Google Adsence makes blogging a viable business venture

A Young Kenyan Considering His Options at Uhuru Park.

Google AdSense is a program that enables website and blog owners to earn money  by showing Google adverts on their sites. This program makes blogging a viable business venture.

To benefit from this program, one has to have a blog or website that has content. Content could be stories, reviews, videos, photos, classified postings, news e.t.c

In this article,we take you though the basics of  setting up a blog, developing content for the blog and monetizing it or turning it into a business.

Domain name - the first step in setting up a blog
Setting up a blog begins with a  decision  on  what will be the domain name of your blog. The domain name is  visible unique identifier of your blog.I can equate  it to a business name.It will have an extension like .com .org .co.uk, .blogspot.com etc. It is you to choose which extension you want. “.com” is always recommended, although it is now never always available for most common names.

Rules when deciding on a domain name

• First the name should give an idea of what the blog is about that is; it should rhyme with the key theme in your blog. This is however not necessary if you will put efforts in marketing your blog. Google must have chosen the latter for their domain name since in the beginning, nobody knew what the word google meant.
• Second it is good if the name is short and easy to grasp and remember. Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool, it will work for you well if people can pass the name of your blog around easily. Search engines too find it easy to handle short names.

Choosing a domain name that is search engine friendly- will show up in internet searches.

If the reason of setting up your blog is to make money, then you must choose a name that has high traffic and low competition. What does it mean high traffic and low competition? High traffic meaning it is a name that is appearing in many of the phrases that are being searched on the net. Low competition meaning there is no enough mention of the word in existing websites and blogs as compared to the searches for the word. How do you find out words that have high traffic and low competition?  Google has the answer; The Google Key Word Planner Just helps you find out this.

For example the word: "Kenya" falls into the high traffic and low competition bracket at the moment.

So if you wanted to set up a blog that talks about physical fitness, then find how you will slot into the domain name  the word Kenya. Say something like kenyangym.com or fitnesskenya.com.

Registering your domain name
After you settle on a name, the next thing would be to register the name. Registering the name makes you the authorized owner of the name. Nobody else will use the name once you register it. Your register a domain name through domain name registrars.  Domain name registrars are organizations that are authorized to assign names by ICANN. ICANN stands for  Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. It is a not for profit international organization that regulates domain names. 
You pay a fee to the registrar to have a name assigned to you. One reliable domain name registrar that i have used over the years is namecheap.com. Visit their site and follow the simple instructions to register a name. once you have a name you need a host for your content. Next we talk about hosting .