No More Crickets

Hello! Anybody out there?

Well, now that I’m back from my holiday, I’m trying to get back on track with these postings! What were we talking about? We went over choosing keywords and topics, and where to host your websites. Also talked about one place where you can design a basic website for free, and where to get photos for your website. You’ve signed up for Adsense (good for you) and hopefully have a site ready to go! You’re going to want to build a few of these sites, since there’s no telling which ones will be the ones to earn you the most. Something I’m experimenting with is foreign markets. You’ll have to have a friend in another country to buy your domain names for you, but other than that… you can use Wordtracker to check keywords in the UK, and you might want to make use of that, since there is probably less competition. If you know another language, you could try making sites in that language as well. You want to get as focused as possible. Now, how to get traffic? Basically, what you want to get are backlinks. This will help Google (and other people) find your page. Put your URL in your signature at forums you go to, or write some articles relating to your subject, and include your website at the end. I’d say put it in your blog but I know at least Myspace is being weird about links.

I want to recommend an e-newsletter that I receive that’s really helpful to me. Not everything always applies, but it’s all about building websites and getting visitors, and I think it’s worth signing up for. Being new to websites, web design, traffic, etc., they bring up a lot of things worth considering and applying to your own websites and businesses. You can find it at Entireweb. If you decide you don’t like it after all, just cancel. It’s free. No big deal. Let me know what you think!

Your Domain

Have I mentioned domainsbot.com yet? Or eurodns.com? I don’t think I have. These are great websites for brainstorming. Domainsbot I like, because you can type in one domain name, and it will give you a ton of suggestions. You can filter them, and say what words you do or don’t want to include. I have to say, it’s not that great with hyphenated websites. I would turn to eurodns for that. I like to use eurodns for bulk searches. If I have a lot of domain name ideas, I can type them all in at once, and see which ones are available. Eurodns doesn’t give you any suggestions for domains like domainsbot does, so I use them interchangeably. I’m mentioning this because by now, you should have at least one idea for a website. You know, I’m going to make something up here. Cribs. We’re making a site about cribs. So I’ve done my research, think this will be a good topic with lots of visitors, and now I need a domain name. I go to eurodns and domainsbot and brainstorm til I find a good one. Preferably, it’ll have some keywords in the title. Say wordtracker says ummm ‘wood cribs’ is a big search. If I can get woodcribs.com, that’s perfect! Hypens are fine, as well (www.wood-cribs.com). Now, don’t go registering them through these sites though. Go back to your Dreamhost account, and register through there, or else you’re just creating more work for yourself. Once you have your domain, you’re ready for the next step….