Hi there!
Welcome back!
Let me start by saying this: wow, the quick start blueprint is amazing! I’ve already learned so much, and I just keep on learning! There was so much information to go through it was almost a little overwhelming, but it’s all split into small comprehensible sections which really helps to keep the overview. And I didn’t even really need to go through all the videos because I joined the Accelerator Pro program 🙂
However, while I watched several interesting videos, the quick start blueprint definitely wasn’t the focus of this week.
And just a fair warning: I’ve written quite a monster of a blog, so be prepared 😉
Since I joined Accelerator Pro there were a few things that I needed to provide Dean with to ensure that he would be able to start setting everything up for my own personal funnel and blog. He just needed the following things from me: a domain name for my blog, hosting, an autoresponder for my emails and a nice picture of myself. Sounds easy enough right? Well, it was not…
Before I’ll tell you all about my tips for finding a good domain name, let me start by taking a small detour and tell you about what it’s like for me to take a good picture…
The horror of taking pictures
I am the absolute worst at taking good pictures, so it took one whole day to shoot one that I was satisfied with! I had to enlist the help of my husband and my daughter. My daughter was playing photographer while my husband was making funny faces to get me to laugh for the picture! It took almost 400 takes, but in the end, I actually ended up with multiple pictures that I liked 🙂 Who would have thought (I certainly didn’t…)!
After finishing taking pictures I could focus on finding a good domain name. I’ve written down several tips to help you through this process!
Tip 1: Choose a ‘.com’ domain extension
Now that, what I thought would be, the hardest part was over with, it was time to come up with a good domain name. The first tip I have for you is to choose a ‘.com’ domain extension. Nowadays, there are a lot of extensions and many people don’t know what it all means. However, everyone knows ‘.com’ so it’s a really safe bet and the best choice!
Tip 2: Make the domain name personal
Another tip is to make it more personal by, for example, choosing something such as ‘marketingwith[YOURNAME].com’ or just using your own name.
“Your personal brand is what differentiates you from others“
Luck wasn’t on my side, because, of course, ‘marketingwithsandra.com’ was already taken but now for sale at a beautiful price of $1000… I was definitely not going to spend that much money on it when I could get another domain name for just under $9! So I had to come up with something else.
Tip 3: Keep it short and easy
My full name also wasn’t gonna cut it, because the last tip is to choose a domain name which is easy to pronounce (keep it short and easy!). And let’s face it, ‘Gouweleeuw’ is unquestionably way too difficult for people outside of the Netherlands to pronounce… By the way, ‘Gouweleeuw’ roughly translates to ‘Golden Lion’ if you were wondering 🙂 I really love my last name but it just wouldn’t work for this purpose.
So the brainstorming process continued… Then, my daughter came to me and said: what about ‘sandra-online.com’? And you know what, I loved it! It was the perfect combination of my name and what I wanted to do with it, while still being easy and short!
I chose Namecheap to register my domain because it is cheaper than any other site I’d seen so far and the reviews were also really good! So if you’re looking for a good place to register your own domain name, I’d definitely check out Namecheap if I were you 🙂
Hosting and autoresponder
Now that I had my pictures and my domain name, I just needed to take care of arranging web hosting and registering for an autoresponder. Luckily this was all pretty straightforward! I received some really good recommendations for this. I checked them out and compared them to other similar companies I already knew about and even worked with.
For the hosting, I went with Interserver. It’s amazing! It’s so much cheaper than what I pay to host my webshops! For just $5 per month, you get speed optimisation as well as unlimited storage and support! In addition, Interserver has been around since 1999 which gives me a lot of confidence. After all, if a company has been around for a long time, you can assume that it’s trustworthy!
As an autoresponder I chose AWeber. That’s something you will definitely need if you want to create an email list with subscribers you want to contact. It’s not exactly cheap, but from the reviews I read, it’s a really good and reliable company. And as I said, you will need an autoresponder, so you might as well choose a good one! I just chose the cheapest plan since I don’t have a lot of subscribers yet, but I hope I have to upgrade my plan soon 🙂
Something unexpected
Now that I had everything I needed, it was time to send it all to Dean and let his team do the rest. I was so excited to start, but alas, I have to wait for a maximum of 14 days until they are finished…
Tip 4: Always check the history of your chosen domain name
Suddenly, I received an email from one of Dean’s team members Glenn (nickname “The Wizard” at InternetProfits!) saying that they couldn’t use my chosen domain name! You’ll never guess why…
It used to belong to a German call girl and was basically blacklisted!! That meant that I had to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new domain name. I’m so glad that the team immediately reached out to me and let me know what happened! And I’m so glad that they are there to guide me in this process because I never even would have thought to look at the history of my domain name.
Well, lesson learned! From now on, I will always check the history of a domain name before I register it. If you also want to check the history of your domain name, go to Archive.org!
Luckily a new name came to me a little easier than the last one: ‘onlinebysandra.com’. It’s the domain name I’m currently using for this blog! Do you like it? I’m very happy with it at least!
How would you go about choosing a domain name? Do you have any other tips?
Please let me know 🙂
Until next time!
Sandra
