The next (and most fun) step is to think about, decide on and purchase a domain name. You want something that is relevant to your product line, and not confusingly similar to an existing web site. The best tool in the world to use to find a domain name that will get visitors (ultimately making you money) is called Market Samurai. For years, I did all my keyword and domain research manually. I would find what I just knew was the perfect domain name and target what I just knew were the perfect keywords… only to spend many months developing a site that got very few visitors. You can target what you think is a great key phrase and rank well in the search engines for it, but if that key phrase only gets ten searches per month, all your effort is for nothing.
What Market Samurai does is starts you at the search terms that get great traffic, then helps you to find the perfect domain name that will get your site to the top of the search engines. Put simply, it makes sure you are going to get actual search engine traffic (and profit) from your hard work. I can’t say enough great things about Market Samurai. With a background in domain investing, I have simply been blown away with how easy it makes everything. Well worth every penny they charge for it, and then some.
Now, think like your customer. If you wanted to start a drop shipping web site that sells natural pet supplies, what would your customer search for if they wanted to find you? Start with that key phrase (ex: pet supplies) or maybe (natural dog shampoo) and let Market Samurai guide you to the perfect combination of traffic, marketability and competition.
If you choose to take the manual route and find a domain name without Market Samurai, just remember that you want to try and keep your keyword in the domain name you register. Also, domain names that contain hyphens work just as well as any. And you can often find great, keyword rich domain names that are still available if they contain hyphens. As far as domain name extensions go, my personal preference is to stick with .com’s for retail sites. There are plenty of keyword rich domain names that are still available in .com if you choose to allow hyphens. Once you have a general idea of what your domain name should be, you need to go find out if it’s available and register it. One of the most professional, affordable domain name registrars I’ve found is Moniker. They have always been priced low, and their support department is great to work with. You can use the free tools they have available to search for variations of available domain names. Go ahead, click on the banner below to see if your domain name is available:
You can use Google to see what the competition looks like for your key phrase. For example, the search phrase “kids Adirondack chairs” has 186,000 results. That means if you want to get on the first page of results in Google for that phrase, you’ll be competing with 186,000 other sites. It’s best to try and find phrases that have less than 40,000 results to start with. You have to crawl before you can walk, and it’s much easier to rank well with less competition in the beginning. Once you’re established and rank well for a few low-competition phrases, then you can start to target the higher-competition phrases and you’ll have a much better chance of actually making it onto the first page.
Once again, Market Samurai does all of this and much more with a few clicks. It will even give you insight as to how well – or poor – your competition is doing with SEO (search engine optimization) and find content you can use to help boost your search ranking. We’ll talk more about SEO, content and off-page optimization in a later step.
Next, I’ll dive into the most boring part of starting out – the legal stuff. Hang in there – just picture yourself on that white-sand beach and when you’re ready… Click here to continue to Step 3: The Legal Mumbo Jumbo