I Bought a Domain Name, Now What? 7 Steps to Build Your Website & Launch Your Blog

Have you purchased a domain name and thinking what to do next? First of all, congrats on getting your first domain name and getting your first step started.

If you’re confused about what to do next and searched google on “I bought a domain name now what?” then don’t worry!

We’ll help you to get started with your first domain name and build your first ever website with these seven amazing tips. You can use these simple methods to utilize your domain name well.

So if you’re just starting your first blog, don’t be panic, sometimes it seems harder for us, but believe me, when you start your first blog, you will know that it is a lot easier.

Before getting started on doing amazing things with your domain name, first, we try to understand what a domain name is? 

A domain name is a unique name to your website. It is an address where users can access your sites over the internet. A domain name is used for finding a website on the internet by translating a domain name into an IP address.

So let’s understand it deeply, A computer uses an IP address which is a series of numbers, and it is difficult for humans to understand and remember the IP address of every website they visit. A domain name was developed and is used to translate a domain name into IP address over the internet. A domain name can be a combination of alphanumeric characters, numbers, and few symbols. 

Let’s get started to the answer of “I bought a domain name now what?” question and build a profit-generating blog…

I Bought a Domain Name, Now What?

1. Getting Hosting Plan for Your Domain Name

So after purchasing your first domain name, how do you want to use it? If you’re going to launch your website and want to earn money using your domain name, then I strongly suggest you get a web hosting plan.

If you’re new to the blogging industry and don’t know which hosting is perfect for you to create and host your blog or website, then let me introduce you to the ideal hosting for your website.

As I’m blogging from 2016, I have used tons of hosting platforms, and I can recommend hundreds of web hosting providers and also few free hosting providers, but they aren’t worthy for you, and they make your website really slow.

So rather giving you tons of hosting recommendations, I would only recommend you try SiteGround hosting.

Why SiteGround?

If you’re looking for the best web hosting platform with blazing fast website speed and 24×7 customer support, then no one can beat SiteGround.

SiteGround is as close as any perfect web hosting, and you can get – speed, uptimes, support, features, and pricing were all phenomenal. I’m using them on a few of my micro niche blogs, and I’ve <200ms server response time and perfect GTMetrix and Pingdom report.

Not just me, thousands of professional bloggers like us recommend using SiteGround for better website speed and service. You can also check in the image below, that even WordPress officially recommends SiteGround hosting.

Get Discount on SiteGround Hosting

Here are a few notable features of SiteGround hosting.

TLDR; SiteGround is best hosting when you purchase it for 1-3 years of promo plan, but it’s expensive because of it didn’t want to overcrowd their servers like EIG + GoDaddy, If you want you can do your research and join the TheGuideX Facebook Group to avoid the traps of affiliate and get unbiased opinions.

Still not convinced why to use SiteGround hosting?

Here I’m sharing a few more reasons why SiteGround is perfect hosting for you;

1. Yes, I’m Using SiteGround

The very first reason why I recommend SiteGround hosting is that I personally prefer using them for various projects and as I already told you, I’m getting <200ms server response time and a perfect GTMetrix and Pingdom report.

2. #1 Rated Host In Various Facebook Polls

Another reason to choose SiteGround is that it is recommended by most of the professional bloggers. You can see in the images below that SiteGround is voted #1 in many Facebook Groups Poll –

3. Endorsed By Yoast, and WordPress

It is not just recommended by bloggers, but even Yoast uses SiteGround hosting on their website. If you’re not aware of the Yoast, it is a powerful SEO plugin for WordPress that helps you with SEO Optimizations.

..and last but not the least, It is officially recommended by WordPress.org

Get Discount on SiteGround Hosting

2. Installing a WordPress CMS

Once you bought a domain name and hosting, you’ve to connect it with your domain name. By connecting your domain name to SiteGround, we’re ready to install and use WordPress CMS on the website.

To connect your domain name with hosting, you’ve to follow exactly the same steps;

But on the other side, if you’ve purchased your domain name and hosting from two different providers, then you’ve to change the nameserver of your domain name to hosting server in order to connect with each other.

So let’s see how to point your domain name to the hosting provider easily using NameServer;

First of all, login to your domain name registrar from where you’ve registered your domain name. Most people purchase their first domain name from GoDaddy, So in this guide, we’ll show how to update your domain nameserver if you’re using GoDaddy as your primary domain registrar.

So first, you’ve to log in to your domain registrar, or you can click here to go to the GoDaddy login page directly.

Once you logged-in to the GoDaddy account, click on the “DNS” option next to your domain name.

Once you reached the DNS Page, click on the “change” button next to the “NameServer” option. And a pop-up will appear, here enter your SiteGround nameserver to propagate your domain name to SiteGround hosting. Once it is done, it usually takes 15 minutes to 4 hours to reflect globally.

Now your domain name is propagated to SiteGround;

Once a domain name is propagated, login to your SiteGround cPanel and go to “WordPress Tool Options.”

After that, click on “WordPress Installer” and then fill the required details to install WordPress on your domain name.

Once you are set up with WordPress, you can now login to your WordPress with your credentials and access the next important step of launching your blog.

3. Installing WordPress Themes & Plugins

Once we installed and set up WordPress, the next part is to install WordPress plugins and themes to enhance its features and overall looks.

As you know, WordPress is an open-source platform, so it has a huge number of free themes and plugins that will be picked up by most of the beginners.

With so many free themes and plugins available at WordPress, you wonder why to invest in a premium WordPress theme?

There are various reasons to choose a premium theme over a free theme. I’ve listed them below;

Quality Of WordPress Theme

The first thing that matters is the quality of the WordPress theme. You should always have to choose a quality and premium theme because these themes properly follow the latest coding structure and SEO strategy, which most of the free themes fail to do.

If you’re getting a free theme for your website, then there are a few chances that it is poorly coded, and thus, it is easily exploitable and downgrades your SEO performance. So I better suggest you to grab a responsive wordpress theme for your website.

24×7 Live Support

Another most important feature of using a premium theme on your website is its 24×7 support. Whenever you buy a premium theme, you’ll get six months or 1-year support from their developer.

And if your website encounters any issues, you can simply contact them, and they’ll fix it for you – But if you’re using a free theme and there are fewer chances that they were fix issues for you.

And in case of a free theme, you’ve to open a support ticket and wait for a long time or for months to get their reply (It totally depend upon them).

Updates

Last but not least is the theme update.

If you bought a premium theme, then you’ll automatically get security and features an update from the developer with ease. Theme update is one of the most crucial factors because it solves security issues and compatibility issues on your website and provides a better user experience.

So these are the reason why you should always have to choose a premium and plugins over a free one. You can easily buy premium themes and plugins from a marketplace like CodeCanyon, ThemeForest, MyThemeShop, StudioPress, etc.

So this is the complete list of themes and plugins I recommend for your website. Apart from this, you can use a few more plugins like WP-Optimize, TablePress, Shortcode Ultimate, Classic Editor, etc. on your website to increase usability and features.

4. Creating a Professional Email ID

So once you installed WordPress on your domain name and then installed the theme and plugins successfully, now you’ve to create a professional and branded email ID.

A professional name is nothing but a unique email ID created with using your business domain name instead of typical @gmail.com or @Outlook.com.

For example, 

If you check on my website, you’ll see a branded email ID for my business. It is [email protected], instead of [email protected], and another email ID is [email protected].

Why we create this type of email IDs instead of using gmail.com or yahoo.com?

The answer is, if we’re looking for a branded email ID, and search for [email protected], then you’ll see that the email ID is already taken by other peoples.

There are fewer or no chances that the domain name you’re looking for is available on Gmail and other mail clients, and if we create an email ID like [email protected], it seems inappropriate to my users.

So instead of using these types of emails, we create a brandable email address with our own domain name, which is unique and professional, and it looks appropriate to our readers.

This provides more usability, functionality, and simplicity to both users and the webmaster. So this is why we prefer a professional email ID for our website. You can learn more about creating a professional email here.

So how to choose a brandable email ID, and what’s the benefit of it?

If you’re not sure about what name you should have to pick, then here is my recommendation on choosing a professional email ID for your website.

Brandable

The first thing is brandable. Your email ID has to look brandable and easy to remember. If you have a business or company name in your email ID, then it seems more professional to your customers.

It will profoundly influence the brand and gain more trust among customers.

For example; If I’m selling something to you and using a brandable domain name, then it adds trust, but when I’m using a free mail client, then for once, you doubt my services, and it even doesn’t look professional.

And whenever you provide your email ID to someone, always remember that in a way, you are promoting your brand name or your company name.

Professional

As we mentioned earlier, it should have to be unique and attractive.

Let’s take an example. If you want to send promotional emails to your customers, an email address like [email protected] would be more credible than [email protected].

Having a professional email address will affect your clients’ or customers’ perception of your business. Here are a few examples of a professional email ID;

And creating a professional email ID is simple, and you can easily create it from your hosting control panel. If you purchased your hosting from the SiteGround, then they even offer an option through which you can easily create your professional and brandable email ID.

5. Creating a Personal Blog with Your Domain Name

Once you’ve created your professional email ID, the next step is to create a personal blog or an online store. If you want to create a personal blog using your domain name, then read this point till the end.

If you’re still searching for the “I bought a domain name now what?” question, then this idea will help you to create a personal blog using your domain name.

There are tons of space available for everyone online, and most of the people read a blog. So if you want to share your thoughts with people and create an online community, then creating a personal blog is one of the best ways.

So once you decided to create a personal blog with your domain name, then you’ve to make sure you follow these points to make it a successful blog;

But if you want to start your personal blog and don’t want these search engines to crawl your website, then you’ll get an option for it in the WordPress admin panel.

Once you enable the private option in your WordPress blog, then the content is no longer crawled by search engines, or it will not show in the SERPs. To enable the private option in your blog, Go to Setting >> Reading >> Click on “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.”

When you enabled this setting, your blog will not crawl by search engines, including Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

Kudos! Now you’ve successfully launched your first blog with your domain name.

But don’t stop here, we’re sharing a few more points on “I bought a domain name, now what?” to make sure you know all the ways to utilize your domain name. Even I’ll share how you can earn using your domain name, so make sure to read it till the end.

6. Creating an Online Store with Your Domain Name

If you still search for the answer to “I bought a domain name, now what,” and don’t want it to use as a personal blog, then you can create an online eCommerce store with it.

Creating an eCommerce website with WordPress is easy. You’ve to install a plugin named WooCommerce and then activate it. It will automatically convert your website into an eCommerce website.

Once your website is equipped with eCommerce functionality, your users can now easily make online purchases from it with no hassle.

There are various reasons to create an eCommerce website, and you can earn a really good amount using it.

Here are a few reasons to create an eCommerce website;

1. Easy & Convenient for Your Business

Once you bought your domain name and not sure why to create an eCommerce website with it, then the first thing I’ll let you know is that it is easy and convenient for your business.

Let’s take an example If you have a business of heater and wanted to expand your business by promoting it online to reach the right people. Then creating an online eCommerce website is easy and convenient for you – and by using your eCommerce website, you can reach millions of potential customers.

This way, your customer can also save their time by ordering your product online with no hassle and in a convenient way.

2. Increase Your Website Trust

Another most important point why you should have to create your online eCommerce store is that it increases your website trust. If you create an online store once you bought your domain name, then it serves more clients and increases your trust in buying a product or service from your website.

3. Sell Your Product Globally

If your business has a store inside any country and store, then it only reaches the potential customers in that location – but when you create an online eCommerce store, it has the potential to reach customers globally.

This way, it can help in expanding your business easily, and the entire world becomes your area of selling and with no geographical boundaries or restrictions.

So once you bought a domain name, one of the best things is to start your eCommerce store online and sell your product to the global audience.

7. Curating Content on Your Website/Blog

The last but not least point after you bought a domain name is to curate content for your website/blog. As you know, a website is nothing without content, and in other words, “Content is King.”

So once we decided whether you’ve to create a personal blog or an online store, you’ve to start creating quality content on your website. First, start by creating informational content related to your business with proper on-page SEO and by focusing on various LSI keywords in your article.

What type of content should I write on my blog? And do they rank on SERP?

Here are a few tips you need to follow when you start your first blog or an online e-commerce store. Follow these points carefully to start ranking on SERPs and gain potential customers or audiences.

This way, you can curate perfect articles for your personal blog or for an eCommerce store. The article ends here – but if you don’t know how to earn money using your personal blog, then In this guide, I’m also sharing a few methods through which you can easily make thousands of dollars.

Bonus Tips – Making Money Using Your Domain Name

Here I will share a few methods through which you can easily make thousands of dollars using your blog. Even I’m earning around 5-8K dollars per month using my blogs and trust me; it is much easier than you think.

There are various ways to earn money online, but in this guide, I will discuss the top three ways to make a good income using your blog.

1. Earn with Your Domain Name using Google AdSense

The very first method you can earn money is by using Google AdSense.

This is the easiest way to earn money online. When you visit any website, you had noticed that they’re displaying some ads on their website. In the same way, you can also display Ads using Google Adsense. Google Adsense is one of the widely known programs for serving ads on your website.

Let’s take an example;

Imagine if you have a website with average traffic of 10K visitors daily, and you’re using Google AdSense on it. And when they come to your website, Google AdSense will show ads based on the targeted audience, and when they click on it, you’ll get a commission for it.

This way if you get 7% clicks on website Ads, then with 10K visitors, you’ll get an average of 700 clicks on Google Ads. And let’s imagine if you’re getting an average CPC of $0.10, then you can easily make $70 from 10K visitors daily and an average of $2,100 per month.

So this is the best way to monetize your website and earn money online once you bought a domain name.

2. Earn with Your Domain Name Using Affiliate

Another most popular way through which you can generate a good passive income is using Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways through which millions of people are making a huge commission. You just need to write informative articles or reviews of products on your website and link to their site. Once your visitor buys anything from your link, you get paid for it.

In today’s era, people are doing amazon affiliate and making thousands of dollars monthly just by reviewing products on their website. You can start the same thing with your blog.

3. Earn with Your Domain Name using Guest Post

Last but not the least way to earn money using your blog is by selling Guest Posts.

Thousands of people create their blog just to sell guest posts and trust me; they are making a hefty amount from it. I know one blogger, who also sells guest posts from his blog and generates more than 1-2K dollars daily (Yes, you heard it right! He makes this much of amount on a daily basis).

This is a good way to generate passive income using your blog. So I suggest you to start your blog once you bought your domain name.

Now It’s Your Turn!

I think now you know what you should have to do once you bought a domain name. This is the best way you can utilize your domain name and turn it into a profitable business.

Now it’s your turn to generate passive income using your blog and by following a few simple steps. I hope this article gives you the clear-cut information of utilizing your domain name, and if it does, let me know in the comment section below.