A domain is simply your "store front" on the Internet. Think of it as renting a business space and running your store in a mall, where the physical store itself is your business, operating in a medium (the mall) with a flow of would-be customers around it. Running an online business is the same thing. you need to rent a business space, i.e. your website, and you need to put it in a place where there''s a flow of visitors, i.e. the Internet. In order to put your website on the Internet, you need a domain and a web hosting service provider to store your website. The domain is like an address, pointing to your web hosting service. All the inquiries to the address gets redirected by your web hosting service provider to the location where you website is stored. Can you live without buying a domain and a web hosting service? Yes you can, but it''s highly not recommended. And I''ll explain why.

• Free domain does not look professional. It feels like as if you''re someone else''s property. For example, what would you think of the website URL "www.freewebhosting.com/blogging-career"? You get the idea. Having your own domain simply makes you look more professional and more credible.
• Having your own domain gives you a sense of ownership. Besides, who knows if the free domain business decides to close down in the near future? Did you know that Yahoo announced the closure of GeoCities in April 2009? What if you had your blog on GeoCities with an address that everybody already memorized?
• Oh did I mention that you can resell your domain in the future? Buying and selling domains is a very profitable niche itself.

Same thing applies to web hosting. If you are serious about your blogging career, never let someone else handle your data, definitely not for free! Take control of your own properties - your business. To see the pros and cons of various ways of running your blog, see How Should I start a Blog for my Internet Business.

So to start a serious blogging career, you need a good domain and web hosting service provider.

When you are choosing a domain, keep the following in mind:

• Make a list of possible names related to the topics you will be blogging on
• Try to make sure the names that you choose are "easy to remember", "easy to spell", and "easy to say"
• Try to use only letters without spaces in domain names. Try your best to avoid dashes and numbers
• Try to go for dotcom (.com) domains first

Once when you''ve came up with a quality list of possible domain names for your blogging career, it''s time to register for your domain name!

Step 1: Go to www.godaddy.com

(We highly recommend GoDaddy because, well, it''s known to be a reliable web hosting service provider. Reliable is the keyword here)

Step 2: See which domain name is available (not taken)

In the middle of the GoDaddy website, type in your domain names from the list one by one, without the .com and hit go.

Step 3: Now that you have successfully registered your domain name. You also need a web hosting plan.

Simply go back to GoDaddy website. Login and upgrade your account by adding a web hosting plan to your account. For a starter, the economy plan is sufficient for now. You can always upgrade later.