I received an email the other day and was surprised with the question. I was asked how to register a domain name. The person thought that they had to have a business license to own a domain name. Needless to say, I explained to him the simplicity of registering a domain name and just how affordable it is.

I figured I’d take this time to explain the steps to register a domain for those of you that still may not be familiar with the process. Before you actually complete a registration I’d recommend reading the post on Domain Name Registration Tips first.

How To Register A Domain Name

1. Find An Affordable Yet Reliable Domain Registrar – You can register .COM domains for $10.99 for the first year and $12.99 for every year thereafter with SiteToad.com. This is an annual charge, not a monthly charge.

2. Search For Availability – It’s likely that they “ideal” domain name that you’re looking for is already registered especially the .COM version. If not, great, you can move to the next step in the domain name registration process. If it’s already registered you’ll need to search for alternatives until you can find something that works for you.

3. Select Any Domain Name Add-Ons – As you continue through the registration process you’ll be asked certain questions like how long you’d like to register the domain for, whether you’d like “private” domain name registration and whether you’d like to select a web hosting or email package. Just keep in mind that all of this can be added later. If I would recommend any add-on, I’d select the “private” registration, this will keep your information private such as your name, address, email address, etc. All of this information is required for registering a domain name.

4. Complete The Payment – That’s it, there are no special forms, business registrations, etc that you’ll need for registering a domain name. Using SiteToad.com makes the domain registration process extremely simple. You’ll receive reminders once your domain is coming up for renewal and be notified if anything tries to do anythign suspicious with your domain name or your account with SiteToad.com.

Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteToad.com

I’m fairly certain that you’ve registered a domain name that you think is a great domain but you either haven’t done anything with it or you don’t intend to do anything with it.

The popular thing to do is park your domain name with a company like DomainSponsor.com and make money on them when someone visits the page and clicks on one of the ads that display on the web page. Below I’ve listed a few alternatives to Google Adsense that you can do with your web pages.

BANS – Build A Niche Store Review

BuildANicheStore.com is a unique way to make money with your unused domain names. It’s based on the eBay affiliate program and allows you to build complete websites and display current eBay auctions on your website. eBay will then pay you up to 75% of their profit. For auctions $99 or less that number is 50% but goes up as the value of the auction goes up.

The nice thing about Build A Niche Store is that you can choose from a large selection of professional templates and you can add unique content to help with getting listed in organic search results.

As the name mentions, BANS is great for building a niche store so if you have domain names that are really descriptive but don’t want to build a full flegdged website you can quickly put up websites and still monetize them.

Another feature that I liked was the ablity to integrate Google Adsense into your pages as well. This will allow you to make money online even if your visitors don’t end up purchasing anything from eBay.

Build A Niche Store Features

Below I’ve listed a few of the features of BANS that you will find very important.

Security: You have a password protected admin panel.

Store Editing: Within your admin you can update the content of each page for SEO reasons such as the meta tags.

Ads: As I mentioned above, you can integrate Google Adsense into the pages as another way of making money with your parked domain names.

I highly recommend you checking out BuildANicheStore.com and view all of the features that they offer along with live sites that were developed using BANS.

Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteToad.com

Here’s a quick HTML coding tip that I thought you may be interested in. By the way, you can find more information on basic HTML codes at www.WebsiteToad.com.

Inserting Bullet Points

Bullet points are great for separating a list in an easy to read format. The bullet point tag is as follows:

<ul>
<li> Item 1 </li>
<li> Item 2 </li>
<li> Item 3 </li>
</ul>

The code would appear as:

• Item 1
• Item 2
• Item 3

Inserting Circle Bullet Points

Bullet points are great for separating a list in an easy to read format. The bullet point tag is as follows:

<ul type=”circle”>
<li> Item 1 </li>
<li> Item 2 </li>
<li> Item 3 </li>
</ul>

The code would appear as:

• Item 1
• Item 2
• Item 3

I don’t know if this was anything that you were losing sleep over but I had to create some bullets and figured I’d pass the information online. Hope you’re having a good one!

Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteToad.com

Let me start by saying that this list of 5 “mistakes” is simply my opinion. I’ve been dealing with websites for nearly 10 years now and have come to recognize certain things on a website that screams “amateur” like the list of 5 popular website design mistakes below

Visitor / Hit Counters

This has to be one of the most obvious mistakes. Hit counters are the little graphics generally stuck at the bottom of a web page that goes up numerically by 1 each time the website has a visitor. I realize that if the number is large that it makes your website look popular but if the number is small it can have the opposite effect. Let your website tell your visitors about the popularity of your website.

I understand wanting to track your stats but Google offers a free analytics program that will give you pretty much any information you could ever want about your visitors. It’s completely free to use so visit Google Analytics to setup an account.

Too Many Ads

I understand the purpose of most websites is to make money but placing Google Adsense in every available location is annoying and is my first clue that the website isn’t a “quality” website.

As you may have read in the past, I run www.websitetoad.com and have added ads in only 2 positions. I have Google Adsense on the right hand margin and two small banner ads on the left navigation. If I added Adsense in many more positions on the page it would look like a giant advertisement rather than a website filled with valuable information on making a website.

Too Much Distracting Animation

You will have been to pages that flash, spin, throb and change color. How long do you usually stay? A few seconds? That’s longer than me. Those animations may be “cute” but if you’re interested in keeping visitors at your website and want to portray a professional look do EVER use them. Take a look at GameQuarium.com.

Writing For Search Engines

Don’t get me wrong, writing for search engines is important but not like in the sense that a visitor to your website is unable to make out the content or easily navigate. Take look at LanyardSupply.com, I’m sure that they are a great website that offers great products, great service and great prices but their website was written for search engines. I’m sure that I don’t need to explain this one much more.

Not Planning For Older Technology

I could break this up into a few categories but I said that this was 5 popular mistakes, not 10. The thing about this mistake is that people think that everyone has kept up with the latest technologies. There is a huge population of users that still have dial-up and very small monitors.

You need to take this into consideration when you’re developing your site in regards to the amount and size of graphics on your website as people with dial-up service could leave your site before even seeing what you have to offer because your site takes too long to load.

In regards to small monitors, if you don’t plan the size of your website those with smaller monitors will have the horizontal scroll on the bottom of their monitor which is a big no-no.

In Conclusion

I could go on and on about web design mistakes to avoid but this is a nice place to start. As you build more websites you’ll find that there are certain things that you should avoid and learn from those mistakes.

Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteToad.com

In today’s internet market it’s extremely difficult to start a new website in a market that’s competitive. With the larger companies able to spend so much money on marketing it’s important to find a market that they overlook or simply aren’t interested in

Niche marketing is the method of focusing on a specific portion of an industry or service. The idea is to focus on a product or service that the main street companies aren’t actively pursuing. The demand may not be as big but it’s a market that’ll allow you to compete without the large marketing budget.

What Is An Example Of A Niche Market

Finding a niche market is easier than you may think. The example that I’m going to give you is a very seasonal niche market but it’s a niche market just the same.

I was searching for a Christmas related domain and found that the domain name ChristmasToiletPaper.com had just been released. I did a bit of research on WordTracker and found that during the Christmas season it was actually something that many people searched for so I registered the domain name.

I think use The Drop Ship Directory and found a wholesale provider and I was instantly in the Christmas Toilet Paper business. I know it sounds funny if not extremely odd but it’s a market that had demand during a certain season and there was virtually no-one offering a decent website offering the product.

Benefits Of Niche Marketing

The obvious benefit is that the ‘big guys’ aren’t spending their large advertising dollars on niche markets. They focus on the mainstreet products. Think of it this way although Apple sells accessories for their iPods & Macs the lion’s share of their advertising goes to marketing the actual iPods & Macs, not the smaller accessories.

Another benefit is the lack of competition, like I mentioned above, there is a seasonal demand for Christmas Toilet Paper but not enough to get a lot of websites interested in it. This makes optimizing for search engines much easier along with making any Pay Per Click advertising much more affordable.

Hopefully this helps in your search for product or services to offer online.

Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteToad.com