Buying a domain name is a big step. It will be your website’s home on the Internet, and the choice of domain name can have long term search engine ranking impact. Therefore it’s wise to think the decisions through before buying and registering your domain name.

Here’s a short tutorial on how to buy a domain name.

Keywords in the domain name

The importance of having your actual keywords in your domain name varies across various search engines. Google for example seems more interested in the popularity and perceived importance of your page as determined by their page rank system.

However, when other sites link to you spontaneously, they may simply use your domain name to do so. Having your main keyword phrase as your domain name in these cases will help your search engine ranking for that term a lot.

So, while it may not be critical to have your main keywords or keyword phrase in your domain name, it’s definitely good to have it if at all possible.

Domain name extension

Whenever possible, try to get a .com domain. This is by far the most popular domain extension. Local domain extensions, like .co.uk, may rank better in that specific country than generic domains like .com or .net. If you want to do business globally, try .com first. Opinion is divided about whether the domain extension has an influence on search engine rankings, and in the end it might not.

However, people’s tendency to type .com as a domain extension into a browser rather than any other extension makes .com the preferred extension.

Budget concerns may prompt you to go for the ridiculously cheap .info domain names, which you can pick up for around $1 – $3.

Check domain name availability

Obviously you need to check whether a domain name is available before you actually register it. There are numerous tools online to do this with. Any domain registrar will be able to give you the information, but here are my two favorite tools for the job:

DomainsBot.com

Simply type your keyword phrase into the Domainsbot search block and it will quickly reveal whether the domain name for that phrase is taken, and also what extensions are still available.

Nameboy.com

This service allows you to type in a few keywords, and it will automatically make up hundreds of possible combinations of those keywords, and list which of those combinations are available for each domain name extension. A great time saver and also great for brainstorming domain names.

How to buy a domain name

The price of domain names vary across different registrars on the Internet. It’s important to find a reliable registrar and not just go for the cheapest. Your domain is almost like your home, you don’t want to leave it in incapable hands. Personally I use Namecheap and have been very satisfied with their service. Their pricing is also extremely competitive.

NameCheap.com Step By Step:

Go to NameCheap.com. Sign up for a free account using the link below the login box on the right.

How to buy a domain name

Once registered, you can use the tool on the front page to register your domain name. Type in the desired name and the extension(s) you’re interested in, and click Search.

You’ll now see what extensions are available for your domain name.

If the .com is not available, you may try something else. Otherwise, just tick all the extensions you want to register and click on Add to Cart.

For this example I chose to register the .net extension. Next, choose how many years you want to register. Start with 1 if you’re still unsure about the longevity of your business or the domain itself. The longer you register it for, the more expensive it gets of course.

Click on one of the checkout buttons, complete payment and you’re done. Time to get some hosting!

Writing reviews is just one of many ways in which affiliates aim to increase their sales. It takes some practice to write good affiliate marketing reviews, but done correctly it can greatly increase your sales conversions for the product you are promoting.

Here is a quick summary of one of the most popular strategies to employ when doing affiliate marketing reviews.

1. Know the product

It is very hard to write an authentic review for a product if you have never even read it or used it yourself. Understandably it’s not always within everyone’s budget to buy every product you want to review. Ways to get around this is to ask the product owner for a review copy, or trade a review copy for one of your own products or services, if you have any to offer.

This costs nothing and the worst that can happen is that the product owner can say no, so always try this first instead of just sucking a review out of your thumb. It is much easier to review a product that you’ve actually used.

2. Compare at least one, preferably two other products

While just having a page where you review one product can certainly work, it’s better to review one or more other similar or competing products. This way you’ll look like even more of an authority given that you’ve actually tried other products as well. I may well be that your visitor was trying to make a decision to buy one of the products you are reviewing, and either recommending that product, or another in favor of it, could close an easy sale for you.

Comparative reviews often yield better results than single, isolated reviews.

3. Set up your review site

Your review site needn’t be complicated. You can either register a domain like [productname]review.com, or if you’re perhaps low on cash and don’t want to buy a domain for every product you review, just register a generic domain contains the word “reviews” in it and use sub folders to organize the different review pages. Be sure to link to the product using your affiliate link.

4. Promote your page The quickest way to get traffic to a review page is with pay per click advertising on Google Adwords, Yahoo or MSN. One great thing about review sites is that, if done correctly, you’ll always get a great quality score from Google, which will help keep your cost per click as low as possible.

The ins and outs of pay per click advertising is beyond the scope of this article though.

A free, but slow and time consuming way to get traffic to your affiliate marketing reviews is to write articles and submit them to popular article directories like EzineArticles.com. From here your articles may be picked up and published on websites and in ezines around the web, potentially bringing you a lot of long term free traffic.

Posting content to sites like Squidoo and Hubpages is another way to create traffic.

You can also use search engine optimization techniques to get organic search engine traffic to your page. This is also a longer term strategy, especially in competitive niches.

5. Test and tweak

Any sales site, be it a sales letter or a review site, needs to be tracked and tested to ensure that you’re getting the best possible conversions. Make sure you track the clickthrough rate on your affiliate links in your reviews, and keep making subtle changes to your page while always tracking the results.

For example, just a change in headline for your review can increase your clickthrough rate and sales. If you don’t test variables like this, you may be leaving a lot of money on the table.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to start an internet business, although not necessarily the easiest. There are definite advantages to this business model, and it is especially appealing to newcomers to the world of internet marketing looking to gain experience while earning some money in the process.

Here are the advantages of affiliate marketing

1. No customer support

It’s not a bad arrangement. The product owner has to take care of customer support. You can pocket your commission and that’s the end of the story, if you want it to be. It is highly advisable though that you look at getting more out of it than that, which brings us to one of the biggest advantages of affiliate marketing…

2. You can build your own business while earning commissions Just sending people straight to the product sales page has its merits in that it requires almost no work outside of advertising on your part. However, you really have to look at the bigger picture here. A far better way of going about things is to send people to your own page first before directing them to the sales page of the product you are promoting.

There are more than one reason for this, but the one relevant to this article is the following:

You can capture their email addresses into an autoresponder, which will allow you to build a list and engage in a legitimate email marketing campaign. Instead of just sending customers to the product you’re promoting, you are now giving yourself the opportunity to follow up with these interested people and promote other products to them as well. You are now building a business for yourself instead of just building someone elses, while potentially earning money while doing so.

3. You have an almost unlimited number of products and niches to target

Even if you’re not an expert at golfing, you can target the lucrative golf niche. Even if you’re not an expert at weight loss, you can target the weight loss niche. There are well paying affiliate programs for almost anything you can sell available online. All you need to do is learn how to plug into this profit stream.

4. You don’t need a lot of money to get started

The least you should do is register a domain to establish an online presence for yourself. This can be something generic if you’re on a tight budget and can only afford one, but later it is advisable to get a separate domain for each affiliate program you promote.

Decent hosting for these purposes can be as little as $7 – $10 per month, while a domain name is around $9 per year, although you can pick up .info domains for around $2- $3. You can start with free advertising methods like article marketing if you don’t have the budget or expertise for other methods like pay per click advertising yet.

5. Earn recurring income the easy way

You can easily target affiliate programs that have recurring membership fees. This way you can build a steady longterm income without having any of the hassles of running and maintaining a membership site.