Choosing a domain name can be a challenging and frustrating experience. It can also be a fun filled and rewarding experience, a test of your creative skills, and self revealing on a lot of different levels!

My business name is Rational Environmental Solutions, I had tried several different variations, such as replacing solutions, with services, or just calling it solutions, so that I could later add more divisions, but what finaly settled me on this variation, was that it said what I wanted it to say, and the domain, www.rationalenvironmentalsolutions.com, was available. As you have already guessed, that was not a good choice for a domain name, although as a business name, it seems to work just fine. It says what I want it to say, and it gets a good look from my home states various agencies when they are looking for eco friendly companies to do jobs for the state. It just doesn’t work well as a domain name, because of it’s length, and the very good chance, that it will be misspelled when typing it into a browser.

So, I went looking for another domain name, that would at least offer some idea and association to what I do. Most were just as long and unruly as the original, so I thought that since the business name said what I wanted it to say, that the domain didn’t necessarily have to completely describe the business. I found the domain name TEXPEST, that describes where I am and what I do, (not, as I am sure some of you are thinking, what I am.) So TEXPEST, became my domain name. While I was searching, I ran across several others that I liked as well. Let me explain a little bit about why I did not choose them for my primary domain, but registered them anyway.

I came across my home town version of the name I chose, TYLERPEST, Since my hometown is one of the largest rose growing areas in the country, and because it has the largest Municipal rose garden in the country, it is sometimes called, the “Rose City”. ROSECITYPEST was available. I live in the Eastern part of the state of Texas, so since EASTTEXASPEST, is both long and difficult, and has the double letters to contend with, I decided against that. I did however find that ETEXPEST. ETEX, being a in common use in the area, was much more appealing, but was rejected because it “could be” confusing. TYLERLAWN, was also available, but didn’t say what I wanted to say. I settled on TEXPEST, because it was broad enough to cover work in the entire state, and short enough to be easily remembered and typed.

I registered the reasonably good other choices as well, to keep the competition from encroaching, and to protect my “branding”. I also wanted to use them to cover a lot of other bases. When someone types a service need into a browser, they often, out of habit, type .com at the end, so if they are looking for info on a Tyler pest, and type it in as, tylerpest.com, they will go directly to a very short page that I have done, that ends something like this: : “If this is your problem, don’t push the panic button, push the solution button.” Bellow, or even in the sentence, the word SOLUTIONS is highlighted, because I typed the “meta” information into the html, that points to my texpest site. Now, before I get emails telling me how this is bad, I want to let you know, that my short pages, contain more useful content than most web pages. I did this with several of the variations, and the rest I “forwarded”, using a 301 redirect, to the main website. If you want, you are of course, welcome to try it out, and see for yourself. It allowed me to say some things, in a little less of a professional tone than I would have on my website proper. (Look at www.etexpest.com, for a chuckle or two, particularly, if you live in a rural area!)

Now, when I search some of my keywords, I run across all sorts of little variations, that when clicked, will send people directly to me! When it was all said and done, I did a lot of good advertising for my business, and had a lot of fun doing it.

James Burns writes on internet and social issues from a different perspective, from his home in Tyler, Texas, and his home page can be seen at http://www.dotcomrevolt.com

“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare’s Juliet famously asked. Apparently not much, for she said, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

In our Internet age, I think the answer is different. Names, particularly Internet domain names, have become indispensable. Without its name, an Internet business no longer exists.

A decade ago, however, many major businesses seemed clueless about domain names and the Internet.

In 1994, a Newsday reporter named Joshua Quittner called McDonalds to ask about domain names.

Remarkably, Mcdonalds.com was not registered at the time, and he wondered why. The PR group knew nothing about registering domain names. Eventually he was told “We are considering it.”

Mr. Quittner registered mcdonalds.com on his own, adopted the email address Ronald@mcdonalds.com, and published a very interesting article in Wired magazine entitled:

“Billions Registered: right now, there are no rules to keep you from owning a bitchin’ corporate name as your own Internet address.”

I share this story to illustrate the dramatic change in little over a decade. In 1994, even sophisticated companies knew little about domain names.

Today we all know about domain names. For most of us, using the Internet is as common as watching TV, using a phone or driving a car. In fact, according to Internet World Stats, about 70% of the total U.S. population are now Internet users.

As a result, most of us encounter domain names every day. Many are now famous: amazon.com, google, yahoo, aol. They are everywhere. Domaintools.com, a web site that provides daily domain name statistics, reports that there are over 85 million active domain names worldwide.

The importance of domain names to today’s businesses is obvious and the risk of lost business from mismanagement is high.

One of my clients is a psychic and author of many books on the subject. It’s fun having a psychic as a client. When she says, “hi, how are you,” I always want to ask, “don’t you know?”

Anyway, she runs her business from her house. Her website is very important to her, to promote her books and speaking events. She includes her domain name on all her correspondence, her book jackets, her newsletter, everything you can imagine.

One day a few years ago, she went to her home computer and was shocked at what she found. She yelled for her husband, “What have you done to my website?”

What she found was this: her domain name led to an “adult entertainment” site. Imagine the impact: the domain name printed on all of her books and publications was now directing her loyal fans to hardcore porn.

Her husband, fortunately, wasn’t the culprit. Instead, she had registered the domain name through an ISP who failed to respond to the renewal notice. The registration lapsed and was snapped up by the porn operator.

This has proven to be a common problem, for small and large businesses alike. Even Microsoft has lost two important domain names due to renewal slips: hotmail.co.uk in 2003 and passport.com in 1999.

In my client’s case we were able to solve the problem for her in a matter of days through negotiation with the porn site operator. But finding a solution is not always so quick, easy or cheap, which brings me to my final point.

What should you do to protect your domain names from a similar fate?

Start by checking the content of your registration record. You can do this at allwhois.com, for example, or similar sites. Be sure your domain name registration information is correct. Also be sure that the billing and renewal notices will be sent to a live email address that you control and will answer.

You can also avoid the renewal problem entirely. Try the approach taken by another one of my clients who runs a nursery and gardening center in the west suburbs of Chicago. He wants to insure people find his roses. Rather than registering for a one year term, as is typical, we’ve registered his domain names for 99 years. After that, he figures he won’t care.

Perhaps you also own domain names that are indispensable for your business. If so, please learn from these. Take steps today to insure your domain names are not lost. Without it, your Internet business will not smell so sweet.

Author, speaker and attorney Mark V.B. Partridge is an internationally recognized expert in intellectual property with over 25 years of experience helping major corporations, entrepreneurs and creative individuals protect their IP rights. As a professional speaker, he offers seminars, workshops and keynotes to help business leaders use IP to turn intellectual capital into incredible value. His book, “Guiding Rights: Trademarks, Copyright and the Internet” is available at Amazon.com and other online bookstores. For more information, visit http://www.GuidingRights.com

This article explains about the meaning behind the different domain registrar fees and why are some more expensive than others. We will also be talking about the different aspects of benefits and disadvantages that come with registering a domain on a more expensive registrar than the less expensive ones.

Over the past few years, I have been into domain buying and selling most of my domains that I have bought were from popular domain registrars that charge low prices from $6-10 a domain, but this only came in when I became wearier of these companies that sell domains for these low prices. From the beginning when I knew nothing about domain buying and only bought a domain for the sake of it, “just to have a website name”. This domain was bought for around $20, but with it I got 24/7 support and a TOL line where I was able to talk to someone on different aspects of the domain functions and how to work it. This of course was very helpful at the time, as I didn’t know the first thing on how to set name servers, how to redirect domains or even how the domain worked, but these kind of registrars that are quite small and not very successful try to promote their businesses by offering their customers, an amazing plus to what they have bought, which included the very important support on all the aspects of the domain running.

As I got more wiser and knew a little bit more about all the different kinds of domain registers and knew the different prices that these registrars have set, I didn’t really need all that help, as I was able to do it all by myself. Therefore I went for registrars that charged incredibly low prices for domains compared to the high priced domain registrars. This was a benefit as I didn’t need any of the help which of course the these low priced domain registrars didn’t really offer, or did but it took them a while to solve the problem you had, as they have a much higher customer count.
On the other hand these domain registrars had much more superior Control Panels for your domain names where you are able to control your domain name servers, emails and redirections, plus much more and each of these control panels came with their own guides on how to use them. Therefore you didn’t even think of looking back at the high priced domains, as you do not need them, because all this and more can be accomplished for a much lower price.

Overall if you are new to the domain market and its functionalities and would like some help, I would recommend reading up reviews on a few of the domain registrars and see which ones offer the most help and go for those, but if do not need any help what so ever, just go buy a really cheap domain and enjoy it for a low price. What’s the point if you know it all anyway.

Author of this article publishes all his articles on his homepage first, which is at http://www.hosterhome.com Come drop by and see if there are any new submissions, including tutorials.

Selecting the right domain name is one of the most important business decisions you can make. When you have a business online, you are competing in a global economy with millions of other websites.

The latest information from Internet World Stats counted over 1 billion Internet users in 2007. According to Rich Miller of Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth since 1995, “There are now 100 million Web sites with domain names and content on them.” Of the 100 million websites, about 47 million of them are active sites and competing for visitors.

Here are some tips to follow in choosing a domain name that makes it easy to find your business on the Internet:

(1) Choose an easy to spell domain name.

It does no good to have a website, if no one can find you because your domain name is too difficult to spell.

Last week I was talking to someone and asked her who the company was that designed her website. She told me the name of the company, and it was some very strange name that didn’t make sense to me. I had to ask her twice what the name was and I then asked her to spell it for me. Unfortunately, she couldn’t even spell the name because she said the company had a strange spelling, and she could never remember it. I then asked her for the website address, and she couldn’t remember how to spell that either. I ended up trying to guess a couple different spellings for the website and never did find the company.

Don’t get cute with your website name or for that matter, the name of your business. You may think it’s clever to spell fenikz instead of Phoenix, but don’t expect anyone to find your website.

I speak from experience on this topic. When I first started my business I was completely ignorant about choosing a business name. I thought it would be fun to have a business name that was a play on words. So I chose “Howe Write You Are Business Communications.” My last name is Howe, and I am a writer. So I chose the domain name howewriteyouare.com.

When I would tell people my domain name, this is what they heard: howrightyouare.com. They spelled the domain name exactly as they heard it and the only way they would get the correct spelling is by looking at my business card. I soon figured out what a dumb mistake I made and changed my business name after the first year.

(2) Choose the right extension for your domain name.

When you go to register a domain name you have a choice of .com, .net, .org, .biz, and some other rarely used extensions. Unless you are a nonprofit, only choose a .com extension for your domain name.

The reasons for this are very simple. When people go to search for a website, they assume it is a .com. If you have any other extension, they will end up at the wrong website.

The other reason to have a .com extension is that search engines will search first for a .com website. For example, a browser will look for quiltingtips.com before, it looks for quiltingtips.net.

Let me talk a moment about strategy when it comes to choosing a domain name extension. If you don’t want a competitor to have your domain name, then purchase all the extensions of your domain name. In other words, if my domain name was going to be quiltingtips.com, I might also purchase quiltingtips.net, quiltingtips.org, and quiltingtips.biz. This way, I insure that my business domain name will not have competition from a nearly identical domain name.

(3) Choose misspelled domain names.

If you have a business name that you know is easy to misspell, consider purchasing the domain name with the common misspelling. Both names can be set up to point to your website, so it doesn’t matter if your domain name is misspelled, people will still find you.

In my previous example, I talked about my original business name and the problems that I had with the unusual spelling of my business name. If I had not wanted to change my business name, a simple solution for me would have been to purchase the domain name howrightyouare.com and have that point to my website.

An example of a well-known business that is using this technique is Verisign. If you type in verasign.com or verisign.com you will get to the correct website.

Conclusion
Your domain name is your Internet identity. Make sure your domain name selection is not an afterthought. Take the time to thoroughly analyze your options and choose a domain name that promotes your business or product online.

Michelle Howe, MBA, president of Internet Word Magic, specializes in writing irresistible copy for websites. Transform the way you do business. Visit her website at http://www.InternetWordMagic.com for a FR^EE chapter download of her new book “Turn Browsers into Buyers” and FR^EE report, “The Five-Step Plan to Article Success.”

Now that you have an idea that you want to run with, you need a
domain name. Dot com names are always a first choice. Names without
hyphens are also the first choice.

The shorter the better but chances of nailing a one word domain name are slim to none unless you want to pay a million. Having a keyword in your domain is also desirable. If you run a golf site, fredsgolfworld is a lot better than fredsapplepies. This is where Domain Name Analyzer comes in handy. It can generate hundreds of available domain names in minutes. No need to keep trying different names trial and error style. Look over the list that is generated and pick the ones you like best. You will be surprised that some of those names are available.

Buying a domain from someone may be a good idea if the price is right.
Most domains these days are not worth more than $100 and most are
worth a lot less than that. I bought a good domain off Ebay awhile back
for $10. I thought that was a fair price.

Once you have you domain name, you need to register it. For years I
registered names at itsyourdomain.com. Great service, easy interface but
they are twice as expensive as other sites. If you only have a few names
I would highly recommend them. If you have a lot of names then there
are other options. I currently have most of my name registered at
registerfly.com.

The prices are good, every couple of weeks they have a
sale and .com names can be registered for $6.99. But I find them very
frustrating. Their interface is poor, hard to navigate. Support is fair. I
have had them park my domains even though I had changed the name-
servers. GoDaddy is popular and I have a few names there but I have
heard some people have had problems. Namescheap and 1and1.com
often come up as good places to register.

Be sure you always have total control over your domain names. Take
advantage of any extra privacy protection they may offer. Some will offer
whois protection so that spammers can’t get your contact info and if you
lock your domain, it makes it harder to be hijacked.

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Serge Daudelin is a Internet Marketing Consultant & SEO Specialist who has written over 300 articles in print and 5 published ebooks. Serge is dedicated to helping others and offering the best information on how to make more money online.

Many people when first starting out in the internet use the free web space offered by their ISP or they go to the free hosting sites. This may seem like a cost saving measure but is it?

Firstly if anything goes wrong and it usually does when you least expect it to the options of fixing those problems can be very limited. What happens when your site begins to build a lot of traffic? We have all seen it before when a free hosted site runs out of bandwidth. This mean they have exceeded the limit assigned to them and request that the visitor return later. Remember bandwidth is your monthly allotment of the amount of data that your site can send and receive. Is this the professionalism you want your site to portray?

Secondly,are the advertising banners and pop-ads? While some may suit your business, most will not and can detract from your business. Don’t forget that pop-ups and banners are a part of free hosting; this is a way of paying for the free service they are providing. While this may not be a problem for personal web-pages if your site is a business orientated then it could lose credibility as it often lacks professionalism.

Thirdly, is the name game problem with free hosting as your website is placed in a sub-domain or a folder (www.yourwebsite.freehosting.com or www.freehosting.com/yourwebsite). This can sometimes result in poor search engine rankings. Remember, this part of the internet game is easy for people to search for what you are selling or offering on your website? That is, a domain name that reflects your business which, helps drive people to your site.

Fourthly, is a fatal flaw with free hosting sites. Many don’t allow FTP access to your site. FTP is File Transfer Protocol and this is how you upload your files for viewing on the web. That means you have to use whatever software they insist that you use to upload your files; usually only one file at a time. Very time consuming when you have a lot of images or pages to upload at once. Free hosting as a cost saving measure? What is your time worth?

The expense of hosting is one that shows the slowest return for your money in terms of being tangible revenue; however in terms of first impressions and professionalism it is worth its weight in gold. I used to use free hosting but once I decided to purchase my own domain and pay for hosting it was the best business decision I ever made and I haven’t looked back.

The key is research! There are many good hosting companies out there and some not so good. Ask people you know who have their own sites; who they use? Ask the company who is designing for you if you are using one. Remember paying for your own domain name and hosting gives you total control over your domain. A good hosting company will also provide extras that can make it worth your while to host your site. Extras like:

• Guest book for visitors to leave comments and suggestion for you
• WordPress great easy to use templates for blogs, websites
• Fantastico (one click installation of guestbook, blogs, bulletin boards, photo sharing, shopping cart software and other great features).

One of the best features of the hosting company I use; Sibername.com is that I get 20 email accounts and I can set them up myself with whatever password I decide. I don’t have to contact my ISP provider to setup the email accounts or change the password for me or if I decide to delete an account I can do that too.

A nice feature of having your own domain is that you can make sub domains. One key point to keep in mind is that, unlike domains, sub domains can be created “at will”. For any domain, you can create as many sub domains as you like; you do not have to go to a registrar and pay an annual fee for each of them. For example a website could be http://www.forexample.com and sub domain of that would be www.question.forexample.com. It is a way to classify different parts of your website.

Some hosting companies will also offer Help Center Live, this allows you to chat with support live and get help ASAP! You have heard of MSN Messenger or Yahoo Chat or many of the other online messaging systems live chat works like that. You type in your question and a support person answers you.

The main thing is that there will not be a page that comes up and says “Sorry the website you are trying to view has exceeded its allowed bandwidth. Please try again later.”

In conclusion, if you want to have quality and professionalism, then spend a bit of money each month to a qualified and dependable hosting company. The number of paybacks are simply too abundant to throw away.

What’s in a domain name? Well think about it - once you choose a domain name, you are kind of stuck with it. I mean, you could get a new one - but you really want to focus on building up a domain name branding.

There are some other things to think about when you are thinking about a domain name to choose.

You see, I think that too many people get all hyped up about a domain name - and the domain name is important - but they lose sight of the big picture.

What is the big picture? What are you in business to do? Is it to make money, is it to raise awareness?

I submit to you that everything in your web business revolves around two things - traffic and conversions.

I mean, think about it - you have to have conversions to make money online. You have to have conversions to build a list.

And you have to have traffic to get conversions. No matter how good is your sales page or your squeeze page, if you do not have any traffic, then you don’t have conversions, that is for sure.

So when you are thinking about a domain name, think about how it will impact traffic and conversions. Is it easy to remember? Is it easy to convert? Will people remember your domain name? Will they be proud to buy from a site with your domain name?

So think about these things. Think about how your new domain name is going to read in the articles you write, when you do article marketing, how it is going to look when you do list building, when people read your emails.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide’

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Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 900 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.

Picking a domain name is more important than just finding the first available “.com” name that you like. In some ways, the name you choose is the platform on which you are going to base your entire internet marketing strategy. So it’s more than a “good” name.

Your domain name is your internet “brand.” A good brand name should be able to communicate your entire value proposition to your prospective client - either because the name is readily understood or because your advertising associates that brand with your value proposition (it’s cheaper to have the former.)

If your domain name is your internet brand, it’s important that it be consistent with other trade names or brands that you use in your business. If you can, consider making it the same name as your company (e.g. newco.com) or a variation (e.g. newcoinc.com).

Many people struggle with the notion of whether the domain name should be long or short. Don’t. Worry instead about whether it’s memorable and clear. You can assume most of the short catchy names are gone or parked, so if you don’t want to have to buy your domain name, go with what you can. Long is OK as long as it’s intuitive and easy-to-remember. Try to avoid abbreviations, or worse, part abbreviation, part full name. The test for clarity is this: say the name to a friend and see if they can get the domain name right just from what you’ve said.

Lastly, avoid complicating the name by adding “the” or “a” or “an.” Don’t add hyphens or dashes unless it can pass the clarity test above. Keep it simple.

The ideal name doesn’t seem to be available. Keep looking. It’s just a matter of time and persistence before you find the right name/brand. You’ll know it when you see it. Good luck!

Want to learn more about it? Download the free ebook, Steps to Internet Marketing Success.

Booking a domain name and getting a website going is quite cheap and easy today. However, what people often neglect to consider is that the domain name is not just a web address but actually a part of the brand identity of a business. You cannot simply pick up any name that sounds good and go with it. You need to think in terms of brand image and how to help that image grow before settling on domain name.

A brand is more than just a name. A brand identifies your business and lets the world know who you are, what you do, what you represent, what you stand for, and so on. It is essentially a small communication that speaks a lot so it is important to pick the right domain name. The key thing is for a brand to be memorable. The easier it is to remember and associate with certain things the better it will work. This is why brand names do not use articles like “The” or “A” and avoid hyphenation. They are single words that are easy to remember.

The .com extension is desired universally but you should seriously consider other examples. For example, if your business is such that never at any time will you have a customer outside the United States then why not consider a .us domain instead of .com?

Think of the customers who will need to remember the domain name more than what you like and you will make a better choice.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide’

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Choosing the right domain name can be critical to the success of your website and business flourishing. Your domain name should be a key to your web site. Most Internet users remember websites by their domain names; the rule of thumb is that when people think of your web site, they’ll think it by name. If your name is also your URL, they’ll automatically know where to go.

You should have a domain name, which sounds solid to the core values and ethics of your business. It should also reflect the personality of your target customer. Make the combination the words that are memorable and should not be confused. Try to register the identical name that your customers and visitors will associate with your Website. you have to keep in mind that people need to be able to remember it, and easily type it into their browser.

Here a question arises if one can not get the same domain name as per expecting website name. One may also add suffix to the name. This strategy may cause confusion. One might attempt to access a web site missing suffix.

Your domain name can also affect the anchor text of inbound links; and your ranking in search engines. So try to have a very much relevant domain name.

The other way is lookup with “whois” and have the domain owner information to motivate them to sell the domain name. The other option, that is followed commonly to purchase a domain name first and then naming your website the same as your domain posses.

Your brand name could be the first word visitors will type in search engines and it would be the easiest name for them to remember, so you should use your business name or brand name. For example use www.handbags.com.

How long should I make my domain name? Technically a domain can be up to 67 characters. But it is universally accepted that short names are better for a number of reasons.

1) They are Easier to remember.
2) They are less susceptible to mistake.
3) They are good for online or offline marketing.
4) They are visually pleasing.

Adverse to the above, advantages of long domain names cannot be ignored. Search engines explore it because of the Long domain name having the keywords to the web site.

A similar setback is whether to choose .com, .net or.org etc. Many people not obtaining .com domain but they can have .net, .org or other country specific top level domain such as “de,” “nu,” or “sg”. People get simply confused whether they should go with one of these available extensions or not.

If your website is aimed at people in a specific country, having a country-specific domain, visitors will recognize right away that the business has a presence in the country of the extension. They might comfortable to buy. Some country-specific search results include sites with the relevant country-specific domain extension even if the site isn’t hosted in that country.

In spite of this, country specific domain could work against. Especially the case when you are promoting your business in international market. People from international market may be less inclined to buy if the business looks foreign to them.

How ever, for international visitor .net or .org or any other country specific extension works also well. Still this might others to mislead that you are promoting your brand to that particular country only.

A school of thought found that “.net” and “.org” are equally acceptable. Actually “.org” extension was intended for non-profit making organizations.

As far as I am concern, .com extension is for commercial web sites that have adopted all over the world and still the most sought after. In some circumstances we can use another domain extension like .info, intended for informational portals.

Thus there exist many good arguments for accepting other extension when you go with the need of a particular name and unable to get “.com” extension other extensions are equally acceptable.

Now let me reiterate the case in a glance that is “Get the name registered before naming your website.”

Aftab Aslam is a full time IT professional and has been in the business since 2002.

He is a founder of EASTXS and author of several Science and Technology related articles.

Visit http://www.raiaftab.com for more details about the author.