Domain

Domain Name (www.)
It is your business address. A piece of real estate on the internet. A good domain name can sell for millions e.g. sex.com. If you own a domain name for long time, search engines will rank it higher than a new kid on the block.  Some people make money just by building websites and flipping domain names for a profit. To register your domain name, go to Godaddy or Namecheap or Netfirms.

Netfirms is one of the cheapest domain registration provider around, starting you around $7.99. Although it starts you at $7.99, the second year renewal is $11.99. Netfirms changed its system recently and as a customer I faced a lot of frustrations when registering new domain and renewing domain names.

The temporary password for newly registered domain names on some occasions do not work and I had to go through the hassle of contacting Netfirms to get a new password before I could access the Netfirms cpanel to point the domain name to my hosting server. That could take many frustrating hours.

Namecheap registers your new domain name at $9.69. I registered a new domain recently and pleasantly surprised with a free domain .info thrown in. Unfortunately, the newdomainname.info was not available so I did not get the freebie after all.

For Namecheap, privacy is not automatic. You have to enter into your account to activate. If you forgot to do so, your name, home address, home telephone number, mobile number, email address can be seen on public domain. To some people that’s an advantage because they can easily be found by people who want to buy their registered domain names. However, not many people would like their personal details to be available for public viewing.

For Namecheap, their email response is incredibly fast. and if you are from outside the United States whereby it might be costly for you to call into USA, your problems can be sent via email and response is quick.

Godaddy advertises that its domain name price registration is $11.99. Sometimes, there’s sometimes pleasant surprise of discounts available. You will see the discounts when you continue registration. The cheapest price I had paid for a new domain name was $7.67. With Godaddy , you are asked if you want to pay for extra protection for privacy. I didn’t but I noted after registration, my details were protected anyway, so I’m not sure what you pay for if you had exercised the extra privacy protection option. One disadvantage is that Godaddy does not automatically offers free domain email address. If you register a newdomain.com, you’d might want to create a contact address such as support@newdomain.com. Some people might not be fussed by this limitation because they can implement wordpress blogs that have a comment section whereby people can still contact them or they simply use a gmail address or pay a little extra to Godaddy for domain emails.

What’s great about Godaddy is that it has an active auction site where you can participate to buy expiring or expired domains. Why buy these older domains? Google places some importance to older domain names. These domains would have some marketing already done for them by the previous owner. Unlike a new domain where you need to put in all the legwork, buying the older domains relieve you some of these legwork. When you retire from internet business, you can put your domain up for auction or sale at Godaddy. So, if you are thinking long term for an exit point, you may want to choose Godaddy.

Godaddy looks daunting with lots of options when one first visits the website. But, it is not all that unfriendly. Just key in your desired name to see if the domain is available, and then continue registration.

Note: The price is accurate at the time of writing. The prices may subject to change by the domain registration providers.

As with any purchases on the internet whether you are booking a hotel online or buying a domain name with any domain name providers, just be sure you uncheck to avoid extra option expenses accidentally ticked, or check the relevant boxes to ensure you buy all the services you want.

For each of the domain registration provider, they each have their own hosting plans that are available to complement your domain registration. After getting a domain name (your web address), the next step is to find a hosting servers (the e-land for your e-shop to sit on) to host your domain url address.