How do I purchase my domain?

Posted by on Jul 3, 2011 in Blog, Resources | 0 comments

The process for acquiring a domain

Ready to buy your new domain name?

Do you know the name already? Is it available? If so, jump straight to Buying the domain!

Are you curious about some deeper insight into the domain name world? Check out this (ah, not yet posted, please be patient!)

Okay, if you are still here, you are probably ready to figure out what name you are going to buy!

Considerations before buying a domain

Let’s start with some considerations:

The preferred top-level domain (short TLD) is the .com, followed by .net and .info, or if you represent a non-profit or other organization you should explore .org. Some choose to go with the relatively new .co and while it is short and sweet, it is easily confused with .com.

Why is .com so important, you may ask? It is really based on people’s expectations. Most people are used to look for organizations under their .com name. Apart from that, you can really select any tld that is available where you are.

Selecting your domain name

Now it is time to select your name and these tips may come in handy (also see the advanced section further down):

Try to choose a short name that is easy to remember. However shorter than five characters is almost impossible to find unless you choose an obscure letter combination. Here is a short domain name I picked up, however I am not yet clear as to what I will use it for: http://loqq.co.
The most obvious choice is your company name or a brand name in your product portfolio. If that is not available, consider what variants you may use. Maybe by adding something related to the entity will make it unique: myowncompany, myownbusiness, myowngroup etc.
However if you company name is not available, consider choosing a name that describes what you do. This is very clever as it is likely to consist of words that people actually will search for. E.g. ecopaintingseattle.com, ecologicalpaintinginseattle.com, whopaintsecofriendly.com (by the way, all three are available at the time of writing). Notice how the last example may match an exact search on Bing or Google. There can be some extra search value in this.
If you choose a name consisting of several words, try to not use hyphens and never use underscores. To give an example with my own site; first go for backwardwebsites.com, then potentially backward-websites.com but never backward_websites.com. The reason is as above – people don’t expect it and will never remember it. That said, you may still want to go with hyphens to get the words right – as mentioned before, words are valued when the search engines try to figure out what your site is about.
Is your name easy to misspell? Then buy the misspelled word as well! My example for backwardwebsites.com is that I also bought backwardswebsites.com, realizing that many people wouldn’t see the difference between backward and backwards. Now that isn’t backwards, that is clever!
Be thoughtful about selecting words that represent names of others’ brands. We live in a litigious society and it may not be worth getting into a dispute over a name that obviously has a direct brand connection to someone else.

Searching for your domain name

There are many places to search for domain names. My two favorites are:

If your site-name is not available, both will provide suggestions. I typically find that NetworkSolutions suggestions are more useful, however GoDaddy provides some alternative information that is also useful.

What is your favorite domain search tool? Please share in the comments section below!

The quickest way – you can search right here!


Advanced research & tips

Are you really serious about finding a name that works with impact?

If so, here is a collection of advanced tips:

  • Use Google’s keyword tool to search on your favorite words and 1) get insight into how many actually search on them and 2) get ideas on related terms that might be better for being found. I am working on a separate post for this topics. Come back and stay tuned!

Okay, so now you are ready to buy your domain! Congratulations!

Selecting the domain registrar

Selecting who to buy your domain from isn’t easy. It turns out that many hosters only provide domain registration as a service, not as a core offering. In fact, they may not even be registrars but just resellers of domains. This isn’t necessarily bad, and it can be really convenient to buy the domain and hosting from one source. However you may get into problems when it comes to support and if you want to transfer the domain somewhere else.

The criteria I go with are:

  • Good price – if I buy 6 domains (which happens regularly) then there is a major difference between $7.49 and $19.95 each. Look around, and search for vouchers!
  • Good self-service administration tools – you need to be able to change domain name servers, A-record and a host of other things easily – or at least your web developer needs to be able to do it. Some registrars make it more cumbersome than necessary.
  • Excellent support – hopefully you won’t need to use their support, but when you need it you are probably desperate for it.

Buying the domain

The last thing to do before you make the leap is to figure out if you can save a few bucks! Many domain registrars offer discounts or incentives most of the time.

  • Expect to pay from $7 to ~$20 for your .com domain. My tip is that whichever registrar you select, do an online search for discount vouchers. E.g. it seems GoDaddy always has discounts enabling you to buy domains at under $8, and if you buy 6 or more at the same time you get some bundling discounts.
  • Don’t buy hosting just yet! Very likely you will want to buy hosting from another supplier and not your registrar. At least hold off for now unless you really want to take advantage of a bundled deal. The risk is that your website developer will be very unhappy with your choice of hoster…
  • Consider buying several TLDs for your domain. If you buy http://backwardwebsites.com, you may also want to catch .net, .info or others as they may come in handy and it will prevent other businesses from marketing under a very similar name.

Questions & Answers

  • Q: The name that I really, really want is taken. Should I try to buy it?
  • A: If you really want it and if you believe there is any chance the owner may part with it, you have nothing to lose by asking. You may by now have come across the fact that many domain names are bought and held by people hoping to sell them for a profit. This is a type of domain squatting . Unless it is targeting an existing brand it is in most cases not illegal. If you ask, or get offered, to buy your favorite name, expect to pay from around $100 to an unlimited amount. The other day I tried to buy http://learntoride.com and the answer was that the highest bid was currently at $33,000. I decided to come up with something else…
  • Q: Okay, so which domain registrar do you recommend?
  • A: I use GoDaddy for my domain registrations. I do it for three reasons: 1) great price (typically I can find a voucher for $7-$8, 2) decent administration interface, and 3) overall administration is much easier when I have all domains with one registrar since they all have difference administration tools.
  • Q: Do you use GoDaddy for hosting as well?
  • A: I used to use GoDaddy however now I use HostGator. There aren’t huge differences but since I am a prolific user I appreciate even the small differences.

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