10 reasons to buy your own domain

An internet domain is the name that appears to the right of “http://”. Many people don’t know that even if you aren’t a company or a “VIP”, you can register a unique domain name of your own. You should by one, even if you aren’t going to use it right away. Buying it now secures it for you.

The first website I ever had was with a company called “GeoCities”, now owned by Yahoo! It was at least ten years ago. At the time I had a very loose understanding of what a domain is, and saw it as being the name of a huge computer that handled all the free web sites that folks had with GeoCities.

Several years later, I took advantage of a similar free service that gave me website space for the price of banner ads. I still had a poor understanding of what a domain was, and I still didn’t realize I could get one of my own.

To get the “premium” service, I paid for the upgrade from the free service. I didn’t know that It was a rip off. I was paying for a subdomain, something that you can create yourself when you own your own domain. If you see a domain like “some.companyname.com“, “Some” is a subdomain of “companyname.com“. By paying to have my webpage hosted as “some“, I was giving free promotion to “companyname.com“. Like i said, I was getting ripped off. What really sucked is that the “premium service” cost more than the cost of having a domain of my own for a whole year.

When I had learned enough about the net to get curious about domains, I found out that I could buy my own without any hassle at all. And I didn’t have to be Yahoo! or Bill Gates to do it.

It’s simple. You find a company on the web that sells domains and you search their website to see if the domain name you want is available, or someone else already has it. When you find one you like that’s available, you log on to the companies website, pay them, and it’s a done deal. They take care of the details like registering it and securing it for you.

I use GoDaddy.com to buy my domains and host my websites and they’ve given me good service, and nice extras. Just so you know, I’m not associated with them beyond being a customer. GoDaddy are you reading this? I’ll take a perk if you want to give it to me!

Ten reasons why it’s a good idea to buy your own domain:

1. You can get one for about the price of a Macho combo burrito.
2. Many domain registrars also offer packages that include hosting, webmail, and unlimited email addresses.
3. You can open and close email accounts whenever you want. Getting spam? Delete imgettingspam@mydomain.com or whatever. Need a temp address to register for an internet service? Create it. Name it what you want. Delete it when you’re done. Want to give a friend an email address? Set it up for them.
4. Get around ISP restrictions. Most Internet service providers won’t allow you to send mail through their servers into other servers that actually handle the mail distribution. They set it up so that you have to send your email to the ISP servers to be processed. This puts limits on the way you handle your own domain. You can get hosting service that will give you direct access to their “inbox” without having to use the ISP as a middle man.
5. Be your own ISP. You call the shots. Forward hits to your domain to another location, change the parameters for how the domain functions, create as many sub domains as you like.
6. Host your own content. Build web sites, run blogs, host multiple domains on one server, run server scrips like online games. Your imagination is the limit.
7. Run a business with your own internet name and shopping system. There is nothing like a domain name that matches your business name, or reflects the type of business you have. Many hosting services provide business account services that handle online shopping carts, payment processing, accounting, etc.
8. Resell your domain, or multiple domains. You own it. You can sell it.
9. Do your own thing without depending on the big boys. Why yahoo! When you can WooHooooo! Sell ad space on your web site or blog. There are even services like google that help you do just that. Free!
10. Impress the chicks

Most of all, for goodness sake, have fun. That’s what it’s all about!

Denigris