Let’s face it, nothing screams out “newbie” more than having a .blogspot.com blog URL, except maybe a .uni.cc. You need your own domain name if you expect people to take you seriously online. What if you saw some alleged (blank) guru’s blog hosted on a .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com URL? Doesn’t look very professional, to say the least. Come on, they cost like $8 per year. Shouldn’t all you future money making bloggers be able to put down $8 per year to register your own domain name? I hope so. When you do choose a domain, just don’t make any of these mistakes…

Getting anything but a .com

.com is king! .com is king! Get that through your head. Don’t settle for anything less than .com for any website or blog. Let’s go over some of the alternatives, shall we?

• .biz - That looks pretty cool I guess, .biz is short for business right? Wow, my blog is sort of about business, I should get this! Umm…wrong! Nobody has heard of .biz, noone cares about it, it’s tacky, it looks stupid, the list goes on…
• .name - Hey, I have a name right? Maybe I should get my full name in the .name extension. That’s what it’s for right? WRONG! Develop your site on a .name and be the laughing stock of the blogosphere.
• .info - Yet another useless TLD. Shouldn’t all websites have some sort of information on them? Why do you need a silly extension like this to tell visitors that? You don’t.

All right, maybe it’s okay to get something other than .com, but use other extensions sparingly. Some blogs have had good success with .net, .org, and even local country code extensions.

Using a .mobi

This could have probably gone in the list above, but this extension is so pointless I felt it deserved its own section. Dot mobi was originally designed for the mobile web. In case you didn’t know, it doesn’t matter which extension you use to access a website on a mobile phone and you don’t need a .mobi to do it.

Using a lot of hyphens for “SEO” purposes

You may have heard some self-proclaimed SEO expert that it helps with search engine rankings if you have a really long, hard to remember, hyphenated domain - full of keywords. So does that mean you should go off and register learn-to-make-money-online.com? I don’t think so. One, because someone already took that domain and two, even if it was available - it would make for a terrible blog URL. So why wouldn’t you want to register one of these ever-so coveted keyword rich domains? Because they’re hard to remember, they’re hard to brand, and they’re hard to advertise. Imagine trying to fit that URL into a 125×125 banner ad. Not a pretty sight.

Using numbers or abbreviations in your domain

Domains with abbreviations and numbers isn’t good. Jeffro2pt0, a great blog, is unfortunately guilty of this - on both counts. It’s supposed to be pronounced “Jeffro two point oh” which I guess is some play on web 2.0. It takes a really loyal userbase to remember a domain like this. Of course there may be some exceptions to this rule. The “101″ suffix comes to mind, if you have some sort of how-to blog for example.

Getting a domain with a well-known trademark in the URL

Getting a URL with stuff like Microsoft, Google, Ebay, PayPal, Yahoo, and other well-known companies is a big no-no. Sure, some of these companies may not mind if you’re promoting their services, but why take the risk? These gigantic companies are rich enough to afford lengthly legal battles, and you’re not…yet. Please be careful when registering trademark infringing names like this.

Registering a typo of a competing blog

Another big no-no. What do you think is going to happen when a visitor makes a typo when visiting John Chow and arrives at your cheesy knock-off site instead? They’re probably going to leave pretty fast, not to mention you look like an unoriginal copycatter (although I do admit John Cow is pretty cool for a copycat).

Registering the wrong name

Before you register and pay for a domain, make 100% sure that it’s spelled how you want it. You’ll feel pretty stupid when you realize your mistake after paying. Some registrars don’t offer refunds, but some do. Even if you’re forced to keep the name, who cares? It’s only an extra $8 per year, which is peanuts compared to all the earnings you’ll get. You can still forward it to your site and catch any visitors who may make the same mistake you did.

Using a domain that is hard to pronounce

This is another one to be aware of. It’s hard to pronounce a domain without vowels in it. How the heck are you supposed to pronounce Frrvrr? Try to imagine this site advertised on the radio, for example.

Radio announcer: What is your site about?
Frrvrr owner: Dunno…but it uses “cutting-edge technology”
Radio announcer: “So what’s your site called again?”
Frrvrr owner: “It’s fur ver!”
Radio announcer: “And how do you spell that exactly?”
Frrvrr owner: “eff - are - are - vee - are - are”
Radio announcer: *phone ringing* We have a caller.
The caller: Your domain sucks! Get a new one!

Although a lot of these “web 2.0″ sites like Flickr have great success with these sort of domains, they’re not a good choice in general unless you are able to brand it well - despite the difficult name.

Conclusion
So try to get a .com domain, avoid hyphens, avoid numbers, avoid trademarks, avoid typos. Make sure it’s easy to remember and somewhat relevant to your topic. After this you should be good to go. There are a number of good domain registrars out there, including GoDaddy and NameCheap. Subscribe to the feed for more updates.