How To Register Your Domain Name Quickly and Safely

You've decided to establish your online business presence and now it's time you register your domain name. Where do you start? What domain registrar do you choose? Relax, relax. It's much easier to register a domain than you think. All you need is a credit card, a preferred name for the domain and a few minutes. When the time comes to register your domain name there are some basic recommendations we would advise that you follow and hopefully this will save you both time and money later.

The companies who allow you to register domains are called domain registrars. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of these domain registrars online. Some registrars are great and easy to deal with. Some registrars are pure crap. There have been numerous true stories of domain registrars selling domains from under the owners noses or of withholding access to the domain name until some additional payment is produced (also known as extortion). There have even been cases with domain registrars and customers having legal custody battles to retain control of a domain - believe it or not! As you can see choosing a great registrar is just as important as choosing a great domain name.

The trick that many people fall for is with webhosting packages that offer a free domain name when registering with that particular web hosting company. More often than not the web host/domain registrar retains some administrative control of the domain and this is where the trouble begins. At the most basic level you don't actually have 100% ownership of your own domain - it's all in the fine print. You need to be certain that you have full ownership of your own domain name and the easiest way to ensure that is to simply buy it yourself.

How do you avoid getting into this mess in the first place? Choose a reliable and high quality domain registrar. When choosing a domain registar you need ease-of-use, quality service and competitive pricing. Ignore the hype. Look for what the registrar actually offers instead of how slick their website looks. Where possible rely on worth of mouth referrals from friends on where they had their domain registered - satisfied customers are always the best sign of a great product or service.

So before you go to register your domain name you'll need to sit down and do some brainstorming on potential domain name ideas. For example if your business is about candles then you'll have to accept that Candles.com is already registered (years ago realistically). So you'll need to be creative and try variations and use variations of the name like LovelyCandles.com or CandleCentral.com - you get the general idea here.

Next you'll need to be able to provide payment and this is ideally a credit card or at Paypal at the very least. Try to make the payment yourself and not use somebody elses payment details - they can wind up owning the domain without you realizing it.

Personally I've been using Godaddy and NameCheap for my domain name purchases for the last.... well actually forever to be honest. They're my exclusive domain name registrars. I hope you find them as reliable and easy-to-use as I have - I'm sure you won't be disappointed.