Initial startout

Hello everyone,
I have been around for a bit, reading and trying to wrap my head around how this all works and how I am going to start out.

I think I have found a start, and I have a few questions about how I should do this:

1) I have an idea of the domains I want, found some good looking domains and now I am wondering:

a) Should I be registering the domains in my name? Is that a concern?
b) Same deal with hosting, advertising stuff, etc.

If I do register my domains in my name, should I be paying for the whois privacy?

I will have more questions I am sure, this could very well (and hopefully will be) the start of my story of how I go into this stuff!

Hopefully you guys can let me know what I should be doing here soon! I wana get up and running ASAP!

Thanks

kylep said:

Hello everyone,
I have been around for a bit, reading and trying to wrap my head around how this all works and how I am going to start out.

I think I have found a start, and I have a few questions about how I should do this:

1) I have an idea of the domains I want, found some good looking domains and now I am wondering:

a) Should I be registering the domains in my name? Is that a concern?
b) Same deal with hosting, advertising stuff, etc.

If I do register my domains in my name, should I be paying for the whois privacy?

I will have more questions I am sure, this could very well (and hopefully will be) the start of my story of how I go into this stuff!

Hopefully you guys can let me know what I should be doing here soon! I wana get up and running ASAP!

Thanks

Click to expand...

When you say you've found some good domains, it means you've done your keyword research right? I hope so... If you're just starting I would make sure not to target highly competitive terms and stick to the longer tail keywords. Then you want an exact match domain (EMD). When you're starting off, if you don't have the right keywords, you won't make any money. You should search through the forum for threads on keyword research just to make sure.

If your domains are de-indexed or slapped by google, it doesn't affect your hosting or registration, as you'll pay for that upfront. I would just make sure to use a private registration. Take a look online, there are usually coupons to help shave off some of the cost.

Hostgator, namecheap, and godaddy are some of the larger hosting companies. Create an account with your information, log in, and you'll be able to register some domains. Again, I would suggest private registration.

Good luck!

Sorry, can you elaborate on the private registration?

kylep said:

Sorry, can you elaborate on the private registration?

Click to expand...

Private registration basically makes sure that your personal information (the information that you input when you sign up with the registrar) isn't associated with the domain on whois databases.

Private registration is something like special service. it will give you some extra facilities and you got the little chance to get banned by Google.
I think registering the domain by your name is good. Because if you have any long term plan then its very important.

makeitWORK! said:

When you say you've found some good domains, it means you've done your keyword research right? I hope so... If you're just starting I would make sure not to target highly competitive terms and stick to the longer tail keywords. Then you want an exact match domain (EMD). When you're starting off, if you don't have the right keywords, you won't make any money. You should search through the forum for threads on keyword research just to make sure.

If your domains are de-indexed or slapped by google, it doesn't affect your hosting or registration, as you'll pay for that upfront. I would just make sure to use a private registration. Take a look online, there are usually coupons to help shave off some of the cost.

Hostgator, namecheap, and godaddy are some of the larger hosting companies. Create an account with your information, log in, and you'll be able to register some domains. Again, I would suggest private registration.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

I did a fair bit of searching around, I found some EDM's that looked good with high monthly searches, the highest being 110000 monthly US searches, it does have competition (7.6 million results found by google) but I am not sure how to really analyse the competition so I figured I would just go for it and try it out.

What do you guys think? Any more thoughts before I register the domain and get some hosting and get working? I would be happy to get any advice I can.

You should always check the competition before you go ahead with it, don't waste your efforts.

If you're after private whois you should take a look at:


They offer free private whois on domain registrations.

Good luck starting out OP

Alright, well I got hosting and a domain.
I am now setting up wordpress and there are a LOT of options for plugins, what do you guys suggest? I was thinking about just building my own software to create the content for me, but if something exists and works well, I don't see the purpose yet and I will look at it further down the road.
My plan is to actually fill in the content on the site, but looking at wordpress, I don't know if it will be suitable or not.
Does the big G have some sort of weakness when it comes to blogs that it can't help but rank them quicker than others?

I doubt thats the case, I am just curious if wordpress is really all that good or if there is another option that you guys would recommend.

About my niche:
I work in a industry that attracts a lot of attention, and I figured that would be a good place to start since I know a lot about it and its something that many people seem to want information on. My intention is to break down the information on it that I know into sections and then build it up as a reference. When I get a little ways into it I am intending on submitting to digg, etc. and then doing a fiver for lots of diggs (200 or so?), and see what kind of result I can get. I will also at the same time do a little running around and posting on similar blog sites with my keywords in the posts and links back to the relevant part of my site.

What do you guys think? Anything I should change or tweak or more that I should be looking at?

I'm figuring more and more out each day!
Now my question is:
What is the minimum number of searches monthly that makes it worthwhile and what should you be expecting for a CPC value?

I have found a few more that seem like they would be good, but its kinda hard to tell.. I would assume 2k+ is acceptable for exact match searches but I'm not sure.

Ok, so no one seems to be on here..
But I will ask this and it will bump it as well, maybe I will get some responses:
I might have stumbled on a small scale goldmine of potential domains.
In doing the research right now (not there yet, but I'm getting though the list), the CPC from adwords is averaging 30.68, thats over 104 keyword phrases, exact match.
Average US searches is 3071, average globals is 5001.
Does this seem like what I think it does?
I did some math, that if in a month I got 20% of the US searches into the site, and then 10% of those clicked, I would be averaging 1885 a month! Does that seem like a good idea to shoot at, and what would be reasonable numbers to put in there for percentages? Does that seem unreasonable the 20% and 10%? That works out to.. 2% of total traffic clicking on my ads, assuming I get my average.
OR, is this a potential screw up in adwords keyword research.. or..?
Someone, anyone? I'm pretty excited about this one, I just dont want to get too worked up if its not what I think it is.

Umm.. anyone?