When you choose your business domain name it needs to be registered. You can either pay and register at the same place you will be paying for hosting, or buy your domain from a lesser expensive provider and then use it as an “addon” domain at your hosting company.
Frankly, for the buck or two you will save by buying at one place and hosting it at another, it really isn’t worth the additional time to deal with two companies. If you will be buying several domain names because that is the business you are in, then it will be worth reading the rest of this post.
Where to Buy Domain Names Cheap
The two top picks for cheap places to register domain names are GoDaddy and NameCheap. Both also have hosting at good pricing as well. You certainly can register your domain at Hostgator or Bluehost or wherever you decide to set up shop. As a matter of fact, sometimes as an incentive to register your domain with your hosting company, they offer FREE domain registration. The USUAL catch to this is it’s only free for the first year and the renewal can then be
Cost to Buy Website URL Name
Generally speaking the difference in price to register a domain can be anywhere from $5 to $20 per year. For the most part spending a couple extra dollars will save you the hassle of having to “assign” the domain to a hosting company different than where you made your domain purchase. The name of your url is the least expensive investment there is when building your online business location. It is well worth $20 a year.
It’s not really a big deal to assign your domain and change the Name Servers (DNS). It just takes a couple extra steps and some time of your time. Plus you have to wait for the servers to populate and that can take up to 48 hours. The last one I did a few days ago took over 35 hours. This is a big pain especially when you have set aside the time to develop or move a website.
Register Domain Names for More than One Purpose
I will confess I had 178 domains at one time. I thought this was a lot but as it turns out there are other domain hoarders out there and some have THOUSANDS of domain names.
Why?
There are several reasons why you would want to register more than one domain.
Reason 1.
The domain name you have chosen is a BRAND name. This means that you are using words that may not have an established meaning, or have a different meaning.
One word of caution, if you choose to use a weird non-word name (like Google or Zellers) for your business, you will have to have a BIG branding budget. It costs less to bring awareness to your business and service if you call yourself The Sub Shoppe as opposed to Quiznos.
To prove this point, ask yourself, when you look for an electrician do you search the directories for a “brand name” like AmpUP or do you search for “electrician”? If you are an electrician starting your own company, and even if your last name is Watts or Ohm – it is still advisable to use the keyword search term in your business name like Watts Electrical.
Once you have decided on the name and how you are going to brand your business then its time to choose a domain name. Your domain can be about your service instead of your name if you prefer. Choose the url by deciding on the way you are going to focus your traffic. For example; if your business name doesn’t reflect the service you provide and you have had the name for awhile and need to keep it. Or, you are focusing on a particular aspect of your business because it brings in the most money, then choose a url to reflect your focus.
Once you have gone to all the trouble to choose and register your business name it is also a good idea to buy up most of the TLD’s (Top Level Domains) Although it isn’t necessary to scoop up all the names, you might want to consider owning the more common ones like the .com, .info, .net plus the one applicable for your country like .us, .uk, .ca, .au, etc.
If you do choose a funky non-word name for your business and pay to have it trademarked, you probably could go to the bother and sue people for using your name in their domain, or simpler yet, just pick the cheap and less-hassle route and buy them all.
Reason 2.
You are a serious marketer and you want to capture peoples attention from more than one site. Many marketers do this.
For example; you can have one site all about golf course reviews and travel guides for the avid golfer. Then have a separate site dedicated to golf accessories, paraphernalia, and the latest trends. The two sites are related in the way that you would likely refer golfers to one another on occasion, but unique and niched enough to warrant their own sites.
Reason 3.
You are a niche marketing guru! These are people that love to get into just about everything and want to have one website for each. Each site is then dedicated to one VERY specific product.
Reason 4.
Domain flipping or website flipping. Although the need for “exact match” domains isn’t AS important as it once was, there is still great value in having a close match name to your business or product.
At one time your website would almost be automatically pushed to the head of the line if the name had a good keyword match – regardless of the content on the site. THAT is only what has changed. Your content MUST fit the domain name for it to have any positive consequence.
For domain and site flipping there is still a good business and profit to be made. You might find there is a URL available that you might want to develop to sell one of these days.
Reason 5.
It’s 3am and you just had a bright idea for a website or a product.
Domain Name Registering
Regardless of why you picked the names, now you have to check to see if the domain is available. If on the first try your preferred domain isn’t available, which is common in top choice keyword phrases, there are a few ideas you can try.
You can hyphenate words. If examplewebsite.com isn’t available try example-website.com or example-web-site.com
Try adding a prefix or suffix. Here are some sample ideas you can try;
hub
blog
e
my
the
zone
ing
free
full
many
station
mania
unlimited
online
I
I am
portal
team
club
site
world
You can try something as simple as just pluralizing it too – examplewebsites.com
Congratulations! You’ve researched, chosen, and registered your domain name. Now its time to pick your hosting company and begin to build your website.
