|
|
 Choosing a domain name
is one of my favorite parts of launching a new
business. Depending on the type of business,
sometimes its pretty easy to find a name that represents
it perfectly and sometimes it takes a lot of
brainstorming. One of my favorite tools is the
Thesaurus in Microsoft Word (or one online). I
check all kinds of applicable words and phrases and am
usually pleasantly surprised with some of the results.
Once I've made sure the names are actually available to
purchase, I will usually pick my top 6 or so and send
them to my inner circle of family and friends for their
input. Sometimes they'll just choose their
favorite but sometimes they come up with suggestions I
hadn't considered.
Choosing the domain
name is really IMPORTANT so take your time and use
some of the tools and web sites below to help you factor
in their recommendations.
You can check the domain
name availability wherever domain names are purchased,
or at a "whois" site (as in Who Is?). Here's
one.
24 Rules for
Choosing a Domain Name
1. Stick with “.com”
2. One Possible Spelling
3. Shorter is Better
4. Commercial Appeal
5. No Hyphens
6. Other Extensions
7. Singular vs. Plural
8. Price
9. Keyword Rich
10. Type-In Traffic
11. Avoid Numeral Substitutions
12. Avoid Slang
13. Watch Out for the Numeral “0″
14. Brandable
15. Easy to Type
16. Easily Understood
17. Avoid Copyright Issues
18. Unique
19. Use a Thesaurus
20. Search Dropped Domains
21. Memorable
22. Domain Auctions
23. Industry Jargon
24. Brainstorm
25. Start Now!
Source
DomainSuperStar.com
Read all the details on each of these recommendations
here
 Domain
names expire after 1 year, unless you buy
more than 1 year at a time. BE SURE
your domain name registrar has a policy of
notifying you well in advance when your
domain is set to expire. (000domains starts
emailing me 3 months ahead of time.) I've
heard some really terrible stories about
people losing their domain name because it
expired. If that does happen you can
sometimes get it back but it will cost you
WELL over the $15 you would paid to renew
it.
|
|
|
"Hosting your" domain
and web site is also very important. Choosing
a company that has a good track record of "up time" as
well as customer service that you can actually reach,
are vital. Thankfully there are some good
comparisons out there that do a lot of the leg work for
you. I use
HostGator.com for my sites. It's $9.95/mo
for "unlimited" space. That includes an unlimited
# of domain names under a single account. I'm sure
if you were hosting a site like Amazon it would reach
some maximum band width that's listed in the fine print
of their agreement, but I have about 20 different
domains under my account and a few of the sites are
fairly big. ALL for $9.95/month. Their
customer service has been excellent as well. Just
recently they notified me my email address had been
hacked and was sending out spam so they changed my
password. How nice is that? The control
panel is user-friendly and adding email accounts and
such are pretty simple.
Hosting
simply means a public computer server where the
files that make up your web site are stored and
are accessible to anyone on the www. In
your domain name set-up there's a place for the
"Nameservers" which is the address of where your
site is hosted. Someone enters your domain
name, through the set-up it sees the "address"
of where your web site files are, and in a blink
of an eye, they're at the server where your
files are stored and they see YOUR web site!
Here are some sites that compare features, prices and
track record of some of the more popular hosting sites.
WebHostingGeeks.com
FindMyHosting.com
Hosting-Comparison.com
WebHostingSecretRevealed.com
|
