A Domain Name Shopaholic

An inveterate shopper, I buy domain names the way some women buy shoes. Sometimes it's because I've got a brainstorm for a world-changing business (the brainstorm stage is usually as far it gets), sometimes I buy them as gifts for friends, and I've bought one for everyone in the family so that they can learn how to create and maintain a web site. (Marketable skills are a good thing.)

A quick soup to nuts survey of the domain name buying landscape follows.

ICANN in Charge: ICANN is the big Kahuna of Internet addresses. They manage all of the addressing on the Internet and certify those who can serve as registrars to sell domain names. You would go to a registrar to buy a domain name like Yahoo! Tech. The name is then associated with a unique address, its "IP address" (Internet Protocol address). Because IP addresses (which are strings of numbers) are hard to remember, the domain naming system allows you to use familiar words instead of numbers. Newbies can read more at ICANN.

A URL Is Not a Home: You can register a domain name or URL at tons of different places. But remember that registering your URL is not the same as physically setting up shop. You'll need an Internet hosting company to do that.

One of the fastest ways I've found to see if a domain name is taken is Instant Domain Search. It searches the name you enter into a search bar instantly—before you even finish typing it. And if you're losing sleep over how many letters long your name should be, or what letters of the alphabet get used most in URLs, check out these interesting facts.

In the United States, some popular places to register a URL include Go Daddy and Network Solutions. Costs vary. So do features. I've seen registering cost as little as $1.99 a month and as much as $20. Most registrars sell other things besides domain names: Some sell web hosting services, e-commerce engines, and search optimization for example.

What's in a name? With 50 million plus .com names registered, the domain name pickings are going to seem slim. And if you're losing sleep over how many letters long your name should be, or whether to use acronyms here's some domain trivia for thought.

Of course, you'll find out that only a fraction of the names are really live sites; the others are held by speculators looking to resell or squatters who own the name that you should have, like the name of your store or business.

Remember that the "dot com" part of the equation is meant to help describe the type of site you are running and where it originates, but that's no guarantee that a dot org is a not-for-profit. Here's a listing of the extensions you can use.

Web naming experts suggest simplicity uber alles. Don't use weird punctuation because it's hard for people to remember where to find you. Underscores (_) aren't even allowed. At Best Tool for the Job, Marcus Vorwaller blogs a list of online helpers you can use to brainstorm your site name. Try Dislexicon, which takes common words and adds suffixes and prefixes to make new words.

Pick a name that's relatively short or easy to remember; watch for words that are difficult to spell. Most experts say about 10 characters are the max. (Why do you think Nickelodeon shortened its name to Nick.com? Good reason.)

When you finally decide on a URL name, you'll be prompted to fill out a form that names all of the various contact people: account owner, administrator, technical, and billing. In my case, I'm all of the above. Not a problem.

Finally, if you're really smitten with a particular .com name, most registrars track URLs that are about to expire and how much they're worth. Just hope that the others are like me—casual buyers who might forget to re-up their annual payment.