This is particularly true when you use a CMS (Content Management System) based site, e.g. I am using a blog software cum CMS called WordPress. It is the most popular blogging platform for self hosted domains (more on domain names later in this article). The beauty of WordPress is that you can easily modify it too look like a professional website or blog, with minimum skills required on your side. It is also extremely easy to update, unlike static HTML and CSS based websites.

Building a wordpress powered site is extremely simple, and you can make your own if you follow these steps:

1. Buy a domain name

2. Purchase web hosting

3. Change Nameservers in domain registrar

4. Install wordpress with one-click

5. Add a theme (template) and some plugins

And thats all, you will be ready with  a website of your own that requires minimum maintenance and is easiest to update. Now I will expand upon the steps mentioned above.

1. Buying a domain name

A domain name is simply the address that you want for your website. For example, the domain name for this website is “lughole.net.” The domain name for Facebook’s website is facebook.com and so on. Now you have to decide what kind of name you want and its extension. By extension I mean whether it will be a .com, a .net or a co.uk domain name. There are in fact a lot of geographic extensions for domain names and some people and businesses like to have their domain names cater to a particular region. For example, Google’s website for India is google.co.in while for the UK its google.co.uk.

Where to buy domain names?

When you buy a domain name, you actually register it with yourself for a period of time, which is a minimum of 1 year. You can renew your domain registration just before its expiration or earlier.

There are a lot of Domain Registrars from whom you can buy a domain. However, I would like to recommend the best ones for my site’s readers. So here goes:

- If you are based in United Kingdom, NAMESCO is the best domain registrar for you. Just go to the website, search for a domain you prefer and if its available just buy it. A two-year registration for a .co.uk domain costs 8 Pounds here.

- For US, and the rest of the world, GoDaddy is usually the preferred place to buy domain names. It keeps running discount promotions and has the best rates.

All legal domain registrars are governed by a body called ICANN  – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

2. Purchasing Web Hosting

When you think of buying web hosting, think of it like buying a hard disk – the only difference is that this hard disk lies somewhere on the Internet – and is used to keep your website’s files accessible to people. When you buy web hosting you get two things – webspace and bandwidth. Webspace is of course the amount of space you get for keeping the files, while bandwidth refers to the amount of traffic (visitors) that the site can handle each month.

Where to buy Web hosting?

Buying a web hosting package can get your pockets shrunk if you don’t take correct advice! There are all sorts of web hosting plans available. Many companies will try to convince you to purchase a super expensive plan which you actually won’t need. A wordpress site does not require gigantic resources so its quite cheap to maintain. However, beware of dubious web hosts who sell you hosting for as low as $1 a month. Many are either scams or link farms. Here’s what I recommend

- If you plan to host just one site, you could purchase the hosting from where you bought your domain name – I would only exclude GoDaddy here since it is an expensive host and offers the least freedom for website growth.

- A great place to buy web hosting is FatCow. They have an annual package that saves you a lot of money and gives you a domain name for free when you buy it.  Also, the FatCow hosting has a fairly small carbon footprint as its run on wind energy.

- If you plan to host unlimited websites, then HostGator is the host for you. In fact its great for hosting single sites as well, but FatCow beat it in the annual price package. Coming back to multiple site hosting, you can host unlimited sites with hostgator for $7.95 a month, and that’s a steal.

3. Changing Nameservers

Steps 1 and 2 were really the main steps in the whole process. Now comes the third step, which needs to be followed only if you purchase web hosting from a place different from where you purchased the domain name (actually, this is usually the case).

Your new webhost will have emailed you the DNS settings or more specifically the Domain Name Servers with your web hosing info. Don’t worry its not as complicated as it may sound. These are usually just two or three server addresses. You need to input these addresses into the nameservers panel in the domain management tab of your domain registrar.

Inputting hostgator DNS into Godaddy's domain management

Once you save the settings, the new DNS settings for your domain registrar can take around 24 hours to resolve to your web host.

4. Installing WordPress

Once the nameservers are resolved to your web host, you get a blank website. On this blank website you will now install wordpress. The slow and traditional way is to download the latest wordpress script from wordpress.org, upload it via an FTP program to your web hosting and then install it using MySQL.

However, we can do it faster with just a few clicks!

a.) Login to your webhost’s control panel (they will give you the login info when you buy a hosting), find fantastico or any other automatic script installer that is there in the website control panel and click on it.

b.) From the Fantastico interface, scroll down until you see the Blogs section and just below it, you should see WordPress in the list. Click on the WordPress
c.) Fill in the blanks, e.eg. the user-name and password you want for the site, title and description, email address etc. Then click “install”. Once installed fantastico will give you a summary of the installation process. Click on “finish installation”, and wordpress will be installed on your domain.

5. Adding Themes and Plugins to WordPress

WordPress has hundreds of thousands of developers – most of whom develop themes (templates) and plugins for FREE. They just want credit for their work in the footer of a site and are happy to get donations. You can find a whole lot of free wordpress themes in the wordpress codex.

Installing wordpress themes

- The first thing you will want to do is download the theme or plugin to your computer and remember where you saved it. DO NOT unzip the file, just leave it the way it is.

- Now log in to your WordPress admin panel and click on “Add New Themes” or “Add New” under plugins.

- Click “Upload” in the menu at the top of the page then click the “Browse” button on the next page. This will take you to your computer where you can navigate to the file you downloaded. Select the file by clicking on it, then click the “Open” button, then the “Install” button.

WordPress will automatically upload, unzip, and install your theme or plugin. All you need to do at this point is to activate the theme or plugin and configure any settings that may be available.

WordPress plugins

These are files that add functionality to a wordpress powered site. For example,. this site uses plugins to generate social bookmarking icons under each blog post. It also uses a plugin to generate a contact form on the contact page. The way to install plugins is almost the same as with themes.

I hope this guide is understandable and helps you learn how to setup a wordpress powered site like this one. I am always happy to  guide friends and can offer professional wordpress services on demand.

Pizza.com was recently sold for $2.6 million dollars by its owner, and this was just for the domain name, he hadn’t even developed a website on it! In 2006, diamond.com sold for $7.5 million while sex.com sold for $12.5 million! Meanwhile, porn.com auctioned in 2007 for $9.5 million cash. Again, these are just the domain names, which some enterprising people had bought and saved to sell at the right moment.

What’s so special about these domains that corporates and individuals are shelling filthy cash for them?

First of all, for the internet marketing noobs and the general public, here’s an introduction to domain names:

A domain name is the unique name that identifies an Internet site. Domain names have two or more parts separated by dots. For example www.lughole.net or www.google.com. In these 2 examples, lughole and google are the domain names respectively while .com is an extension.

You can easily buy a domain name from a domain name registrar (more about the process later in this article). A dot com domain registration will cost you between $8 to $10 and you will have to renew the registration annually.

Now, when a domain name costs just $10, how come they are being sold for millions?

Not all domains sell for millions of dollars. Some sell for thousands, some hundreds and some sell at cost price. Its the type-in-traffic these domains derive that matter. Common English words derive the largest amounts of visitors who simply type in the phrase followed by a .com (e.g. sex.com). Then there are others, like “lughole”, which is a more uncommon dictionary domain.

A dictionary domain is a single word that is a part of the English language (or any other language for that matter). The simple test for a dictionary domain is that it should exist in the dictionary of that language! Many people have bought dictionary domain names in speculation, hoping to sell them for thousands or millions of dollars in future. So meanwhile, these domains do not contain a website, but are on a prospective big sale by these speculators.

But not all dictionary domians are profitable investment, though surely most are. This brings us closer to a term called premium domains. Wikipedia describes premium domain names as follows:

In the business of marketing domain names, “premium” domain names are often valuable, and have particular characterizations: The names are short and memorable, may contain words that are regularly searched on search engines or keywords that help the name gain a higher ranking on search engines.

Premium domain names are the ones that fetch maximum money at domain auctions. Besides the ones mentioned earlier in the article, names such as funny.com, cute.com, article.com etc are premium domain names and surely get loads of type-in visitors.

So if you have the stamina to search for unique dictionary domain names that may turn out to be premium domains (I assure you all the popular ones have already been taken), go ahead! Here’s a simple step-by-step procedure for buying a domain name:

1. Register yourself at a domain registrar like GoDaddy or Sedo
2. Search for domain names on the site you have registered – they have the search domains functionality right on the front page.
3. Once you find your preferred domain available, add it to your shopping cart.
4. Add any other extra features you’d like with the domain to the cart. Once done, proceed to checkout.
5. Pay via Credit Card or Paypal (if the Paypal option is available) and you own the domain for a year! You will need to renew the domain next year by paying the renewal fee (which is usually the same amount that you spend on buying it). Don’t worry about forgetting to renew the domain, because your registrar will send you countless reminders for renewing it 3 months before it needs to be done and till the last few days.
6. Park your domain name(s) at Sedo, which is the largest domain-name after market. List your domain for sale there and till the time you find a buyer for it you earn cash from the parking it at Sedo – which normally means the guys at Sedo will put advertisements on it and pay you a commission from the revenue generated.
7. Alternatively, you could make a website out of your domain name. Making a website is really easy if you know some basic html. You would definitely earn more from your website than parking your domain, but then you also need to invest a meager amount. You will need to buy web hosting space to keep your website live once you have made it. I recommend Hostgator for hosting your site. It has a reasonable price structure and excellent service and support.

Its not necessary that you go for dictionary domains to create your website. Enterprising people come up with unique and amazing names for their sites which become brands in themselves. Names like youtube, google, metacafe are household names, and yet these are nowhere mentioned in the dictionary. Such internet behemoths have given the webmaster industry a new phrase – brandable domains. What really is a brandable domain is a matter of speculation. Neil Patel has a good article on choosing a brandable domain.

Its not easy to buy a domain now that you can sell in millions, but if you try hard, you can get domain names which may sell for hundreds or thousands of Dollars; and that my friend, is still a fabulous return on investment!

Important: always try and get your hands on a .com domain. All other variants like .net, .org or .info etc are also fine, but a dot com always has the maximum branding power.