Buying a domain...

[Roadkill]

So I've been giving thought to buying a domain... and finding some hosting of course.

I realize there's a bit involved and the number one 'problem' that arises from doing so would be "what would I do with it?"

I've heard of friends that run advertisements off it and use it as a money making machine (do it right, you can make $100 every few weeks). A sort of glorified blog is an option... but there are cheaper ways to do that. Forums have also been suggesed, but those are hard to get started. Or... I could try to buy a soon to be popular name and resell.

Or I could just make a stupid webpage for the hell of it. But that would be a huge waste of money, wouldn't it?

So, just to get everyone's input, what would you do if you had your own domain and host?

[TerraFrost]

I own three domains. This one and two other undeveloped ones. I didn't expect to start development on those websites when I bought them, though. I bought them to prevent someone else from buying them later on down the road and so that if I ever do decide to pursue the ideas I have for them, I'll be able to do so, unencumbered.

As for the money involved... well, you wouldn't, in theory, even necessarily need to pay for it. If you wanted to have a free domain name (eg. roadkill.noip.org, or something), you could. You could also host it on your own computer. Wouldn't get spectacular speeds, mind you, but that may not be a problem for you (or maybe it is a problem... who knows).

But if you wanted to get a "real" domain name and have a more reliable host, you'd need to pay. The cheapest hosting option would be shared hosting. The cheapest option frostjedi.com's host offers is $60.00 / yr:

http://www.surpasshosting.com/hostingplans.php

As for whether or not $60.00 / yr would be a huge waste of money... well, around here, internet costs $50.00 / month, or $600.00 / year. It's cheaper then that by leaps and bounds.

As for what to do with it... a blog or a "stupid webpage" would work. You could, if nothing else, use it as a testing ground for stuff. You could mess around with creating your own PHP scripts, or modifying WordPress, phpBB, MediaWiki, or whatever else. You could use it to share files with friends / family members - files that might be too large for email, as well.

And yeah... starting a forum is going to be tough. Not because the software is tough to install, mind you, but because it's going to be tough to keep it alive. CR has spawned a ton of message boards, FJ included, and of those, afaik, only FJ is still around. And most of those others never got above 2,000 posts.

Might be worthwhile as an experiment, though. And who knows - maybe it would be successful.

[Rapscallion]

I would probably fall through with running advertisements off of it to make extra money, but then again, I'm sure no one would go to it if I did that.

[Roadkill]

the trick is getting it to appear on search engines, along with your own neat little tricks for getting viewers. Repeat business is not necessarily the goal, but its cool if you can manage it.

For example, friend mentioned above doesn't use Wikipedia any more? Why? Because he would repeatedly replace all the citation links with links to his own site to boost viewership!

[TerraFrost]

the trick is getting it to appear on search engines, along with your own neat little tricks for getting viewers. Repeat business is not necessarily the goal, but its cool if you can manage it.

For example, friend mentioned above doesn't use Wikipedia any more? Why? Because he would repeatedly replace all the citation links with links to his own site to boost viewership!

Not all links are equal. If you're trying to promote your website, you should either be looking at getting big honking websites to link to you (maybe get featured on digg.com, reddit.com, stumbleupon.com, etc), or lots of little websites to link to you permanently. Vandalizing wikipedia.org serves little point in that regard. wikipedia.org adds the rel="nofollow" tag to links, so they don't affect your Google placement, and they're rather temporary.

As for stuff that'll get you featured on big websites (and lots of little ones)... well, creating a so-called viral video would work. Become lonelygirl15, the Star Wars kid, All your base are belong to us, or whatever.

Of course, that's not nearly as easy as it sounds. What, instead, you could do is go the long and hard road and create a better website / web app then anyone else and just be patient. You could create the best phpBB template / modification around, submit it to phpbb.com, and then wait for people to come. Or maybe create something that is as popular as phpBB or Wordpress or whatever and wait for the people to come.

Lots of people want to become millionaires. Lots of people are also not doing anything to further their goals. Success is never easy and you shouldn't get discouraged when you don't find it overnight.

edit: you can read up on past discussion on this subject here:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7091