Welcome back to How To Start A Blog. This is step 2, URL and Hosting. If you missed step 1, you can find it here; How To Start A Blog – Step 1 – Theme. To recap, here are the steps you need to have completed before you move on:
- Think about your subject
- Decide on your overall theme
- Compile a list of 25+ specific blog topics you want to write about
- Start writing a few posts in a text editor or word processor
Ready to start a blog? Good. Let’s get started
Selecting a URL
Selecting a URL and hosting is a big decision. Let’s start with the URL. A web address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is one of the most important parts of your blog. It should convey the main focus of your site, not be too long or difficult to spell, and be memorable. Most importantly, it must be available.
One bit of advice I try to follow is from Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg: You need to be able to tell someone what your domain is, in a loud room, without having to spend 5 minutes trying to explain it. Take for example his site Digg. Simply a word with an extra letter. Easy. Now, consider SCVNGR which is a really cool app and site but difficult to explain quickly.
This advice came from an episode of the Random Show (not sure which one) where he and Tim Ferriss talks about … well… random stuff. Great series with a lot of info.