The Six-Figure Second Income: How to Start and Grow a Successful Online Business Without Quitting Your Day Job (16 page)

Three Important Notes

1. Be sure not to use spaces between words! Domain names cannot have

spaces so it must be CherryTomato and not Cherry Tomato.

2. Also make sure to include the original terms in your list, so put the word

Organic into your first column and so forth. That’s because, even if the original term

OrganicTomatoSecrets
was taken,
OrganicTomato-Methods
may be available.

3. Be sure to put the “.com” part not in the third column but in the special place in

the tool where you can ask for it to appear after every single combination. In Figure

4.1 it’s cal ed Divider 3.

FIGURE 4.1 Make Your Work Easy With a Permutation Tool

Now hit the Generate Permutations button or whatever it’s cal ed on the tool. If you

properly loaded in the terms above, you wil instantly see a list of 196 possible domain

names! It wil have alphabetized your terms and displayed the results as fol ows:

HealthfulBeefsteakTomatoKnowHow.com

HealthfulBeefsteakTomatoMethods.com

HealthfulBeefsteakTomatoSecrets.com

HealthfulBeefsteakTomatoSolutions.com . . .

At the end of the list you’l see:

WholesomeTomatoSystem.com

WholesomeTomatoTechniques.com

WholesomeTomatoTips.com

Now al you need to do is go over to yet another free and helpful tool on the Web,

which is a bulk domain-name availability checker. Because these tools also change

frequently, just go to www.sixfiguresecondincome.com and type the word “bulk” into the

search box.

Al you need to do is highlight al those 196 terms in the first tool, copy them, and then

paste them into the second tool. In another couple of seconds you wil have a list of al

the domain names and which ones are available.

I hope you see why it’s not necessary to include sil y terms like “u” and “4” for “you” and

“for.” With just a smal amount of creativity and a couple of online tools, you can find

many great domain names that are available.

Warning: You May Become a Domain-Name Junkie this Way!

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. As an Opportunity Engineer, not only wil you see opportunity

and potential products everywhere, but you’l see lousy domain names and think I can do

better than that! You’l go home, run these tools, and—sure enough—you were able to do

better. You wil then want to reserve some of the best names.

Pretty soon you’l own lots of domain names. The process of monetizing domain

names is a whole separate discipline and some people get rich doing it. They either sel

their good names to businesses that want them or they build specialized sites that earn

them money for each name. This process is beyond the scope of the book, but I bring it

up because, once you’re a domain-name junkie, you may be able to make money from

your odd habit.

“Once I pick a great name for my info product is it important to get al the

Question:

other versions of the same name, such as “.net,” “.tv,” “.info,” and so on?”

I would not bother with those at the outset of your info-product promotion.

Remember that you should be putting the least time into a project as you

can during the early stages—I’m not saying you should do a shoddy job but I

Answer:
am saying you shouldn’t yet build the Taj Mahal. First determine how popular

your product becomes. At the earliest sign of it taking off you can reserve

some of those other names.

The risk of doing it initial y is that you’l quickly multiply your cost. You wil spend about

$10 per year to reserve your “.com” name. To get al the other versions you could spend

$50 to $100 or more per year in total. It’s a relatively unnecessary expense and you’l

make more overal profit by taking that $100 and reserving many other great names for

other great products you’l soon have on the drawing board.

Question:

“What is a private registration and should I get it?”

The domain registrar where you reserve your names—companies like

GoDaddy
and Network
Solutions
—wil strongly suggest that you get a

Answer:
private registration. It’s a way of obscuring to the outside world the fact that

you are the true owner of the domain name. They’l tel you that it’s a form of

protection for your name.

Don’t bother. It’s a great gimmick for those companies to increase their domain-

name-related revenues, but it real y doesn’t protect you in any meaningful way. I’ve tried it

and it’s more of a pain and an expense than anything.

Question:

“Which domain registrar should I use?”

I like GoDaddy.com. They have very good customer support, but you won’t

Answer:
need it often because their system is straightforward. They also remind you

when your annual renewals are coming up for domain names.

Building Block Two: You Need to Arrange for Web Site Hosting

In a sense the World Wide Web is nothing more than mil ions of computers of al shapes

and sizes hooked together with certain specific requirements.

Think of our system of roadways. You have your own driveway leading to your house.

Within reason, you are the owner and control er of your driveway, which might be

beautiful y paved or it might be a dirt road.

As you head away from your house onto ever-larger roads, things begin to look more

standardized. The city roads are wider than your driveway and the state highways are

wider stil . Final y, you get to the interstate roads, which are big and wide, with

standardized signage and ramps.

Wel , your home or office computer is like your home driveway. But your new web site

needs the services of a specialized computer—a hosting service—that’s part of that

interstate system known as the World Wide Web.

Web hosting services are special computers first because they must be kept on 24

hours per day, every day of the year. The governing body for the Web insists that domain

names fol ow certain standardized rules and one of them is you can’t just have your

domain name reachable when you feel like it, turning it off when you’re on vacation.

You have great control over your web site but less control over your domain name. I

don’t want to get too detailed and confusing here, so I’l just get to the bottom line, which

is that you need separate web hosting no matter how many computers you have at home

and how good you are at using them.

Here’s the good news about web hosting: Many companies wil have you believe that

you must pay $49 per month, $99 per month, or even more for web hosting. That’s utter

nonsense, because for only $3 per month you can get perfectly good hosting to start your

business.

In fact, I’ve made mil ions of dol ars of profits from web sites hosted at $3 per month.

At one company I use, the customer service is so fast that if you send a question and get

up to go to the bathroom you can expect that the answer wil be waiting for you when you

return.

As usual, Internet-related companies change so frequently that I don’t want to print

their names in this book, so for my latest recommendation just go to

www.sixfiguresecondincome.com and type “hosting” into the search box.

Warning: Avoid Free Hosting Services

Some of the best things in life are free, but hosting ain’t one of them. You can find plenty

of free-hosting services on the Web, but almost al come with gimmicks, the biggest of

which is they wil use your site to advertise themselves or other services. Your site should

only contain your stuff and no forced advertising for others.

Another scam with free hosting is they wil often tel you: “Wait—there’s more! With

your free hosting account you’l get a free domain name! How sweet is that!”

It’s not sweet at al . One problem is they may make you have a name that you cannot

choose

but

that’s

stuck

inside

a

long

string

of

letters

like:

www.organictomatosecrets.abcxyzhostingservices.com. The worse problem is you might

have the name you choose but they wil own it. So when you eventual y grow out of the

cheapo free hosting service and want something good, just try to get them to give you

your name back. They’l say, “Mr. Jones, you agreed to our Terms of Service for our free

hosting account and part of that contract fine print is that ABCXYZ Hosting Services

owns the name you chose. Now we are reasonable people and if you would like to

purchase your name from us, we’re wil ing to sel it to you. . . . ” They know they have you

over a barrel because you did agree to al those pages of fine print.

There’s only one exception I can think of to the free-hosting gimmicks out there.

Google actual y has a service where you can get a free site hosted and maintained by

Google itself. It’s not a fancy site, but hey, the price is right. In certain situations it may be

al you need. If you would like more information on this service go to

www.sixfiguresecondincome.com and type “Google hosting” into the search box.

“Is web hosting the same as my web site? Where does my web site actual y

Question:

reside?”

Your web site is just an account at a web hosting company. You’l open the

account and they wil give you instructions on how to set up your web pages

Answer:

on their computers. You might have a copy of your web site on your own

home computer, but the official copy is on the hosting company computers.

“But my Uncle Louie swears that his genius kid Melvin can do anything with

Question:
computers and Melvin once told me he could host any site I wanted for free

right from his home computer.”

If good hosting is three bucks a month, why would you want to hope that

Melvin knows what he’s talking about? Besides, we al hear about cyber

Answer:
attacks practical y daily, where hackers in Asia, Eastern Europe, or the high

school down the street have managed to breach the security at a large

company.

Hackers are indeed a real problem. Therefore, you need a web hosting company

that’s staffed with ful -time security professionals whose only job is to monitor the

computers for hacker attacks and repel them. A freebie site or Uncle Louie’s kid are not