As detailed on this post, Steve Watson and I are starting a “Making Money From Blogging” duel on Saturday.

Day 1 – Buy your domain name, set up your hosting and use the 1-click install feature within your hosting (sometimes called Fantastico) to install WordPress on your hosting.

First things first, some keyword research. On this occasion I want a domain name for my book but I still do some keyword research because I’m not so wedded to the name that I wouldn’ t change it if there was something similar with more searches. So it’s off to the Google Keyword Tool I go…. now some people get all in a tizzy about how many searches is good – but I just look for 5000 or more, ideally with some related terms with the same or more. Don’t forget the Google Keyword Tool defaults to your country, so click the Advanced Search Options box and choose All Countries if your market will be global.

My new blog is based around success, success thinking, secrets of success, keys of success, and so I started with the word “success” and also clicked the box that says “only show closely related search terms” or something similar, and then clicked on the header of the column that says “global monthly searches” so that it orders the list from the most searched downwards. Now, my idea for my book is to call it The Success Factor and I notice that one of the highly searched key phrases is “the success” with 300,000 searches a month.

So I want to have that phrase in my URL, and when I search “success factor” I find it’s searched over 18,000 a month, with “the success factor” searched over 12,000 times a month. I’m happy with that but “The Success Factor” as a URL had obviously already gone, so I added one relevent word at the end and bought that. I’m usually targeting 3-word phrases nowadays and having quite a lot of success with that, from global markets to local business markets.

(Actually I had a bit of a laugh today, because one of the key phrases I’m targeting for The Business Success Factory is “internet marketing brighton” but when I type that into Google, one of my other websites comes up Page One Position Two – AccountancyBrighton.com because I have an article on that blog for how to market your Brighton business using the internet! )

I always buy my domain’s from Funky Domain Names – it’s our reseller account at GoDaddy, I like the 24 hour telephone helpline particularly and know my way around it now. I have an unlimited hosting account there and sometimes put new domains on that, but if I intend to sell them eventually, I like to set up seperate hosting. For that, I sometimes use Hostgator which is also very good. Steve hasn’t sent the rules through yet, so I’m not sure if we are allowed to mention our new blogs, so I won’t just yet.

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