In my last post, Picking The Right Keywords, I talked about what I did to find the right set of keywords and pick the name of my site. In this post, I want to tell you the steps about setting up a niche site.  These are the actual services and sites that I use to set up my niche sites.

But first,  I want to share a mistake that I made registering a site that I have called www.whattodoformoney.com so you can learn from my missteps.

I do most of my work late at night after my family goes to bed and after a long day.  I think that had a lot do do with why I made the mistake which was somewhat costly.  I did all the keyword research and found the right combination of searches per month (>1000 SPM) and competition (<1,000 competing pages). The problem was when I registered the keyword I found that I had registered the wrong one.  Whattodoformoney.com was not what I originally wanted.  I actually wanted whattodoforextramoney.com.  This cost me time, money and possible ranking in the search engines.

Buying Your Domain

  • The first thing that you need to do when buying a domain is to find a registrar.  I use Name Cheap, which I found to be easy to set up and configure.   If you buy 24 Internet Marketing they have videos that will take you step by step through the process.  I highly recommend this purchase as it will save you a lot of time.

Buying Your Domain

  • The next thing that you need to do is find a web host for your domain.  This will allow you to publish your site to the web.  Things get a little confusing here but let me tell you what I did and you can follow my lead.   I use a web hosting company called Just Host.  I signed up for their service in a few short steps.  You can sign up for different services and length of time.  The longer the contract term, the cheaper per month it will be.  As I am just testing this strategy, I picked the one year plan and nothing else (****secret to save you money….email me and I will tell you how to get 50% off the fees****).  There is some configuration here, but not too bad.  I could write all the steps but it is easier to see them and follow them, so I recommend that you get a copy of 24 Internet Marketing.

Fixing My Mistake

Here is what I did to fix the mistake.  I registered whattodoformoney.com because it was available and it cost me $10.16 through Name Cheap. I did not know that I made a mistake at that point.  The next step that I did was to get web hosting.  I use a company called Just Host.  This cost me $41.88/year (****secret to save you money….email me and I will tell you how to get 50% off the fees****).  When I was setting up the blog, I noticed in the cpanel (more on cpanel in my next post in the series) that I signed up the wrong domain.   I then used my web hosting to buy another domain which I originally wanted.  This cost me $14.95 because I didn’t go back to Name Cheap to save time.  I bought whattodoforextramoney.net because whattodoforextramoney.com was already taken.  I then redirected the domain to hit whattodoformoney.com.  If you search for what to do for extra money using quotes, I am already coming up on page one of Google because there is less traffic for these search terms.

I know that this is a bit confusing for the newbie.  If you need help then just email and I will help you.

Time spent buying domain: 15 minutes

Time spent buying and setting up hosting: 1 hour

Time spent fixing my mistake: 1 hour

Total spent: $61.99 which should have be $14.95 cheaper

Check out my Toolbox for more information on the services and products I use.

In my next post I will discuss how to set up your site using cpanel and WordPress.  By the way, I have had 2,400 page views .  Not great, but I am working hard to boost my numbers.  I am having fun and glad to see that I have had traffic but I need to spend more time building traffic and backlinks.   But more on that in later posts.

Joe Edward

Joe Edward