When I went through the Google Conquest course last year, and I’ll give a review of that in a later post, Alex Goad and Brian Johnson kept bashing several key points into my head. They said again and again, pay attention to these details and you’ll stand a great chance of making money online.

One of their mantras concerned the domain name you choose. So how did I settle on marketplex.net?

Truthfully, I’d just finished watching a video (aff.link) by Rich Schefren in which he’d made the obvious point that to succeed you actually need to start doing something. Up until now all my time had been spent doing research and making excuses as to why it wasn’t the right time to take the plunge.

So I said to myself, “Do it now, right now!”, and I fired up namecheap and started searching for keyword combinations containing the words “internet” and “marketing”. That’s the niche I wanted to be in so bingo, get a domain name, make a start.

Naturally all the good stuff and even all the bizarre combinations of the good stuff was taken. I was thinking, “Market, marketing, markets, complicated, newbie,..”, and finally I decided the whole business was just too damn complicated, full stop! Wait a minute! Complicated marketing, market complexity, MARKETPLEX! No way, there’s no way that could still be available.

The dot com had gone but all the other dots were still available. Just in case someone in the world was having the exact same idea I was having at that exact same moment, LOL, I jumped into action and registered the dot net. Whew, success!

However, once I’d screwed my head back on I remembered Alex and Brian and the way they had almost begged us to just follow a few simple steps to ensure we set things up correctly. Bol**cks! MARKETPLEX? What’s that then? What the hell is a “marketplex” anyway and who’s going to be searching for it online?

I’ll tell you who, customers of a couple of large companies that are already using the name. And why was marketplex.net still available? Because it had recently been de-registered, I have no idea why but just suppose it was for all the wrong reasons? Spam domain? Adult content? Worse? OMG! What sort of domain do I have here?

I tried WayBackMachine, no luck. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed that I’m not the sucker owner of the most unmarketable domain on the Internet. Okay, an exaggeration but the point is, my domain name is weak for the market I’m in and I have no idea of its prior history. My first huge mistake.

However, I’m going to make my life deliberately difficult and stick with it. And I’m not going to make the same mistake when it comes to registering my next domain. Keyword research and domain history. These steps should never be overlooked.

Lesson learned. Don’t do it again!

First thing I decided to do is setup a blog and here’s one I made earlier. It’s virgin territory right now, including the terribly bland default WordPress theme. I’ll do something about that later but for now at least I’m up and running.

I used namecheap.com (aff. link) to register the domain, I’d heard GoDaddy is a very bad choice for Internet marketers, which is fortunate because in the past they would have been my first choice. Apparently they are a bit trigger happy on spam complaints even when those complaints are totally unjustified. I was also told it is nearly impossible to transfer your domain away from them once they have it in their clutches.

Anyway, namecheap.com (aff. link) seems to be perfectly adequate and the domains are cheap enough. Just go to their site, enter the domain name you want, if the domain is available add it to the shopping cart, create a new account and pay using your credit card or Paypal. Super simple.

Get a .com if you can or (if .com is not available) a .net, .org or .us/ .co.uk in that order and try to include your primary keyword or key phrase in the domain as this can give your SEO (search engine optimisation) ranking a boost, so I’m told.

For example, if you are selling fishing rods it would be ideal to get the domain name fishingrods.com, which is almost certainly already taken but you get the point. A rule I’ve broken with this web site, if you notice, but I won’t be relying too heavily on SEO to promote the site. I’ll be trying different techniques which I’ll describe in later posts.

I also joined namecheap’s affiliate program with a few mouse clicks, no fuss at all, and I have used these links on this page – just so you know. Any link followed by (aff. link) is an affiliate link which means I get a commission from the seller if you use my link to purchase a product or service. This commission is paid by the seller not you. Well after all, I am trying to become an Internet Marketer, so I won’t be missing any opportunities if I can help it. I also cloaked these links, a process I’ll explain in a later post for those who don’t already know why this is necessary or how to go about it.

I’m a newbie marketer but I do have a strong background in I.T. and I’ll be putting it to use wherever possible and explaining what I’m up to as I go.

So that’s the domain registration sorted out. Next time I’ll talk about hosting and how I created this blog and how it’s possible to do it with virtually no specialised knowledge, provided you choose the right host.