Step 1 — Choosing a Domain Name

Feb 12, 2012 by Emily

My first step in building on online presence and a passive income was to create this website.  All the research that I have done indicates that it is beneficial to have your own dedicated website instead of using one of the free services.  I think it does look a lot more professional to have a site named momismakingmoneyonline.com instead of momismakingmoneyonline/wordpress.com, for example.  It also gives you flexibility to expand and more control over the look of your site.

Once I had decided to have a dedicated website, I needed to search to make sure that a domain was available that I liked and that I felt reflected what I wanted for this blog.  I wanted it to include the idea of passive income or internet marketing or making money online in the title, both for branding and search purposes.  The best place to search for a domain name is at the domain providers.  In the past I have purchased website domains at www.godaddy.com for my tax business and for my online scrapbooking business. So that is where I went to do my research.  You can type a proposed domain name in the box at the top and it will tell you whether that name is available and in what endings –.com,.net.,.info,.org,.co,.us,.ca,.mobi,.biz, or .me. It also suggest similar alternatives that are available, which are sometimes right on and sometimes hilariously funny if the software doesn’t interpret your words correctly.

I wanted a .com domain for this blog. I know there are lots of great businesses out there with .net or other endings, but I still feel like .com is the gold standard and what people are most likely to think of first. I also didn’t want to be competing with another business that had the same domain name, but with a different ending.  That said, I think there is a case to be made that if all the traffic to your site is going to be driven by google or another search engine and people are just going to be clicking on a link instead of entering your website name manually, the extension may not be as important.

Of course, GoDaddy is not the only place to look for domain names. Some blogs I have read suggest namecheap.com, which as its name indicates sells discounted domain names. Many of the hosting companies, such as Bluehost, offer one free domain name with a hosting purchase and also offer the ability to search on their websites. I use Bluehost for my hosting and will post a comprehensive article on choosing a hosting provider soon.

That said, I played around with domain name ideas for awhile. I have spent the last few months reading a lot of online blogs about internet marketing, developing a passive income stream, and affiliate sales online. They have been awesome sources of information and their owners are generous. One thing I noticed, though, was that almost everything I was reading was written by young (late twenties to late thirties) men.  Yet I know that there are tons of searches monthly by moms, stay-at-home or part or full-time employed, on the topics of how to work from home or how to earn extra money. I felt like my situation, that of a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom with a part-time seasonal tax practice, might fill in a voice that was different than those of the blogs and websites that I had been reading. So I wanted to include the word “Mom” into my domain and business somehow. After some thinking and searching, I landed on MomIsMakingMoneyOnline.com.  I like it.  I also like that I can shorten it with an acronym to MIMMO, which is not earth-shatteringly clever, but at least catchy and useable.

Although I did my searching on GoDaddy, I did get a free domain from Bluehost, so I once I knew the domain was available, I went ahead and purchased my hosting package.  And that is the topic of my next post.  Stay tuned…

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