One of the first things I committed myself to and purchased when I first got into internet marketing was hosting and my own domain name. I know many people starting online maybe a little apprehensive at first to spend money on a hosting plan and a domain, so I wanted to write a post on 10 reasons why you should.

I actually might have purchased my hosting and domain name a little prematurely. Because I got this domain name, “mathewday.com”, which was my first, in 2008. But I didn’t even use it until a year or so later. Even if you aren’t going to use it right now, get your own domain name now. While a domain name ages, it not only can increase in value, but also gains more credibility and integrity from the search engines, which is a very good thing for when you do create your first site.

I first started learning about internet marketing a couple years ago and the first thing every expert would say was to get my own domain name and a hosting plan, so I did. The only thing that I was a little scared about was that I didn’t have any technical or design skills whatsoever. I really thought I would have no idea on what and how to make a website or blog. It really is a lot easier than you probably think and a good hosting company will make it even easier for you.

I have 2 Baby hosting plans with HostGator, which cost me less than $20 a month, and allows me to have unlimited amount of domains on just one hosting plan. I really probably don’t need 2 host plans, but have them both for when I expand online. I highly recommend Hostgator, they are truly in a class by itself when it comes to support and reliability. Just ask around for yourself and you’ll hear all the good things about them.

Host Gator Coupon Codes

You can checkout Hostgator here and get 20% off any new hosting plan purchase. (you’ll see the discount code once you choose a plan) It only works for hosting plans and the more months you add, the more you can save. Or you can use Hostgator coupon code mathewday1 and it will take $9.94 off your entire hosting plan purchase. Which means, you can get started with host gator for only 1 cent for your first month!

Here are 10 benefits of getting your own domain and hosting plan:

1. Especially if you’re new to creating websites or a blog, a ton of FREE tools and tutorials come with your hosting plan that will make life much easier for you. FREE website builders, cPanel, templates, scripts and much more comes with your hosting, which can be installed very easily. So let’s say you wanted to install WordPress on your domain to make a blog, it only takes a few clicks and you’re done.

2. You’ve just made an investment. Kinda like buying real estate except without the huge risk, but the payoff may end up being equally rewarding. A domain appreciates in value over time.

3. You have more flexibility and pretty much full control by getting your own domain and hosting plan. You are the owner of the the domain and it’s original content. No one can tell you what you can or can’t do with it. If you make a Free Site somewhere like Blogger, then they can take down your site anytime they want to and it has happened numerous times.

4. With one hosting plan you can create as many blogs as you want to. Just from one of my hosting plans, I have created numerous blogs.

5. Same thing for websites, create unlimited amount of websites all with one hosting plan. You don’t need to get more hosting to make another website, but you may need a different hosting plan once your sites get to much traffic. You probably won’t mind having that problem.

6. Promote your brand with your domain name. If you want to create or already have a business, then there’s no better way to promote it by having a domain and website with the name of your brand. Every successful brand has their domain name on the internet.

7. People will take you more seriously and you’ll be more credible if you have your own domain. Try making money online or start an online business sharing someone else’s domain name, talk about difficult.

8. Your websites and blogs can now be found and seen 24 hrs a day and anywhere in the world. Which of course allows you to make money online from your website anytime from anywhere, that’s if you want to. The door never closes unless you want it to.

9. Make extra money online or start a full time internet business. I’ll admit, this is the real reason why I had purchased my first domain and hosting plan. I at first wanted to just make a little extra money, but just recently, now I work full time online. It would’ve never happened without a domain and a hosting plan.

10. You now have a chance to become the next Multi Millionaire who creates the next big website out of their basement. Hey, it could happen. Think BIG, it’s been done before even with old school computers and slow internet.

If you don’t have your own domain name and hosting plan, you should really take that step today. It really is your first step to open the doors to an unlimited amount of opportunities for you online, but your online journey really can’t begin until you take that first step. Also, the benefits I listed above may not be true or come with every hosting plan or domain company. This will depend on what company and what hosting plan you choose, just keep that in mind.

However, you can renew your domains for multiple years or register new domains until June 30, and lock in their regular rates.

You can try some of these Godaddy promo codes and see if they will save you any money. It’s been awhile since I’ve used any of them, so I don’t know if they are still good, but I believe some of them were non-expiring. For those of you who normally use Godaddy for  domains or about to get your very first domain, then you should definitely register it NOW and not procrastinate.

I used to register new domains at Godaddy but lately, I’ve just been getting them from my hosting company, Hostgator.  Just made everything simpler and there wasn’t much of a price difference. If you have any questions or want anymore details about the Godaddy Domain price increase, then just contact their support team.

I wonder if everyone else is going to start increasing their prices as well.

It usually goes like this, the shorter, more catchier and relevant your domain name, the better. If you are choosing a domain for your brand or business, then you will want the exact name in your domain. Other than that, then you will want to choose the most relevant domain for your website, blog, lp, squeeze page or etc… It’s best if you can choose a domain name that explains what your site is about. Like for my landing pages and mini sites, I like having the name of the product or service in my domain url. Also, if you are getting domains for your brand or business, then you probably want to buy up as many similar domains as possible…. Or you may have some complications or competition in the future.

Does .com or .net really matter?

Yes, usually the .com will always be the most powerful and best, so get that first. However, .org .edu are usually for informational only sites but can rank well since Google looks at them as authoritative sites. I usually only get .com or .net and sometimes a few others when I see a good one available.

Does the format of your domain name matter?

Yes, as in format I mean this “www.makemoneyexample.com” to this “www.make-money-example.com”. A domain with no hyphens is best, but if they are all taken up and you have one available with hyphens, then use that.

What’s the best domain for SEO?

This again would be the name that is most relevant to your site with the least amount of hyphens. What I do is look at all the popular relevant keywords for my new site and choose a domain name from that list. If you have your main keywords in your domain name, you’ll be able to rank easier for the keywords. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and be on the front page of Google before you even get content on it. I’ve learned that Google looks at domain names to partially figure out what the website is about, this also will factor in how important it is and where it should be placed in the search engine results pages (serps). I’ve had this happen to me only a few times. I bought the domain and registered it. As soon as my dns was changed over, my site was already on the first page of Google for competitive keywords.

Where should I buy my domain name?

The #1 place to buy or register a domain name is Godaddy, they usually are always the cheapest. I’ve bought some from them and I’ve bought some from my hosting company, Hostgator. Why? Godaddy has the cheapest domain names, but registration and all the addons they have can get quite annoying. Not only that, when you register a domain name at Godaddy, they allow the public to have access to all your registration information thru Whois sites. I didn’t realize this until I was getting spammed and learned it was from my new Godaddy domains. They make you pay additional fee to hide it, or just use your business address, email etc.. and you’ll be fine. While Hostgator domains automatically hides your personal info for you. For me, I would rather pay the higher fee for a domain name with my hosting, hostgator just because it’s more convenient, easier and HG rocks!

That’s all the domain name tips that I can think of, if anyone has some more tips please share. Remember that I’m not the Almighty Internet Marketing Guru, these are my opinions from my own experiences and not everything that works for me might not work the same for you.

Why Not use a FREE hosted blog?

Yes, there are several places to create a FREE hosted blog, but there are several disadvantages of not having your very own “self hosted blog” on your own domain name. With a FREE Hosted blog, you are sharing their hosting and domain name. That means they can have complete control over your blog, so making money from it will be tough, or not even allowed. You won’t have a control panel for you to have complete access over your sites or be able to see all your stats. It’s very unprofessional, it could get taken down at any moment, and many won’t take your website seriously. Make sure you consider these things if you are planning on creating a online business, or making real money from your blog down the road. A “FREE hosted blog” url will look like this, mathewday.blogger.com instead of www.mathewday.com.

Having your own “self hosted blog” means getting your own domain and hosting plan, which if you use the coupon code below, you can get started for only 1 cent today! There’s endless opportunities and reasons to have your own domain and hosting plan. You’ll be in full control, the owner, empowering, a wise investment, and there’s multiple ways for you to monetize your own sites and blogs.

The basic 3 things that you will need to create your own blog are, a domain name, hosting plan, and a blog platform. A domain name is the url like for my blog it’s mathewday.com. Hosting is where your blog is being stored at and allows the public to see it on the internet. Blogging platform will allow you to design, build and add content to your blog easily and quickly.

Why use WordPress (WP) the #1 blog platform?

WordPress is the simplest and fastest way for anyone to create professional looking blogs or websites with the least amount of effort. WordPress.org is for “self hosted blogs” only, which means you’ll need to get your own hosting and domain first. Don’t worry, I have listed the exact steps you need to take below, which is a very quick and simple process. WordPress is the #1 blogging platform used by newbies and the Top Professional Bloggers alike. You don’t need to know any coding, programming or be a designer to have a awesome looking blog. WP uses plugins, which allow you to add just about anything to your blog without messing with the coding. Changing your theme, design, or layout, can easily be done with point and click. Oh yeah, WordPress is 100% FREE, all you need is your own domain and hosting plan.

Why Hostgator (HG)?

Hostgator is the #1 hosting company with millions of domains being hosted. They’ve received numerous awards and is the most dependable company I’ve ever used. You can host unlimited websites on one hosting account. WordPress can be installed with just a few clicks using HG, and this is the hosting I use as well. I changed over to Host gator a few years ago when I started having problems with my old hosting company and I couldn’t ever get in touch with their customer service. Everyone was telling me to changeover to hostgator, especially for WP blogs. Their customer service is intelligent and the BEST I’ve ever dealt with.  They have 24/7 live support, or you can contact them by email and phone. They make everything very easy for beginners with all their tutorials, forum and their easy to use Cpanel- it’s where you’ll be able to have full control over your websites or blogs. Very inexpensive pricing and features that can’t be beat. With prices starting at only $5 dollars a month, but I’ve got some coupon codes and discounts for you to use below.

Here are the basic steps below to Create your WordPress blog with hostgator

First off, if you don’t have your own hosting or want to transfer from your old host to HostGator then Click Here first and get a HG account. You’ll have to choose a domain name for your hosting account if this is your first one with them. Choose a domain name that either will be the name for your blog, brand name for your business or you can choose to just use your own name, like I did for this blog. One of my hosting accounts with HG is under this domain name “mathewday.com” but I have like 20 other domain names under this one hosting account. I suggest you get at least the Baby Plan which allows you to add unlimited websites or domains, plus all the other extras like, free transfers, FREE templates, site builder and much more. Choose whatever plan that best suits your needs.

I know of 2 Legit Hostgator discounts or coupon codes that still work currently. The first coupon code will be added automatically when you choose a plan and it takes off 20% from your entire hosting purchase. Choose a plan and look on the lower part of the site, see the code? You’ll only get the 20% off one time, so you might want to pay for more than 1 month. The other discount takes off $9.94 from your hosting plan purchase, enter coupon code mathewday1 at checkout, which will allow you to get hosting for your first month for only 1 cent.

Now, for those of you who just opened a new account with HG it’s going to take a little time for your domain name servers (dns) to propagate properly before you can see your site/blog online. Also, you’ll get a email with details on how to get into your Cpanel (control panel). This shouldn’t take to long and if you have any questions about it just talk to your HG support and they’ll let you know the status.

How to install WordPress on hostgator

Once you have access, log into your cpanel for your HG hosting, scroll down and click on the Fantistico De Luxe icon in the software/services section.

Now, once your in, look on the left hand side and you’ll see all the different scripts you can install onto your domain. Click the wordpress link, then click on the new installation link and now choose what domain name you want to install wordpress onto. Fill out “Admin access data”, this is what you’ll need to access your WP dashboard, so remember this name and password. Fill out the “Base configuration” with the name you want shown for your posts that you write, email address and your website’s domain name for your blog. Click install if everything looks correct and then enter a email for them to send this information so you’ll have it just in case you need it in the future. Now you’re done and just installed WP on your new domain.

After you’ve installed WordPress onto your domain name, enter the domain name into your address bar and checkout your new WordPress blog.   Now look for the “Meta” section on the right sidebar and “login” to your WP blog. This is where you’ll be able to get into your WP dashboard and add content, change things around and change your theme/template with just a few clicks. Enter the admin nickname and password you previously created when you were installing wordpress onto this domain.

Once you are in your WP dashboard scroll down and look on the left for the section that says appearance. Now just click on “add new themes” and you’ll be able to find new themes or layouts and install them with a few clicks. Or go to this site for WordPress themes reviews to checkout some of the popular themes available.

How to install WordPress if you already have hostgator hosting, but added another domain

This is the same steps you would take if you already had hostgator hosting and just added a domain to your hosting account. If you purchase another domain name with hostgator, remember to first change the dns for the domain to your hostgator servers after purchasing, and do a addon domain in your cpanel. After you do those two things, then you can add wordpress onto it just like above.

Now all you need to do is add content, SEO, and work on getting traffic to your blog. I know you’ll be happy with hostgator hosting and with wordpress. Honestly I barely have made any money online with my FREE hosted blogs, but once I got my own domains and used wordpress, I’ve created a real online business and do this full time now. I hope my tutorial on how to create a wordpress blog with hostgator was helpful and not to hard to follow. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment, and please share this post with any others who it may help.

Video – Installing WordPress using Hostgator Hosting

I found this video that explains everything above pretty nicely and maybe a bit easier to follow. Hope it helps.

Easiest way to redirect your domain if you have hosting is obviously go into your cpanel and redirect any domains you want to.  People do this when they are selling a product for a affiliate company and want to make their link look professional.

Instead of this for example:  “www.affiliatecompany.com/affiliateref#12343″. By redirecting that same url, you could turn it into this “www.affiliatecompanysale.com” and it would redirect when clicked to the example url.  Doesn’t the second one look better?

How to redirect domain names with Godaddy?  I found a really great video on how to do this so watch the video.   It’s so simple.  You could do this method even without any hosting.  Many people do this for ppc.

That is the easiest way to redirect if you don’t have hosting.  There are a few other good ways to redirect domains if you have hosting but are more complicated and I’m not going into that in this post.

I normally use Hostgator for my hosting and domains.  Just in case you don’t know about HG, they are one of the Top Hosting companies in the world and also have over 1.8 million domains registered thru them.  They also have VIP support, Instant chat so I can talk to support with IM.  It’s pretty awesome.

I have a few hosting accounts from them and don’t even remember how many domains.  I have however just recently started getting all my domain names from Godaddy.  Why?….#1 reason is because hostgator has gone up on Domain names – $15 for .coms…to much.

Godaddy is having a “Huge Domain Sale” right now and I’ve got some Sweet Promo codes that work with them and most of these promo codes are non expiring.   Godaddy is the #1 domain company in the world so they are very reliable and trustworthy.

Godaddy Domain Sale – try some of the promos below and get a cheaper price.

Godaddy Hosting Specials – Throw in the 10% host promo below.

Here are the Go Daddy Promo codes below.  Enter them when you make a purchase.  There will be a “Put Promo Code Here” when you are registering a domain or host.  Try different combinations with the sale links above.

I don’t know which promos will work if you purchase thru the already on sale godaddy links.  I do know they work, I have just recently used them.  Don’t worry, if the promo code doesn’t work with a special sale link then you will know before you make final purchase.  They aren’t trying to trick you.  You’ll see the discounted price before final purchase.

Godaddy Domain Promo Codes Most are Non Expirinig

FPT2 – $5 off $30 or more of any purchase
NEW3 – $3 OFF ANY DOMAIN
NEW1 – 10% OFF ANY ORDER
NEW2 – $5 off any order $30 or more
LOVE99 – 1$ domains
FPT1 – 10% off any hosting plan

If you know of anymore promo’s for godaddy then let me know and I’ll add them.

cheers!