Do you know how to protect your online reputation? It’s not something you can do by clicking a link or paying $7.99 a month for an anti-virus.
Finding useful information on how to protect your online reputation will take you just long enough for your reputation to shatter in thousands of pixels… in all their glory.
I hope to solve that for you right here in this post, and it shouldn’t take long at all.
Why?
Simple. Because as long as you do this one thing, you’re digital profile becomes near bulletproof.
In todays world, it’s more important than ever to control the information about you. Since information about you could be looked up within 10 seconds by anyone, you want to have control over what they find or don’t find.
This isn’t just for personal vanity either. What users find when they look for information about you could give you certain advantages or disadvantages. It could create oppurtunities for you, or destroy them.
This study by Tripadvisor explain that your online reputation impacts multiple different areas of your life. This is why having control over your name is crucial.
As long as you control information about your name, you’re in control. If someone else gets control over your name, you could easily be controlled or bribed.
This is all about having complete control over your digital reputation. What does that mean exactly? It means having complete control over your own name, and it shouldn’t cost you more than $12.
Do you care if the country was able to discover that you’re an evil person, even though it would be a complete lie?
How do you do this? Keep reading…
Table of Contents
Investing is crucial to learn and implement for our long term financial survival. That includes investing in your name. How do you invest in your name? This post is about how to protect your name and your reputation.
The inspiration for this topic came to me the other day as I was double checking my domain expiration dates. One domain I bought almost a year ago was the name of my sibling. I saw that it was available and snatched it immediately.
Why I Bought My Families Domain Name
Why did I buy it? One simple, but crucial reason.
Control.
Protecting your digital presence is something everyone needs to do these days. The fact is, we live in a digital world. Elon Musk says “we already are cyborgs”.
I invest in domain names, every day I’m looking at domain names for sale, expired or not. It becomes addicting—knowing any second you could spot a needle in a haystack made of gold. Which happens more frequently than you think if you know where to look and what to look for… but that’s for a different post.
Domains are very much like real estate. Location Location Location is equivalent to the name of the domain. The name of the domain is the address, which is the location. If you want real estate in a nice location, you’ll need to pay for it, but with domain names, sometimes you spot gold that can be bought for ten cents on the dollar. Making it even better than real estate.
A vortex of thoughts fired off in my mind as I thought about owning your personal names domain address. Me knowing what I know about domains and ranking them in search engines, it’s not only possible to completely annihilate someone’s name and reputation, it would be easy.
Everyone should own the domain of their own name. Not only is this the domain you could use to start building an additional income (that could easily turn 99% passive) but it’s essential for your personal survival long term.
Why? Simple.
The Most Important $12 Investment You’ll Ever Make
Imagine this…
Someone hates you. You have an enemy. Most people do. So they get an idea of seeing if your domain name is available. It is. You haven’t bought it, so it’s probably available if your name is “Donald Trump”.
The most important financial investment for your personal security, protection, and self-worth is in the .com domain name of your personal first and last name.
Registering a domain name that’s available or even expired is a measly $10 a year, it’s nothing. So the person that hates your soul, buys it.
But what could an enemy do with your domain name? Well I’m afraid the truth is ugly.
They could essentially destroy your name and reputation. Again, if your name isn’t Donald Trump, there is most likely very little, if any, competition is the search engines for your name. So getting a domain of your exact name to show up as the first result in google and all the other search engines, wouldn’t be very difficult at all.
Say they do that, what do you think they would put on the website? They hate you. Are they going to be saying how great you are? No. In fact, they could say essentially anything they want.
Think about that…
Any person on earth, someone that could love you or hate you, could buy your name online and say anything they want about you.
This is about preventing that from being a possibility.
So here’s what you do.
How To Secure Your Online Reputation in 3 Steps
You can quickly and easily protect your online identity with a few dollars and within a few minutes. Here’s what you do.
- Register Your Name’s Domain Name.
- Host Your Domain Name
- Publish Quality Information About Yourself To Rank For Your Name
Doing this one quick and easy thing will ensure control over your name. Could others publish information about you? Of course, however, ranking your own domain name of your name is much easier to rank #1 in the google search results when someone Google’s your name than any other domain name. So if you publish information about yourself, you can rank for your name.
At the very least, register the .com of your name. A domain that’s available and not a premium domain will cost you a whopping $9 a year.
We’re going to register your domain with NameCheap. They’re simple, clean, and easy to manage domains you buy.
Here’s how to register your names domain url address, step-by-by.
Step 1) Go To Domain Registrar
Go to Namecheap.com
Are there other options for domain registration? Yes, but Namecheap is one of the best because of its ease of use and functionality. They’re also less expensive than other registrars.
Do yourself a favor, don’t waste countless hours Googling, “best domain registrar” and trying different ones. Certain companies with more marketing power will get you to try them and end up giving you a massive headache.
I’ve been using Namecheap for years and won’t use anyone else for registering domains. Their platform is easier to navigate and sort through than any other I’ve tried.
Step 2) Search Your Name
In the domain search bar, type in your first and last name with no space in between and add .com at the end. Press enter.
Owning the .com is the most important, they have the most legitimacy in general. Second best option would be the .net version.
If the domain says it’s available, congratulations. Go ahead and buy it, assuming it’s a non-premium domain for $9.
Step 3) Buy Domain
Go through the check process and buy the domain.
How To Continually Improve Your Online Reputation
Now that you bought your domain if you want to host the domain and publish content on your domain (which turns it into a website of your name), here’s what you do.
If you want to continually control and improve your name and reputation online; the next step is to host your domain so that you and anyone else can visit your new domain address. After you get hosting for your domain, inside your hosting account you can install WordPress, this is where you’ll build your website.
If this seems too technical, don’t feel overwhelmed, it’s actually very simple. The first step is to host your domain. Hosting is what allows your domain to be “hosted” so that the domain appears when you type it in a search browser.
How To Host Your Domain
Hosting is what allows you to “host” your domain so the domain can be accessed on the World Wide Web.
This is purely optional at this point. You already own your name as a domain. That was the goal, to secure and control the information on your name. It’s entirely up to you if you want to host it and turn it into a real website (that can make some money down the road as well).
If you want to host your name’s domain, here’s what you do.
Step 1) Buy Hosting Service
A domain, which you already bought for around $12, and hosting for that domain is only a few dollars a month. It’s nearly free. Those are the only two things you need to build an online business. The rest is time and effort, that’s it.
Go to SiteGround.com
Get the baby plan, you don’t need a higher tier when you’re starting out. It’s good for one single domain. If you want to buy more domains or want faster, more efficient hosting with more features, we use the GrowBig plan, but it’s not necessary for just one website.
Back to the point, I made above about wasting countless hours researching what to use. With hosting, it’s much worse. Siteground is legit, fast, secure, and easy to navigate.
Step 2) Add Your Domain To Your Hosting Account
Now we’re going to add the domain your bought from Namecheap to your Siteground hosting account. This is where the domains contents will exist.
Going through the checkout process will provide you with all the steps Siteground lays out for you on setting up your domain to your hosting account. Siteground makes it very simple for you.
If you do need some support, one of the great things about Siteground I love is their support. They are available 24/7 with any questions or help you need.
Step 3) Install Wordpres
Now we have to install WordPress on your domain. WordPress is a content management system that manages all of your content and publishing capability to your website.
1) Go to the login page and log in.
2) After Logging in, click Websites
2) Click Cpanel
3) WordPress Installer
Installing WordPress is the easiest method to build your website. WordPress is what you’ll log into to publish content on your site.
From the Cpanel, click “WordPress Installer”.
After clicking the WordPress installer, follow the steps to install wordpress.
Afterward, you now have a domain and website of your personal name that you can log into and work on to do as you wish.
Conclusion
Now that you have the domain of your name hosted, you may want to build the domain into a business. Since it’s your name, it would be perfect for a consulting or service type business.
To build a business online, which is what I recommend you do with your domain since building a business is the best way to secure yourself financially in the future. There is no faster or less expensive business you can start than buying a domain and hosting, but I’ll leave that for another post.
We hope this article helped you learn how to to protect your online reputation. You may also want to see our guide on how to buy gold.
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What do you think the easiest and least expensive business to start is?
