How To Register A Domain Name

Registering a domain name is a very simple and straight forward process. I do understand as a newbie, everything online seems so very daunting at first. Believe me, I have been through that stage and I can tell you it is not as daunting s it looks to be. Now, registering for a domain for me is as simple as making purchases in my local supermarket just that the products in this case are different.

If you are not used to making purchases online, you may not feel comfortable registering for your first ever domain name. You may wonder whether it is safe to buy or pay for anything online but I can assure you that purchasing anything online is as safe as it can be. Just follow these steps and you will be getting your first ever domain in no time.

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Focus On One Money Making Model At A Time

As a newbie, it is very easy to get overwhelm by the sheer number of ways to make money online. Each money making model or method seems to be better and more promising than the next. The situation is not help by some unscrupulous marketers who take advantage of newbies’ naivety and greed and come up with products, services and systems that promised the sky but deliver precisely little.

As a result, you will find a lot of newbies flirting from opportunities to opportunities in the hope of finding the one which can make them millions but most will end up disappointed and some end up giving up on making money online which is a real pity. That is why it is important for you if you are new online to focus on one money making model at a time. When you have master a particular money making model, you can then move on to other opportunities.

Don’t ever fall into the so called newbie trap of moving from opportunities to opportunities. It is fine to explore and feel your way around the online world initially. However, once you decide you are ready to make money online, focus all your time and efforts on a particular money making mode. Trust me, you will be saving yourself a lot of heartaches and headaches.

Essential Services

Besides the software and tools which I have mentioned in my previous posts, there are a number of services which will greatly enhance your online business and bring you greater profitability. You can subscribe to these services when you are ready to move forward to the next level of your online business.

While most of these services are not a necessity for a beginner, web hosting is a must for those of you who are really serious about making money online. If you are short of funds in the beginning, make it your priority to get your own hosting once you have the funds for it.

Here’s a list of services which you will definitely find useful.

Autoresponders
If you want to build your own list, an autoresponder is a must. There are a number of free autorepsonder software and scripts around which you can probably try out in the beginning. One word of caution though, most of these software and scripts are very problematic. A paid autoresponder service is a must for those who are serious about building their list. You can check out my reviews on Aweber, GetResponse and iContact autorepsonder services.

Premium Templates & Themes Services
To stand out from the crowd, you need to give your website a high quality theme or template. Although there are many free high quality themes and templates available, they are already used by a large number of websites. It will be hard for visitors to differentiate your website from the hundreds if not thousands of websites out there using the same themes or templates. Premium themes and templates offer you the chance to get a high quality template or theme for a fraction of the cost involve in hiring a web designer. However, one setback is that these premium themes and templates are not restricted to you only. In other words, other people can buy them and use them on their websites too.

Web Design Services
If you can afford to engage a web designer to design and code your website for you, then by all means go ahead. Web design services do not come cheap and a simple website makeover can set you back at least few hundreds. Otherwise, going for premium themes and templates are the next best choice.

Web Hosting Services
As mentioned, you should get your own web hosting as soon as you can afford it. I have previous written a post on “Choosing A Suitable Web Host” and you can refer to that post when it is time to get your own hosting. Alternatively, you can check out my “Web Hosting Reviews” section for a list of suitable web hosts.

Outsourcing Services
Outsourcing is the key to growing and expanding your online business and generating more profits. Outsourcing will free up more time for you to focus your efforts into other more urgent and important parts of your business like marketing, etc. Stuff that you can outsource includes, web design, programming, content creation, graphic design and more. If you need to outsource, you can look for freelancers at Elance, Rentacoder and Scriptlance.

Keyword & Market Research Services
When it comes to keyword and market research, there are many free and paid keyword and market research services around. However, Wordtracker is probably the best of the lot offering both free and paid version of their keyword and market research service. For newbies, the free trial version is good enough to begin with.

Essential Basic Tools And Software

As an online entrepreneur, it is important for you to understand and learn how to leverage on tools and software to get the most out of your online business. While some of the tools and software may requires a certain degree of investment to begin with, I’m glad to tell you most if not all of the basic tools and software are free to begin with.

Which is why making money online remains one of the best ways for a regular person to make passive income online as the startup capital requires is pretty minimum. Most of the tools and software that you will require initially are free to begin with. As your online business grows and when you can afford it, you can upgrade to more premium services which should accelerate the growth of your online business.

Here’s a list of paid and free essential basic tools and software that will help you make money online and grow your business:

• Anti-Virus Software
• Article Submission Software
• Directory Submission Software
• Video Submission Software
• Chat Software
• Email Software
• Feed Reading Software
• FTP Software
• Graphics Editing Software
• HTML Editing software
• Web Browsers
• Rewriting Software

Anti-Virus Software

Protecting your computer and data is a must for any online entrepreneur which is why having anti-virus software is so very important. You do not want to be caught losing your important data to viruses, trojans etc. There are many free and paid versions of anti-virus software available. You can probably start off with these free anti-virus software before moving on to more secured paid versions.

• AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
• Avast Home Edition
• Avira Antivir Personal

Article Submission Software

Having a good article submission software is going to save you much time and effort in promoting your website. A good article submission software will help you to automate your submission process and let you focus your time and effort on other parts of your business. The article submission software that I used and which I highly recommended is Article Post Robot. There are other good article submission software around but Article Post Robot is one that serves me very well all these time.

Directory Submission Software

A directory submission software is a must if you want to get index in the search engines quickly. Basically, a directory submission software helps you to semi automate submission of your websites to hundreds if not thousands of feed directories, web directories and RSS directories. This is vital as manual submission is very tedious and takes up a lot of time. While there are some directory submission software that are fully automated, I have not done enough research to validate whether these software are the real thing. In the meantime, having a semi-automated solution is the next best thing. I highly recommend using Directory Submitter. I have been using Directory Submitter for a long time and this nifty software has helped me get my websites indexed quickly in the search engines. You will never go wrong with Directory Submitter.

Chat Software

There are many types of chat software around but I would recommend using Gtalk which is free and can synchronize with your gmail email account. A chat software will allow you to communicate with people easier and on a more personal note.

Email Account / Software

To receive and send out emails for personal or business purposes, you need an email account and an email software to manage your emails. Personally for me, I find that I can do everything with just Gmail. Before I was a convert, I used Yahoo! Mail as my choice of web based email account. Now, I practically cannot make do without Gmail. As for email software, you can try other alternatives such as Mozilla’s Thunderbird and Eudora.

Feed Reading Software

To get updated on the latest news and happenings in your niche is going to be very easy with a feed reading software. You can check out this post on a list of desktop and web based feed reading software that you may use to get updated on your favorite news sources.

FTP Software

For a good FTP software, you can go no further than FileZilla. I have been using FileZilla ever since I started making money online. It is a very fast FTP software which allows you to upload and download files easily. Speed is very important especially if you have a lot of files to download and upload.

Graphics Editing Software

Photoshop is one of the best graphics editing software out there although it is not free and cheap by any means. However, this is a worthy investment and one software that you should get as soon as possible. Changing and redesigning graphics is part and parcel of being an online entrepreneur and this is a skill that you should master the basics at the very minimum.

HTML Editing Software

Dreamweaver is my choice of HTML editing software. Although there is a learning curve attached to it, but once you master the basics, getting a simple HTML site up is going to be a piece of cake. Other HTML editing software that you can look at are Coffee Cup, FrontPage and NVU.

Rewriting Software

There are two programs that I highly recommended. One is WordFlood and the other is Power Article Rewriter. Both rewriting software will allows you to rewrite all those PLR articles that has been lying on your harddisk and put them to good use. You can also choose to spin your original and unique content into many different versions and submit them to various article directories to build links and drive traffic to your websites.

Video Submission Software

If you are going to use videos for promoting your websites, you should get a video submission software to help you automate your submission of videos to various videos sites. Using videos is a good way to build links and generate traffic to your websites fast. You can try Video Upload Pro which is a very good video submission software by the same person behind Article Post Robot.

Web Browsers

My choice of browser has to be FireFox. There are lots of plugins available to make this browser the top choice for online entrepreneur. Other worthy browsers are Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. For your information, I used all five as I sometimes code and modified wordpress themes for my websites.

Basic CSS

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is a type of stylesheet language that defines how a document would look like. It commonly used to style a website or documents written in markup languages such as HTML and XHTML. Even though HTML can be used to define how your site would look, web designers still find HTML very cumbersome to work with.

As websites started to get more sophisticated, it become more complex to write and maintain websites in HTML. With CSS, web designers have more control over stylistic capabilities of a document without the complexity of HTML. This allows web designers to focus more on the design aspects of a website rather than coding.

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Basic HTML

HTML which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language is a language specifically used for websites. It is a type of language or text which allows websites to display text and images. HTML uses a lot of tags to define the way website look and feel. Without HTML, I simply cannot imagine how the internet would look like, although another language or format would probably come along and take its place in history.

Well, I’m not going to go into any details regarding HTML but I will direct you to a few sites whereby you can learn some basic HTML skills. If you want to make money online, it is very important for you to master some basic HTML skills as most if not all online make money activities involve some HTML at one stage or another. I learn most of my HTML skills from W3Schools which I still use today if I need to refer to anything in an instance.

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Basic Computer Skills

There is nothing more frustrating for a newbie than getting stuck at the very first hurdle. To a newbie, it seemed that there are so many things to learn yet so little time to digest and accomplish anything. From understanding how to operate your computer, the various terminologies and language used online to a whole host of technical issues, newbies feel so overwhelmed that they give up even before they get started.

If you want to start making money online, you need to learn how to build a site from scratch, upload and download files to installing links. Before you can do all these, you need to learn how to operate your computer and some other basic computer skills such as emailing and surfing the net with confidence first. That is the first step to you being an online entrepreneur. After that, you can tackle other more advance skills.

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