Now, many people plan to earn money through advertising - and that is a superb method, one which I’ve been personally trying and using for a while - and is considered a generic method that can work in many circumstances. However, do not plan your site for advertising. As I said previously, you can make money out of empty sites, but that will just add to the rubbish online. Equally, don’t plan to make a web site ‘out of advertising’ as that is all it will become. I could give a hundred examples - some high profile ones - that use excessive advertising, but you’ve already seen them! If advertising is your business model, create your content first and then think about advertising later.

So the next step is to decide what to call your blog or site. I often spend too long on this, so don’t put a huge amount of emphasis on this, but having a good name is important. My personal recommendation for a name is as follows:
- Keep it as short as possible, but don’t sacrifice clarity for length
- It should be easy to remember, at least for regulars. Sorry, ASK and EBAY are already taken, don’t fret if it’s not that easy!
- Where possible, avoid words that can easily be misspelled
- Again, where possible, avoid international misspellings! Such as:

• Color and Colour
• Jewellery and Jewelry and Jewelery!

- Don’t try too hard to be ‘cool’ sounding - it’ll probably sound like it’s been made by an inexperienced newbie! (And even if you are an inexperienced newbie, doesn’t mean people need know that!!)
- Try to include keywords where possible, but don’t stuff your domain/blog name with keywords and make it look either too lengthy or messy
- Acronyms can work, but don’t try too hard - trying to squeeze the meaning of an acronym out of a cool sounding word you’ve thought of may sound lame to many people

So, if you take any of that advice or not, you then have to make sure the name isn’t taken. Lets face it, Google is your friend here - go Google it. Don’t forget to try your name in “double quotes” - and try variations. Example: “doshblog”,”dosh blog”,and dosh blog without quotes. If you get any sites that clearly utilise this name, don’t bother - you’re only going to be treading on toes, if not anything else purely in contending with getting people to your site when they search for you by name - usually a pretty easy task.

Assuming you’ve found a name that isn’t mentioned heavily on Google you have to decide about where you want to host your blog or site - as this influences if you can even get hold of the name you want. In my next article I’ll try and discuss some of the merits of the various ’systems’ (to name a few: Hosting it yourself / hosting it with a provider, Blogger, and various other Blogging systems).

If you chose to host it yourself or get someone else to host it, then you will need to purchase a domain name. Some hosting packages come with free domain names - but don’t be taken too much in by this, as domains only cost £3 / year for .co.uk’s, or about £6 / year for .com’s ($10 / year). If you visit any site that sells domains you’ll be able to check availability - and there’s many sites online purely for checking the availability. However, I prefer to use a program to check the availability en-masse - Domain Name Analyzer. I’ve used this for quite a while now, with relative ease - although I won’t say the interface is the best ever, you do get used to it. If you’re interested in using this program, download and install it and load it up. Click “Names” -> “Add Names” and type in some names (press enter after each one to separate them with a line) and then tick any extensions (Top Level Domains - TLD’s) that you’re interested in. Personally, that’s always “.co.uk”,”.com” and “.net” - but honestly if I can’t get both the “.com” and “.co.uk” I’m rarely interested in “.net”. Press “OK”, then “Selections” -> “Select All” and then “Lookup” -> “All Selected”. It’ll search to find which are available, but have a play - there’s more options in there that I haven’t bothered to look at yet.

A point to note: If your name is registered in one of the TLD’s (like, DoshBlog.com is registered, but DoshBlog.co.uk is available) then check out the domain. If you find it’s not being used (like one of those tacky search pages that are simply trying to get accidental clicks) then you may still consider using your desired name. If the site looks real, and is fairly active - even if it’s not been used for a while, then you should probably think of another name.

One you have a name, get it registered - GoDaddy is one I’ve used and is very reputable. There’s plenty out there - go have a Google if you need another - but that’s my advice. Oh, if it’s “.co.uk” domains you need, you can’t do better than 123-Reg - much cheaper!

You’ll need a web host - GoDaddy offer that service, and I offer hosting if you have some specific details you require - such as the use of my decent logging software - but otherwise services like GoDaddy and EasySpace are perfectly good. My advice is make absolutely sure they support PHP - as this is what most of the decent open-source Blogging and Web Site software is written in, and is quick to get started with.

If you’re using a ’system’ like Blogger, then when you attempt to sign up it’ll give details as to if the name you want to use is available or not. Don’t just add a “1″ on the end to make it ‘unique’!! It’ll look unprofessional, and more than likely means someone else is already using the name actively.

Hopefully by name you’ve got a unique name, that is fairly catchy, relatively easy to remember, isn’t already used all over the net, and it’s registered (or signed up) to you. Is it all in the name? I’m not sure. But I know that a lot of sites would have done a lot better with some of the key names that have dominated our Internet so far! Try to make the name good, but the content is what will really get your site popular - so don’t spend too long worrying about it.

My personal skills are in the computing field - I am a programmer and computer engineer, so can offer many things in the way of advice and articles on a variety of computer-related issues. This is, actually, a very saturated field - and can be tough to stand out from the rest. After all, the people who tend to make the content online are also fairly knowledgeable in the computing field themselves. Nonetheless, this is my key area of interest and skill.

Within the realms of this area of interest you possess, you need to find a target market. “Computing”, for instance, is far too general a topic. Although many people do cover just that - it’s not going to be a field that is worth trying to break directly into. You cannot hope to earn money online without having some form of skill or interest - as there’s far too many people already out there trying to earn a buck or two with nothing to actually offer. They generally end up falling into the category of spammers in some form or another - the ‘content’ they put out there is purely a block between you and what you were actually after in the first place.

That’s not to say there’s not money to be made without having a specific area of skill - but this blog simply isn’t where I plan to talk about that, as the web is already full of that kind of rubbish.

It may be hard to find a niche market - and more often than not your intended area of interest has been covered a hundred times before. Should you just give up? Absolutely not - like writing, every story has been done before but each writer has their own style and take on the subject. Put your own slant on any topic, add something that others don’t. Go forth and find the competing sites - and find what you think is missing from theirs. There will always be something, and that will be your ‘In’ to that topic.

If you’re still stuck to find a target market, consider this:
- Do the competitors tend to target their content at particular groups, and are they missing targeting another set of forgotten users? (For example: Does the content assume a basic level of knowledge that a decent amount of people simply don’t possess?)
- Where are the competitors advertising/spreading the word? If you know of pools of people they are not reaching, you could have a target market without necessarily breaking from the same kind of content a competitor is offering
- Is the content of your competitors laid out in an easy to use way? There’s a lot of extremely useful content sites out there that are hard to navigate, badly designed, or even broken from disrepair. Could you make something better?
- Are your competitors targeting an area that is too vague or broad? Perhaps there’s a more specific subset of the topic that you could cover in more depth, attracting a smaller but more dedicated set of visitors than the alternative sites?
- Is there too much of this content out there? Could you do a service by simply bringing the best of this together? Don’t underestimate the need or impact of bringing high-quality content to an easy-to-access location
- Is the existing content out-dated? This often happens when your target market is very specific and there are only a small handful of sites competing in that field
- Are they missing something big?! If you visit your competitors’ sites and are left thinking ‘But hey, why didn’t they include ….?’ and ‘they could have said more about ….’ then you have a niche there also

There are plenty of other ways to establish a target market - but above all make sure it is something you are interested in, at the least marginally knowledgeable in, and prepared to put work into a site of that nature. Many money-making schemes - or even just web site promotion plans - can takes months to even show signs of popularity, so be prepared to hold on. If your target market doesn’t interest you much, will your enthusiasm wane after a month without much success?

To start I’ll highlight my goals of this Blog and overall the plans I have got:

I wish to earn money online, in particular through Blogs but also through other online means. This is a goal shared by many people, and so I hope I can shed some light as to how to go about achieving this - and, with help from other like-minded individuals, provide a wealth of information for all here.

So to start with - I’m a computer engineer and programmer. I do a lot in the realms of web design and programming, so beginning to work with Blogs in this way came naturally. I’m doing this with my partner, Kate, however - and she has no technical background whatsoever. It quickly came apparent that, although extremely helpful it was to be technically inclined, it’s not at all necessary and I’ll try throughout this blog to provide methods for both sides of the coin; those who can do technical ideas, and those who can’t.

I’ve been reading many Blogs with similar motivations - although they tend to be focussed on what programs work best, which affiliate generates more money, etc. Although I believe fully that there is more money to be made from certain companies and less on others, I think the general way you undertake these ideas is common. So instead I’ll try and focus on;
- Chosing your target market(s)
- Creating your Blogs/Sites
- Deciding upon a financial strategy
- Deciding upon a marketing strategy
- Maintaining an income beyond the initial ‘boom’
- How to extend this when the initial topics may have died down

So again - thank you for visiting, do add my to your “Favorites” so you can check back soon, and please do comment if you have anything to say on what I write.