Lesson #06 Buying a Domain Name
Written By Titmowse

There are far too many places on the Internet to buy a domain name. Since this step is vitally important, paying close attention to and reading the small print is essential. You are paying for virtual property. You are buying your name, your brand, your business identity.

Choosing Your Domain Name

You may think you have the most original idea for an adult domain name ever. You very well could have that never-thought-of name. Don't spend money on any cool logo graphics until you make sure.

As stated before, there are bunches of online places that will register a domain in your name to you. If you go to one of those sites, they will have a domain name search engine that will let you search the entire database of InterNIC. InterNIC is an offshoot of ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). InterNic is a reliable site for information on domain names and disputes. They also have a list of ICANN Accredited and Accreditation-Qualified Registrars. You can go to one of these accredited registrar sites and type in the domain you desire, if it turns up as available, you are ready to register.

You've probably seen ad links to places that claim they will register your domain for you absolutely free. This is true, but the phrase is misleading. It may cost money to search the database of the US Patent Office, but researching and registering a domain costs nothing except man-hours and the actual lease/registration fee. When these registrar sites claim to do what you can do yourself for free, realize they are just using that word free as a tool. What they really want is for you to host your site on their servers. They throw in the time spent to register your site as incentive and you still have to pay the actual domain name registration fee.

It is recommended to have a place where your domain will reside before you register. In other words, you must have a web host lined up prior to when you register your domain with a registrar. If you don't have an account at an existing webhost when you register the domain, your Registrar uses space on their servers as default. You can change the "Name Servers" at any time by logging into your domain account. The process normally takes anywhere from 24 to 72 hours depending on Registrar.

Getting hosting first is always best, many adult friendly hosts will allow you to set up your URL on their servers fairly easily once you've setup an account with them.

When we use the term register/lease in reference to domain names we mean it literally. ICANN made the rules for domain naming so that the registrant can only have claim to their domain in one-year increments, the maximum being a block of ten years. True, if you are a huge company such as Microsoft, you have intellectual property rights, but you are not Microsoft. You are a new paysite owner. You do not absolutely own your domain name. You only lease it. This is not fair and hopefully, this will change some day.

Domain names started out to cost about $70.00 for one year. Now you can buy a one-year lease for as low as $10.00 a year, but the average cost of annual registration is $15.00. Compared to the price of land and building and taxes, a virtual space on the Internet is the best property value in existence.

Go to the InterNic (http://www.internic.net) site and the ICANN (http://www.icann.org) site to learn more about how the domain naming system works. Here is a list of some approved registrars where you can search for domains and get yours today!

Dotster
(http://www.dotster.com)

Network Solutions
(http://www.networksolutions.com)

Register
(http://www.register.com)

All Domains
(http://www.alldomains.com)

Go Daddy
(http://www.godaddy.com)

For an adult Paysite, you should typically stick to a .COM or .NET domain.

Look for more Domain related links in our Cozy Academy Library or by dropping by the Hosting Helper guide on Cozy Frog!