Don't Pay Too Much - It used to be that the top-level domain registration business was a monopoly run by Network Solutions. The price for a domain was $35 a year, take it or leave it. Now that there is competition in the field you can easily pay less than $10 a year. Of course you will want to use a reliable company as your registrar, but you still don't have to pay a lot for them. I've used www.gkg.net since 1999 and have been very happy with their friendly and responsive customer service, and they charge less than $10 a year (no, I don't have any financial interest in them). You can probably find even cheaper, but still reliable, companies if you look around. Be sure to use an accredited domain registrar or one of their agents, you can check this at www.internic.net/regist.html.

Research - All the domain registrars give you the ability on their websites to find out if your chosen domain name is already registered. If your first choice isn't available, try some different combinations until you find one you like. If you are interested in finding out who owns a domain, check one of the “whois” directories on the internet. Just do a search on Google for “whois” You’ll be amazed what you can find out about a currently owned domain. However, unless you’re obsessed with a particular domain name, I wouldn’t bother trying to buy one from someone who already owns it, they could easily ask thousands of dollars. Be careful about copyright infringement with your domain, www.microssoft.com might get you a bunch of accidental traffic but will probably not be worth being figuratively beaten to a pulp by a team of lawyers. This domain actually exists right now, but it seems the owner doesn’t dare do anything with it. You may, if you’re feeling like a media mogul, choose to buy up a slew of related domains which all point to your website. For example Amazon.com has amazonbooks.com and amazonmusic.com which both point to their main site. Finally, you may want to research whether the domain you’ve chosen has been used before and then not renewed. Some used domains are “damaged goods” because the previous owner used deceptive techniques, such as doorway pages, in order to get better search engine placement. This “spamming” of search engines can get the site permanently banned by the search engines. In that case the site owner drops that domain and gets another. You can see what any website looked like in past incarnations with the “Wayback Machine” website at www.archive.org. This is a site which is creating an ongoing catalogue of almost the entire internet at different points in time, a fascinating and monumental project. I don’t know of any way to find out if a used domain has actually been banned, but if you find in your research that the domain was used for a gambling site, adult content or just a compilation of links you should definitely pass on it.

Register It - Registering your domain is fairly straightforward, you just need a credit card to purchase it like anything else you would online. It's important to keep active the email address you use as a contact as you may need it to access your account someday if you forget your login. To avoid that, be sure to write down the user name and password for your account immediately and keep it with your printed receipt. Your purchase may be a tax-deductible business expense. The registrar will most likely offer free parking of your domain for a year or so until you get regular hosting. That just means it will remain active and when someone pulls up that domain they will see a page from your registrar telling them the name has been registered. When you do get hosting, your web developer can point your domain to your host's servers. Your registrar or website host usually has instructions on how to do this on their sites.

With some thought and care you can have the perfect website name for your business and not get ripped off in the process. Thanks for reading, I wish you all great success in your business endeavors.

This article © 2004 Wilford Design and may not be reprinted without permission.

Back To Article Index