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

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

Hello again

I figured that I’d leave a quick post with some information regarding domain registrations for those of you that are new to domain name registration and give you a few tips. Below you’ll find some of the more common & important tips for registering a domain name. Rather than going on with details of this post let’s get started. They aren’t listed in any particular order but each of them definitely deserves to be read.

1) Don’t register domain names that are too long. Yes, you can register domain names up to 63 characters long, but that doesn’t mean you should use all 63 characters. You want your domain name to be easy to remember. Not everyone will bookmark your page initially so try to think of something that can be easily remembered — although most premium domains have already be registered for quite some time. I personally try to keep every domain name that I register under 15 characters which is still quite a few but these days it’s tough to get a decent domain with less characters.

2) Use of hyphens in your name. Much like the 63 character domain names option above, you should try to avoid registering a domain name with a hyphen. It’s often times difficult for people to remember but it’s still an option. Now I’m by no means a search engine expert but I’ve found that there is no benefit or penalty for registering a domain name with a hypen. As a matter of fact I own a couple of domain names with a hyphen and they rank rather well so don’t let this be a deterrent. It’s actually quite possible to register some keyword dense domain name with hypens so it’s still an option but one that avoid at all costs if possible.

3) Try to reserve a dot com name. .COM is the most recognized domain extension and if it’s available definitely register it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with registering one of the many other domains but again, people first think of .COM when typing in a domain name. I have a competitor that registered a .NET for a domain names that I own, this was before I registered every extension but the point of the story is that if someone is wanting to visit his site they are most likely going to think of the .COM and end up at my site. They may realize that they are at the wrong place but it’s definitely possible that they will stay at my .COM and make a purchase from me rather than the intended .NET. Just something to think about.

4) Protect your name by registering multiple extensions (.net, .org, etc.). This stops people from copying your name and putting up a competitor site based on the brand that you’ve built. For example, if you own JustBirdCages.com you may want to seriously consider registering JustBirdCages.NET, JustBirdCages.ORG, JustBirdCages.US, etc if they are available. This will keep imitation sites from building their brand on your domain name. Try our domain name search tool to search for some domain names that you’re considering and it will show you all of the available extensions.

5) Keyword Dense Domain Names. If you continue to read my blog I’ll get into keywords in regards to search engine optimization (SEO). Obviously you know some of the more common words that someone would type to find a website related to yours so using a domain name with your keywords in it is definitely a plus. With that said, you’ll find that sites that rank well in the search engines without their domain having anything to do with their website but it definitely doesn’t hurt. I tend to search for the main keywords related to my websites topic before anything else and then research from there for alternatives.

6) Domain Privacy.Recently the option for private registration has become a feasible option. You can find the owner of a website on any registered domain names by doing a WhoIs lookup. The information provided would be your name, address, phone number & email address. Adding domain privacy is like an unlisted phone number with the phone company. There is always an additional cost but these days it is almost becoming necessary. Click here to read more on private domain registration.

That’s about it…
You’re ready to check if your domain is available. You can click here to visit www.SiteToad.com which offers domain names for as little as $1.99 for an entire year.

Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteToad.com

A question that I frequently get asked is how to make a free website. It’s an understandable question but one that’s difficult to answer. I realize that money can be tight but it’s difficult to truly build a free website especially if you want to create a professional website.

What I plan on doing is listing some tools on how to make a free website along with some affordable tools that allow you to present a professional image. Just keep in mind that if you don’t have a professional image it’s likely that you’ll lose out on sales.

Free Domain Names

I don’t know of any site that offers absolutely free domain names unless you purchase a pre-paid year of web hosting or some other sort of annual service.  A domain name is extremely affordable at $10.99 per year through www.SiteToad.com. Again, this is per year not per month so it’s extremely affordable.

Free Website Hosting

This is another service that it’s difficult to find for free and still portray a professional image. You can always use a service like BraveNet.com as they actually provide free domain hosting. The thing is that they amount of resources that they give you is limited to sort of force you to upgrade to one of their paid plans once you’ve outgrown the free space.

An affordable option is web hosting with www.SiteToad.com, we offer a Deluxe hosting plan for $7.95 per month but it gives you ample space to grow your site. Best of all, you an host unlimited domains on one hosting plan. This allows you to host multiple sites such as Domain1.com, Domain2.com etc all for only $7.95 per month. Plus you don’t have the adds that display on your site that you’ll find with many free domain hosting providers.

Free Website Builder

This is going to be very similar to free website hosting as you will have the providers ads displaying on your site and doesn’t look professional at all. www.SiteToad.com offers an ad-free website builder that allows you to update your website on any computer and offers 100’s of free templates to choose from to get that professional look that you should strive for.

How To Make A Free Website

As you can see it’s actually very affordable to build a website with www.SiteToad.com and still achieve that professional look that you’re looking for. If you haven’t had a chance to look at the site, we put together www.WebsiteToad.com which offers all the tips & tools that will help you learn how to make your own website.

I’ve built the site with a search box so that you don’t need to search all over to find what you’re looking for. I recommend that you check out www.WebsiteToad.com before committing to any given domain names or web hosting provider.

Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteToad.com