BlogSwarms

“I registered a domain name last night for my new blog,” my friend told me. He then showed me the name. I suppose it made sense to him at the time when he was as inebriated as a newt. To me it was a classic example of why you should never register domains under the influence of any intoxicants.

There are a number of issues you need to consider when registering a domain name for a blog – and it is best to have a clear head when you do so.

Is there another blog with a similar name – more importantly, does it already deal with similar material to what you plan for yours?

Are you looking for a descriptive name or are you trying to be clever? If it’s a commercial blog, descriptive is better. If you’re building your reputation around clever wordplay, then feel free to invent a neologism or coin a bizarre phrase. It will be easy for people to find you in the search engines – provided they already know what they are looking for. That is why a generic, descriptive domain is sometimes better.

Should it be dot-com? It makes sense to register the .com of a domain if it is available. Too many people will type .com on the end of a domain by default, without thinking of what alternatives are around. If you’re based in a specific country, and your audience is likely to be mainly people from your country, then a ccTLD makes sense. Sometimes .org makes a great deal of sense – a community blog, social awareness and activism; particularly if it’s a short generic domain name where the .com is already in commercial use. Similarly, if your blog’s main purpose is to provide information, .info is worth considering <shortword>.info makes more sense than yetanotheregregiouslylongdomainname.com.

If someone else has already registered the ideal domain name, you could always offer to purchase it from them – yes, I know, you’d prefer it if they gave it to you for free – and there’s an undeveloped beachfront plot in my hometown that I think should be given to me just because I know exactly what I’d do with it. Decide in advance what the name would be worth to you – especially if it’s for a business, and make the owner an offer – there should be contact details in the whois database. What’s the worst they can do, say no?

Again, along with cute plays on words and ‘vanity’ ccTLDs ( .tv, .md, .dj, .me and so on..) I would advise against using numbers or hyphens unless you have to. Mainly because they fail the ‘radio test’ – how will people know that they are supposed to type a 2 or 4 instead of the words ‘to’ and ‘four’. I’ve even seen people type ‘hyphen’ and ‘dash’ – or leave them out – when trying to enter a name they have just heard on the radio.

Hopefully that’s a few ideas for you. I’ll return to this issue again, as I think it’s important.

First – and foremost – you need something to blog about!

It could be anything. What your pet canary gets up to. Your thoughts on the political situation. Recipes you have tried (failures and successes). Whatever you write about, you can be sure that there will be an audience out there for it – somewhere…

Obviously, you want to pick something that you enjoy writing about. But if you want to be popular, you need to pick something that does genuinely appeal to others. Not just something that you think the rest of the world should care passionately about.

If you are desperate to make money – significant amounts of it – you must write compelling stuff. The calibre of articles that people would pay good money to buy in a book or magazine. Also, you need to make sure that it is related to a topic that is widely popular, that people will spend money on. Finally, you need to be better and more popular than your competition.

It is certainly possible that – with sufficient research – you could find you have an area of expertise that matches these criteria. Then, if you are prepared to write, and keep on writing; along with finding creative ways to promote your blog; you may find that it is commercially successful in its own right.

However, that’s not the only way that your blog could become your personal little goldmine. Your blog promotes you – as a capable communicator and an expert in your specialist field. You may find that your writing opens doors to opportunities that wouldn’t have been available to you if you had never put finger to keyboard.

Besides, there’s more to blogging than making money – and there’s more to blogging than just having an idea of what to write about!

Why blog? An important question – so here’s a range of answers. Later on I may refine some of this, and develop these themes further – but that’s the whole point. Blogging is all about finding your voice as a communicator – discovering who you are as a writer and becoming more effective in your craft.

Reason 1: the social side. Whether we like it or not, we’re social creatures. Even the most reclusive of hermits must grudgingly admit that deep within us all is a drive to communicate, to share, to belong. Blogging is a means to developing social cohesion in a virtual environment. We blog because we want to belong – to find an audience to share our lives with and hopefully receive contact in return. Blogging reaches out, saying “This is me” hoping to find a receptive readership who will respond in kind.

Reason 2: A passionate message: not only are we born to communicate, but many of us feel strongly that we have something that is of value to share – in fact it burns within us with an evangelical fervour: whether it’s our conviction on the best way to teach children or our affiliation to a school of political thought – we have a message that will not let us rest until it is effectively shared with the world. Writing a blog is a means to that end.