If you want to have a professional presence on the web, I strongly recommend registering your own domain name ...

 
Almost every day I see some n00b posting on the web developer sites, "What should I write about? Give me a topic that I can make lots of money with!" Conversely, on the writing sites, I see writers who are certain they know what they want to write about -- but they don't know how to get the blog part started. This series of articles is about the nuts and bolts of starting a blog, ranging from picking a good subject to domain names to building the site, and finally to monetizing the sucker once it starts to grow ...