Choosing domain name is serious business since this is going to be your business trademark.
What Domain Name Means?
Domain Name is actually the name of your business. It’s going to be your trademark, your brand, the sign of your shop, one of the parameters that will help you get visitors to your website (besides high-quality content).
There are two kinds of domain names
- The Brandable domains
- The Keyword based domains
Brandable Domains are usually one or two-word name that is easy for people to memorize and write. Examples of brandable domains are Google, Twitter, Digg, Nike, Pepsi, CNN, Times etc. Those domains do not base their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to their name but to what they are, what they are promoting and how they do that. When you use that kind of domain names you invest to the future of your website since YOU are going to make this a trademark and a brand with your work.
Keyword based domains are based on rich keywords and can be found by using a powerful keyword search tool like Jaaxy. In this case, you need to dig and search in order to find the best suitable for you domain name. On the other hand, they are more powerful when you start your online business and will give you a great boost as a new entrepreneur.
How To Choose a Domain name
First things first. First of all, you need to
- Choose your niche, if you haven’t already.
- Choose whether you are going to select a brandable domain or a keyword based domain.
- Choose whether you are going to aim to a local or to an international market.
- Choose if you are going to cover all the aspects (i.e. Everything About Golf) or just a specific part of your niche (i.e. Golf Apparel or Golf Equipment).
Domain vs Subdomain
Well the differences are obvious. When you use a subdomain (i.e. mywebsite.blogger.com) means that you don’t actually own your business. When you use blogger, Wix, WordPress etc. free subdomains you don’t own the website (your business) and they can easily delete your website for any reason, especially when you are into Affiliate Marketing and you use affiliate links massively.
The only subdomain I trust 100% is SiteRubix since it’s part of Wealthy Affiliate University.
Subdomains also (except SiteRubix) don’t offer any security or protection at all. Anyone can damage your website, you have to take your own backups, monitor your website’s health etc. Subdomains are good for testing purposes and for starters.
On the contrary, Domains are like real estate. It’s like you invest in property. You buy it, you own it, you create a value and if you want you can sell it and make a huge profit.
Click to see how much a fellow WA member sold her Website
When you own a domain you also have the full control. You can do whatever you want with it and they tend to rank better within search engines.
Tip. When you own a domain, you can create an unlimited number of subdomains withing YOUR main domain, for promotional reasons, test, technical, different languages, sub-niches etc.
Remark. As you have noticed I am using a SiteRubix subdomain for the time being since I want to make sure that SiteRubix is offering a high-quality service. After a year, I can definitely say that they are the best. My website(s) are always live, secured and the support is great, despite the huge amount of content. Although everything is perfect and I got good ranking in search engines, I just purchased my own domain and soon I’ll transfer this website to my own property.I am just doing some experiments first which you are going to love!
What is the Best Suffix
Basically the best-ranked suffixes are the .com as the best choice and if that is not available you can choose the .net suffix. Avoid .biz since it’s considered a bit “spammy” or .org which is used for other reasons. I’ll revert to this subject soon, on another post, with more information.
Where to Buy a Domain From
You can find many providers to choose your domain from in the market but there are only a few of them that rule the market and are worth your trust.
I personally prefer the following
- Namecheap. Namecheap is an authority in the market. All you need from them is to buy your preferred domain(s) and transfer them to your hosting provider. You are going to host your websites in Wealthy Affiliate, where you have daily backups, security, 24/7 support, unlimited hosting, unlimited email accounts, unlimited subdomains (like blog.yourwebsite.com), SEO tools, WordPress premium website creator, premium templates, keyword searching tools, and all the tools and plugins you need to have a healthy website with no down times so don’t worry about it!
>> Namecheap has some Great Offers, check them out! <<
- Wealthy Affiliate. Recently WA introduced the option to buy your domains directly. It’s a feature that all WA members were looking forwards to it. What are the benefits? You don’t have to setup anything! You just buy your domain(s) and all initial settings (DNS addresses, hosting setup etc.) are pre-installed and pre-set! The only thing you have to do is to transfer your SiteRubix website(s) to it with a single click or to create a fresh one from scratch in 30 seconds (see the video)!
>> Read about Wealthy Affiliate Domains <<
Where I want you to focus.
- You need to be sure about the renewal price of the domain(s) you are buying. Some providers give you a great initial entrance price and upon renewal (in one year), they ask you for more money knowing that you will renew with them anyway since you won’t like to pay the transfer fees. Just check their terms and policy before buying.
- The “Privacy Protection” is something that all domain suppliers charge but they state it as an extra feature with an additional cost for marketing purposes.
What About Hosting?
Web hosting is the most important element! There are many providers who offer basic shared hosting services for free but that’s, maybe “good” only if you are not counting on it and you just created a blog for your eyes only and for a few friends.
Why Quality Web Hosting is crucial
- Because the uptime of your website/blog is very crucial when you are running a business no matter how small or big it is. When you start getting visitors free hosting won’t work for you and your valuable visitor will receive a message like “bandwidth has been reached” and you will lose your potential reader / customer since they will fly away and you won’t see them again.
- Because free hosting has limitations. It’s “good” only for personal blogs with not much of media (pictures, video, graphics, long and many articles etc). You have to keep your pages, articles, design small and light and you won’t be able to write posts for long since you are going to exceed the maximum capacity assigned to you. So if you are creating content, forget about it!
- How many domains you can host. Free hosting companies allow you to have only one domain hosted.
- Security and Backups. You are responsible for protecting your website by taking backups manually (waste of valuable time and hard disk space) and to purchase your own security. All these features have extra costs because you will have to buy gadgets, apps, and services to do the job, so your hosting is not free!
- Email Accounts. They offer max one (if they offer) and it’s usually provided by a free email handler which is not safe enough since your mailing lists will not be secured. Can you imagine the consequence of that? Your subscribers will think “Since I subscribed to hiswebsite.com, I receive many spam emails from “weird” websites“… and you will lose your followers and your reputation in one night.
Do you want more? Yes, there are more features which you may have already figured out, if you are using a free web hosting provider, or you will find out soon if you don’t choose the right one. If you have discovered something else please feel free to add it below in the comments.
The reason I am giving you a warning message for these is because it’s very frustrating when you are spending your time trying to establish an online business, writing articles, checking your stats, socializing your business, creating strategy etc. and you find out one day that you won’t go far with that. I am not suggesting you to spend a fortune to get what they are selling you, on the contrary, I am advising you to think wisely before your do so. Just do some maths and a cost analysis on what you get with the money they are asking and if that works or it’s just marketing.
All companies think they have the best program or the best service for you, or, at least, that’s what they are trying to persuade you to think. The only ones who know the real truth are the users and since we are looking to get the most out of it with the minimum possible cost, we know better what is good and what is not! Don’t fell for any marketing tricks, butterflies, and flying elephants you see on their advertisements. Some Internet Marketers who haven’t used the product or service but they choose to sponsor it to make money, have the same responsibility with them when they mislead us for their own benefit so… be careful out there!
If you have any questions or comments, drop them below and I will get back to you!
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