Saturday, January 25, 2020

How to Register a Domain Name for Your Online Business

How to register a domain nameIn this blog post, I'm going to answer your on how to register a domain name for your online business. But the first thing that should come to your mind is that without a domain name and web hosting, you cannot build a website or create a blog of your own.

In other words, it is actually the foundation of any successful online business and you must deem it necessary to buy one for your web business to flourish. I shudder when I meet aspiring internet entrepreneurs who say they don't have a website and yet they want to earn money online.

With that said, let's get started.


What is a Domain Name?


A domain name is simply an online address that takes a web surfer or information seeker to a specific website, blog, ecommerce store, etc whenever he/she enters it on his/her internet browser or follow a link that contains the online address.

It can be in different forms such as a word or combination of words, word(s) and numbers, characters, creative or brandable, numbers only, words separated with hyphen(s), etc.

A domain name will always have its own unique extension or TLD (top-level domain). A name with its unique TLD can only be registered by one individual or corporate body at a time.

For example, there is only one and only one person who can own https://www.businessdoer.com/ at any point in time. But another person or corporate entity can register the .net, .org, .info, .biz, .co, etc without any problem. The domain extensions are so many now to list all of them here.

However, you should bear in mind that .COM TLD is generally perceived to be superior to the other extensions and rightly so because its commercial attributes. So, I may advise you to register your domain name in the .com extension.

Without a domain name to do business online, you cannot really promote your unique brand or project your online identity to the global market. Fortunately for every aspiring online entrepreneur, it will not cost you an arm and leg to get a domain name.

Yes, it costs less than $10 per year to register a domain name or renew it for you to continually have an unfettered access to use it.

In case you don't know, owning a domain name as your virtual office address gives you identifiable perception, search engines traffic and scalability in your internet business and online marketing. To this end, you should be able to give careful thought to it before choosing and registering a domain name.

Before you get a domain name, make sure it is easy to remember, short, passes the radio test, reflects your business idea, keyword rich, marketable, unique, descriptive, commercially viable, connects with your niche or industry, and so on.

Domain name registration is on first come first served basis. So, use your creative imagination to get a domain name idea and quickly register it before someone else does. It did happened to me!

Few years back now, I checked the availability of a name for online business ideas I was contemplating of starting with it in April. As luck would have it, it was available for hand registration but I deferred it.

By July of the same year, someone else has taken possession of it and I became so heart broken for days on end.

What I should have done on that day was to go to my preferred domain name registration service and reserve the name for less than $10 for a whole year pending when I'm ready to start an online business with it.


What is the Cost of Domain Name Registration?


Personally, I use NameSilo.com to get a domain name every time I want to register it for an internet business idea I want to start. It costs $8.99 per year as of writing this blog article.

And if you're lucky, you may register for just $6.99 if there is promotion going on. Most of the time in the year, NameSilo host promotions to attract more customers.

The best of it all is that your registration will include privacy protection if you desire it. Majority of other domain registrars charge an extra fee to protect your domain name for you.

Whois privacy can come in handy when you want to hide your identity from the public and safely do your business without prying eyes.

How to register a domain name

On how to register a domain name, this is the steps I usually follow to reserve a name.

  1. I will make a tentative list of all the domain names I want to register which are related to the business to start in a notepad, one domain name per line. 
  2. Decide in advance on the TLD/extension I want to go for. I always make use of the .com extension for my business. The only exception is when I am buying and selling domain names. 
  3. Copy and paste the list into the domain name availability checker and click the search button. 
  4. The domain availability checker will go to work and show me the results in seconds or a minute as to which of the domains cum its their TLDs are available to register and which ones are already taken. 
  5. If the name that is available in the results page is okay by me, I will proceed with the domain name registration process. First, I will log in to my account with NameSilo.com and pay the registration fee to get it secured into my account.
But if you are a new registrant, you have to sign up from this link and proceed with your cheap domain name registration. If you register a domain name for one year, have it in mind that it will become due for renewal on or before the first anniversary date of your registration.

You may loose your domain name to another online business owner who is also interested in it or cyber squatters who want to make quick cash from reselling it if you failed to renew it within the grace period available to you after the due renewal date.

And the number of days for the grace period differs from one registrar to another. You may have to check with your domain name registrar in order to be sure.

This is how to register a domain name and it is essentially the same steps you will pass through if you already have your own preferred domain name registration company in mind.

Lastly, make sure you don't register a domain with a trademarked keyword in it. You can check for trademark issues with TradeMark247.com for free.

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