Get a Domain Name
Every great website deserves a great domain name. A great analogy for a web site is that it is like a building. Even though most of a web site is written you don’t actually write a web site you build it. And just as every building needs a place to sit, an address, in the realms of cyberspace a web address is a domain name.
Some hosting providers will actually give you a free domain name for as long as you host your site with them and this might seem like a good idea until you decide to move and they are holding the domain name that you have built your precious site on and most probably spent a lot of time and money building up your traffic. So before you jump at what looks like a deal make sure that you are actually going to hold ownership of the domain name.
Websites can be changed and altered but a domain name stays the same forever so it is a good idea to put some time effort and thought into selecting the www address for you new website.
Domain names come in various TLD’s (top level domain). At the top of the food chain is dot com followed by dot net, dot org, dot info and dot us. You can pick up a dot info at Go Daddy’s for 99cents which looks like a good until next year when it’s time to renew and now it’s like ten or eleven bucks. A dot com is like $7.50 and if you choose wisely you will have made an investment that could make you a wealthy individual in the near future. Pizza dot com recently sold for $2.6 million and while it is true that one word domains are rarely available for registration there are still some great domains available if you are prepared to look.
Here’s how to find a good domain name:
1. Go to Go Daddy’s and enter names into their free search tool and see what’s available for registration
2. Fresh Drop lists domain names that are being auctioned off. Although Fresh Drop is a paid membership site they allow you to search some categories for free. They offer superb tools like showing the amount of back links a domain has and page rank and if it is genuine for domains being auctioned. If you are interested in grabbing good domains then Fresh Drop is an absolute must.
3. Go to Go Daddy’s expiring domain name auction site and see what’s available. Before you can bid you must take out a membership but it is less that $5 a year and considering that you can buy thousands of expired domains some of them over 10 years old for $5 plus registration fee the $5dollars for the yearly membership is a great deal. For example I recently bought the domain name GetRidOfDebts.com at the Go Daddy’s auction for $5.
Dot net and dot org are also useful domain name extensions but if you can find a good dot com that suits your website then that is without doubt the way to go.
