Your own domain gives you flexibility in terms of using it for monetization. Would you like to earn money on internet? First step into online world is registration of your own domain name. It could start you on your way to financial independence. Everything depends on you, you are the boss.

What is considered a ‘good domain name’? A domain name that has short recognizable words, preferably one word, relevant to the content of the business it represents. A domain name can contain several words. In this case, a hyphen should be used.

At this point in time it is rather hard to find one word for your domain, as public internet is a quarter of a century old and the best names are taken. The first domain was registered in 1985.

Websites can be registered privately in order to keep the owner’s name private. Otherwise, the owner’s personal name is listed and displayed in directories. I always exercise my ‘register by proxy’ right.

OK, you are ready to register your very own domain name. Where and how do you do it? There are many registrars. My favorite is godaddy.com. The company has been around for quite some time, reliable, has excellent customer service and the process is fully automated and painless. All you need to do is go to the website FREE Private Registration with your domain at GoDaddy.com
and select appropriate options on the screen. Watch out: select options that you want, otherwise you will pay much more then you need to.

Good to know: after you registered your domain, you need to wait up to two days until the process is complete and your domain goes thru all necessary internet points.

I know, you are bursting with ideas and your hands are itching to start clicking. Good luck with your new domain!

Now you are ready to select your new web hosting service. We will discuss it in the next couple of days.

You decided to start a blog. There is such a great variety of blogs today: photoblog, artlog, sketchblog, vlog (video blog), music blog (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) and professional blog. Yes, it’s true – companies hire bloggers.

A couple of months ago I created a search for word ‘blog’ on www.dice.com – one of the major employment boards I’ve been using for years. I get consistent results for the last couple of months. I repeated the same search today. It brought me 160 jobs throughout USA that included the word ‘blog’. A couple of months ago the quantity of jobs that mentioned the word ‘blog’ was significantly less. Blogs are hugely popular today.

What should be your next step? You need to decide the type of application you will use. There is a variety of blog applications available today: Serendipity, Blogengine, DasBlog to name a few. In my opinion, the best platform for a blog is WordPress – www.wordpress.org . It gives you many benefits. You can have free flexible software that will perform a variety of functions for you. It is considered premiere blog software today. It allows you to have your own domain name. Free software is a great idea, it works for many people. After tinkering with free software I made a decision to buy the theme you are looking at right now – Thesis. I am fascinated by the quality and the support of the crew. It provides many features and can be fully personalized.

You need to decide where your blog will reside. Many companies offer free computer space for blogs: www.wordpress.com, www.blogomonster.com, www.livejournal.com, etc. The list of companies that provide free space is long. If your blog resides on free space you will have a sub domain name. You will not be an independent domain owner.