Domain Reviews:
How to Choose & Who to Buy From?

For most online ventures these days, one common thread that we continue to see is that having a website is a very good thing! I totally agree! At the beginning, you can probably get away with those "free", designed for you review sites, Blogger for your blogs or eBay as your portal to the world. At some point, though, you will out-grow this and the sooner you take the step into building your own website, the better off you will be for the future. I'm not here to talk about HOW to create a website (I will get to that later), but who should you invest in BEFORE you get started!

The first step is to buy a domain! This part is quite trivial to do, but finding the domain of your choice may be a little bit complicated! A few things to consider about choosing a domain name:

1) Search Engines Bots Usually Do Not Care What This Name Is (Directly)

2) From an SEO Standpoint, though, people are more likely to use your URL as your anchor-text link which brings SEO powers inherently to that domain name. For example:

• Garden-Decor.com
• SunshineHappiness.com

The first choice naturally optimizes for "Garden Decor", which is probably targeting the product at hand. "Sunshine Happiness" sounds nice, but no one is going to be searching for this phrase to find garden objects.

3) Hyphens are OK! Most people these days reach sites through links rather than directly typing in URLs. Because of this, hyphens usually are not that bad.

4) If possible, find a ".com" extension. ".net" is the next best choice. Newer extensions such as ".biz", ".info" and ".us" are still not as widely recognized.

4) Still, you want a domain name to remember! Not too long. Not too cryptic. If you saw the following three domains for bird feeders on search, which one are you more likely to choose?

• Discount-Wholesale-Liquidator-Bird-Supplies-4-You.com
• ABirdsNet.com
• Plextor-Inc.com

There is still some psychology behind going to sites and personally, I would click on the middle one of those were my three options.

5) Finally, choose a domain that YOU like. Heck, you are going to have to live with it.

So where do you go to buy a domain? If you are just looking to buy a domain name, a cheap, reliable place to go is the king of domains, GoDaddy.com. A standard ".com" name only costs you $8.95/year. The management is simple. The customer service is great. The price is right.

Of course, most of us are looking to do more than just buy a domain. From this point, you have few options:

1) Park You Domain and Make Money

2) Sell Your Domain for a Profit

3) Use Your Domain to Make a Website

Parking and Selling domains is a rather new (and very lucrative!) venture. To find out how to do this, read my review of domain profitting.

To make your own website, you are going to need to find a "server" to host your domain. By adding hosting to your domain, you can usually reduce (and even eliminate!) the cost of the domain name. But choosing the RIGHT hosting company is CRITICAL to your success online. Read my review of choosing hosting companies.