Building a website with a domain name helps your visitors to remember your site easily. Getting a catchy and short domain name helps in every way. Registering a domain name is easy. Just search the Internet using Google! or Bing and you will get many free services to register a domain.
Benefits of using your own domain name:
1. Visitors remember your website better – Choosing a nice and short domain name in the past is not a huge problem. During the 90’s before the Internet boom, domain names are abundant. At the peak of the economy, domain names were snapped up like hot cakes. If you do a search on one to two words domain names, most probably it is already taken. A good and easy to remember domain name helps visitors to remember it better and you will have higher chances of them visiting your website again.
2. Look more professional – Rather than using a free sub-domain name provided by a free web hosting company, getting your own domain name actually makes your website look more professional. A domain name of your own projects integrity and creates trust in your visitors. If you are an affiliate marketer, this helps in your sales.
3. Make money out of your domain name – You can actually sell your domain name in any online market place. As I have mentioned earlier, one and two words domain names are scarce. If you managed to get yourself a catchy and short domain name, there would be high chances of selling it to prospective buyers.
However as a word of caution choose the right place to shop for your domain name. I have had a bad experience where my domain name was stolen by the company that I performed a search on. I actually planned to register a domain name of my choice. While shopping, I did numerous searches using free services offered by the hosting company. To my disbelieve someone went and register and parked the domain name in the server.
To be on the safer side, you can try searching for domain names using GoDaddy! web hosting services. You can head to GoDaddy! Domains and use their ‘Find a Domain Name’ search function. Best of all, the search function will sometimes propose a different domain name if the one you are searching for is taken. Another method of searching a domain name is through using a domain suggestion tool. You can find this tool widely available on the Internet through a simple search on Yahoo! or Google. This tool is able to suggest from twenty and up to an unlimited number of possible combinations of a domain name. From my experience, I have actually used this service numerous times and furthermore it is free. Here are some links to the tools that I have mentioned:
GoDaddy! Domain – https://godaddy.com/domains/domain-name-search
Namecheap – https://www.namecheap.com/
Remember, there are no obligations to purchase the domain name even though you are using their suggestion tools. Registration of a domain can costs you from nothing up to $10 a year depending on which company you register it in. Getting a web hosting package together with a domain name might be cheaper than just registering a domain name. Some web hosting companies are even offering free domain name registration in their web hosting packages, while others are charging minimal fees for it.
Of course there are many ways to make a profit out of your domain name. Here are some criteria where you can cash in your domain names.
1. A domain name which belongs to a company – If you managed to land your hands on a domain name which belongs to a company which plans to unveil their web services, high chances that they will buy the domain name from you. There are also high chances that they will bring you to court to get the domain name.
2. Short and catchy domain name which is made up of one or two words and contain some general words – eg. GoogleSeo.com, MakeMoney.com, EStock.com, RealEstate.net, YouTube.com, PC.com, DoctorsOffice.com. RealEstate.net was sold for a record $300,000 in the past, while EStock.com was auctioned at net price of $5,000 recently. YouTube.com is a multi-billion dollar company and PC.com belongs to Intel. GoogleSeo.com and MakeMoney.com is ideal for websites which target online money making opportunities. And finally DoctorsOffice.com is on sale for $20 million dollars -no buyers yet.
3. A well known and established domain name with high traffic – Of course, if you happen to own a domain name which does not fit any of the above criteria, a high traffic and established domain name also fetches a high price tag. For example in the past, YouTube.com was not widely known up until recently whereby the company was taken over by Google in excess of $1 billion dollar. Do a search on Alexa.com and you can identify top websites that has high traffic. If you managed to build such a website, I’m sure you can sell your domain name at a high price.
So don’t wait and register a domain name today!
