Take Care Choosing your Domain Name

"Profit in business comes from repeat customers; customers that boast about your product and service, and that bring friends with them."

The above quote by W. Edwards Deming author of "Out of the Crisis" (1984), is relevant to my discussion on Domain names. It is I believe also relevant to anyone in any business. OK, now I have got my pontificating off my chest let me get started with my discussion on domain names.

Contrary to what another writer has published, no reputable Domain name registrant, who intends staying in business will sell you a domain name for $2.00. The Registrant has to pay a much higher wholesale price than this for the domain name in the first place, and would be making a big loss by selling for a mere $2.00. The Domain name market is very competitive, and if you shop around you will be able to purchase a Top Level Domain (TLD) name for under $10.00, but certainly not for $2.00.

Now, I have seen advertisements for Domain names for under $2.00 for $1.99 actually. But the firm in question was making this offer on the proviso that some other product or service such as a hosting account was purhased with the domain name. So the domain name part of the purchase for this particular firm would be a "loss leader", but they would be more than compensating for this with their profit an the other products or services.

What some firms may be selling for $2.00 are not domain names, but sub-domains of someone else's domain name. The ethics of selling these even for $2.00, I personally would find very questionable.

Earlier I mentioned Top Level Domain (TLD) names and sub-domain names. I shall explain the difference.

A Domain Name consists of several different parts. The first part is generally "http://" , for secure sites it may be "https://". The "http" is an acronym for "hyper text transfer protocol". The next part of a domain name is "www.". The "www" part of course stands for the "World Wide Web". Then there is a bit in the middle "IanMcKenziesLinks". This middle bit can not have any spaces and needs to be written as one word, as I have done above. It is this bit that you choose and complete the appropriate searches for availability, before you plan to register a domain name. Now, the final part of a TLD name is the suffix at the end of course. This traditionally is ".com", but it could be several other suffixes in addition, such as, ".net", ".org", ".biz", ".name" and so on.

Now, I know taht some article sites do not like domain names listed in the article, so I won't do that. But, if you put the first two bits "http://www." and the middle bit "IanMcKenziesLinks" together and add the suffix ".com" at the end, you have an example of a Top Level Domain (TLD) name.

Top Level Domain names such as I have exemplified above, can have any number of sub-domains. For example, you could have the "http://" part and replace the "www.' part with for example "iansblog." . This would then become a sub-domain of the Top Level Domain described earlier. There could also potentially be thousands of others.

So, if you purchase a "domain name" like the first example in the paragraph above, you are not really purchasing a domain name at all, but a part of someone else's Domain Name over which you really don't have any control. If the owner of the TLD name of which yours is a part for example chooses not to renew their domain name registration, then too bad,all of the "suckers" who purchased sub-domains of this TLD will lose their sites.

Why would anyone purchase a sub-domain, when Top Level Domain names are so inexpensive?

On the issue of money and costs, I would like to pick up on one other point another writer has made. This writer slammed free hosted sites. Why? I ask?

The TLD site above, in addition to the sub-domain "blog" site associated with it are both hosted free of charge. The only financial cost involved was the two year registration of the TLD name costing me a total of $17.64. That fee also includes the ICANN fee. In exchange for the free hosting there are some unobtrusive advertisements across the top of each page. Now, these ads., are related to the content on the pages of my site. There is amongst the ads a Google search bar on each page also, which i think can be quite handy. In my opinion, it certainly is a small price to pay in exchange for totally free hosting.

I reckon having both a web site, and a blog site published and "on air" for two full years for an all up cost of $17.64 is pretty good value. What do you think?

Ian McKenzie is Director of Ian McKenzie's Domains and Professional Performance Australia. His web site www.ianmckenzieslinks.com has links to his various company and personal web sites.

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