Getting Your Domain Name

One of the first things you should do when you start
your business is to pay for the rights to your name on
the Internet. As some companies and individuals have
found out the hard way, there are plenty of so-called
cybersquatters who will buy up preferred and popular
names, like plumber.com or weddingplanner.com, and then
sell them to others at highly inflated prices.

by Michael J. Martinez

It’s also good to link your Web pages to that URL as
soon as possible. The alternative to having your own
URL–a Web address at Geocities or Angelfire.com–just
appears less professional than having your very own
name. In addition, a name that closely mirrors that of
your business is far easier to remember than a
Geocities name full of subdirectories and backslashes.

When it comes to getting your own Web address, however,
be prepared for disappointment–odds are, you won’t get
your first choice. Unless you’re in a unique business
or have a unique business name, you’ll find that
getting the URL you want is going to be a tedious
process. Be flexible and creative, and keep in mind
that the name should be intuitive and easy to
remember–and to spell!

Registering the name itself is easy. You simply go
online to one of the many authorized registrars that
handle new Web addresses for the Internet. Some of the
more popular registrars are Network Solutions/Verisign
(http://www.nsi.com), http://www.aol.com and
http://www.Registrar.com. A Web search will turn up a
number of these services, and the Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit
group that oversees the electronic address system,
maintains a list — at http://www.internic.net — of
all the registrars it has accredited.

On average, you can expect to pay $35 to $70 a year for
the rights to your Web address. These prices may
include various offers for page holders and redirect
services–basic pages that give you a place to promote
your business while you build the rest of your site, or
that redirect Internet users to the rest of your Web
site, which may or may not be within the same domain as
your URL. For example, you could register
mikesbarandgrill.com, but have that site redirect
customers to your old Geocities site, or link to pages
on the previous site while you work on the new one.

There are a number of available Web address
extensions–the three letters that follow the actual
name and the "dot." The most popular is the .com
extension; the others are .org, .net, .gov, .mil, and
.biz. The .org extension is generally accepted as a
nonprofit extension, while the .net extension is more
widely accepted as one for businesses. The .gov and
.mil extensions are for U.S. government and military
Web sites, and thus are off limits–you can’t even
register for one of these names. The .biz extension was
introduced in 2001, and could well be an interesting
alternative to .com. However, .com is the best-known
extension in the world, and people trying to find your
Web site are likely to simply type your business’s
name, followed by .com.

You should be very wary about buying a certain Web
address if the .com version of it is already taken.
Even if you buy .biz, .org or .net, you’ll still find
that many people will look for you at .com. It’s better
to change your initial URL idea than to end up sending
prospective customers to another business across the
country–or worse, across town.

Your best bet is to find a unique name, and then, at
the very least, register the .com version of it. If you
can afford it, you should also register the .net, .org
and .biz versions as well. That will not only protect
your URL from cybersquatters, but will also alleviate
any confusion in the marketplace. You can set up
redirects from the other URLs to your .com address.

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Michael J. Martinez is an associate editor for
Kiplinger’s "Personal Finance" magazine, covering
technology issues and reviews. Previously, Martinez
was a business and technology writer for The Associated
Press and ABCNews.com in Seattle, covering such
high-tech luminaries as Microsoft and Amazon.com. His
book Practical Tech is available in bookstores for
$17.95 at
http://www.kiplinger.com/books/Practicaltech/practicaltech.html