Are there internet domain registration issues of which I need to be aware? The answer, actually, is yes. Internet domain registration is big business with competition for the best names that can be picked up by the top search engines. Like in any competitive field, there are always those out looking to take advantage of you. We both know that your domain name is important to you and so is your money, so it is important that you be aware of and concerned with certain scenarios where you can be taken advantage of in the internet domain registration game.

The most common “trick” you may encounter comes by way of internet domain registration renewal. The internet domain registration companies will use the credit card number you gave them to begin with and automatically renew your domain name several months in advance of when you need it done. This is a way of getting your money in advance of when you need it and thus cutting your paid for time down. It is a not a new scam that the internet domain registration companies invented; magazines sometimes will use the same method with regard to subscription renewals.

There is a way to stop this from happening, or at least reducing the risk. Never give the internet domain registration company permission to user your credit card to automatically renew your domain name. They may try to scare you by telling you that giving them permission in advance will ensure that you do not lose your domain name. The truth is, you can keep track of the time as easily as they can.

If you do not allow the internet domain registration companies to automatically renew, trust me, they will remind you when your time is approaching via email. This, however, is another time when scammers are out in full force. Be sure the emails you receive are from the internet domain registration company you are working with. Sometimes domain renewal is a way of hiding phishing scams. Just stay on top of things and be aware of who the sender is on any email you receive.

The truth is that if you use a legitimate internet domain registration company, they will send you email notices reminding you that you need to renew. They will send such notices well in advance, but will let you know when you actually need to renew. As ridiculous as it may seem to many people, you do have to renew your domain registration every time your registration runs out. The best way, though, to avoid the many scams and cons out there is to simply keep track of your domain timing and the companies with which you are working. Your best defense is being knowledgeable about your own situation.

One of the most important actions you will perform in the building of your presence on the web is internet domain registration. Keeping the name you want is valuable, but does cost you money. With such high demand for domains, there are obviously going to be those who want to take advantage of the situation. Your best defense against such people is to keep track of your domain, your registration time, and which internet domain registration company you are using.

If you would like the latest information on domain hosting, or find more of my personal articles like the one you just read, visit my computing blog.

You’ve seen them before and wondered what the heck they were thinking: small businesses with domain names like eallylonganduniquebusinessname.biz. Half-out-loud you say: what, was reallylonganduniquebusinessname.com taken? A new advertising technique of "illegal" casino websites helps prove that your snickering is absolutely justified.

Cheapskates and Johnny-dot-Com-Lately’s

If you’ve consulted for small business websites as long as I have, you have probably encountered more than a few whose owners decided to save three dollars at Godaddy by buying a dot-biz domain name. Or a dot-net, dot-info, or dot-whatever was on sale that week. Whatever it is, forget trying to tell them that they may have lost out in thousands of dollars of business from type-ins. That is, from all the people who will type in the dot-com version and get an error message–or a parked domain advertising naughty-naughty pictures. Nor should you tell them that everyone who knows a dot-biz from a dot-com knows that the former is usually offered on sale and is the beast-mark of the most extreme kind of penny-wise-pound-foolish cheapskate. The obviousness of the truth of the observation will only make them hate you more.

Then there are the netrepreneurs who wanted that keyword-perfect domain name so badly that they took a dot-biz, dot-org, dot-cc, or dot-what-the-heck-does-that-stand-for? when the dot-com version was already taken. You know what I’m talking about: a one-man-band bookstore that buys the "book" domain with the Vatican’s top-level domain extension because Barnes & Noble has book.com, and every other possible variant was also already taken.

Again, don’t bother telling these people they’re just sending type-in traffic to Barnes & Noble. You are arguing against a cottage industry. Pitcairn Island, population under 100, has its own top-level domain name extension. No doubt they can cut back on their rare coin and postage stamp production thanks to the hundred bucks (US, not Pitcairnian) per domain paid by wishful Johnny-come-lately’s. And GoDaddy is no doubt raking in the credit card digits from .us domain names that are worth their weight in gold pixels. This is the web version of small business owners paying thousands to put their kids in their TV commercials. If you’re a business consultant, you correct their error at your peril.

Why Casino Sites Know Web Businesses Need Dot-Coms

In case you have some justification for a dot-whatever lurking in some self-destructive corner of your brain, let me write this as clearly as possible. For a US or international business, the only suitable domain name extension is dot-com. Nonprofits can get by with dot-org, schools with dot-edu. Non-US country-specific businesses can use their own national domain name extensions. No, my fellow Americans, there is no justification for dot-us, even if your shipping area does exclude Canada and Puerto Rico and military addresses to boot.

Why? Here’s solid evidence the dot-whatevers are so bad.

1) Type-in traffic.

Yes, many people really will type in the dot-com version of a non-dot-com business website. I discovered powerful proof of this once after I saw a television commercial for a website with educational information about gambling. Curious how they were making money on this deal, I typed in the domain–and found a website with actual gambling right on the homepage, which would be flagrantly (though perhaps technically) illegal for me to use. Only later did I realize that the TV commercial had advertised the dot-net version of the domain, and I had typed in the dot-com version. The dot-net version has the educational material.

How would a no-membership-fee content website–with little to no advertising–recoup the expense of television advertising? Only if a vast number of the visitors to go to the money-generating dot-com version.

2) Prestige

You may think I’m completely off-base and a business’s domain name choice is none of my dot-biz-ness But the fact is those opinions are my opinions, they’re not going anywhere, and if you want to impress me, a dot-whatever domain name won’t do it. And I’m certainly not the only one who feels that way. Maybe you can just devote your dot-whatever website’s homepage to refuting the snickerers like myself?

3) SEO

True snobs, search engine algorithms are suckers for anything that smells of respectability–and dot-whatever does not smell like that. How often do you see a high-ranking dot-whatever business site? The irony is that many dot-whatever domain name owners hope that having the keyword in their unique domain name will help them in search engines.

In the end, I have to admit there’s one good thing about the snobbery against the dot-whatever domain names. They provide a way for web business consultants to sort out the serious inquiries from the slush, just by looking at the "from" address.

Joel Walsh is a freelance business writer and web business owner. The following site provided information for this article: Internet Casino: http://www.casinotimes.co.uk

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

When starting an online presence, the first and most important step you will have to take is to register your own domain name. In the online world, your domain name serves two purposes – name and address. Your domain name can serve as your site name. It will also direct your visitors to the contents of your site or someone else’s. Hence, it is very important that you choose one properly.

If you are planning to launch a personal web site or one for your business, choosing a domain name like yourname.com or yourbusiness.com would be the logical step. However, there will be instances when the domain of your choice isn’t available and you will have to pick another one. In doing so, please take note of the simple guidelines below.

If you already have a theme for your site, it would help if the domain name contains words that are related to the site’s content. This makes it easier for you to market your site. Potential visitors will know what they’re getting into when clicking a link to your site.

You may also choose domain names that are short and easy to remember. A domain that is short and can be told in a few syllables will be easy to remember. It also helps if the name has a twist or if it sounds rather funny. Good examples of short domain names include one-word internet giants like Google, Amazon and Ebay.

You may also choose simple, ordinary words like business, computers or laptops. Although a number of these domains have already been registered, be on the lookout as they could easily bring in instant traffic for any site. This will be very useful if you are going to use any of those PPC programs for parked pages or even selling the domain name in the future. As an example, business.com was sold a few years ago for millions of dollars!

Remember that these days getting your own domain name no longer costs an arm and a leg. Gone are the days when companies would charge you 30 dollars or more. You now have a choice of sites that can register your domain names for less than ten dollars and still provide you with lots of free stuff. Some companies are even offering domain names at peanut prices if coupled by other purchases like web hosting. Of course, this is great news for anyone considering building a web site or purchasing a domain name as an investment.

Darwin Catalan is an entrepreneur and the founder of BlueRegistrar. Learn more about domain names, web hosting and other site management tools.

http://www.blueregistrar.com

Each and everyday you hear stories about some name getting thousands of dollars from the buyer. You also jump right into the game of domaining and hope for that lucky day to arrive when someone might get interested in your domain name. Right?

The main problem with newbies over here is that they do very less research and start spending their money on useless names. After 6 months or a year their moral goes down the drain and they are back where they were but with lighter pockets then before.

Some people get into the trademark mess. They get sued by trademark holding company and then they show their temper openly on forums and other message boards.

Some can’t even monetize their domains to get the renewal fees for the upcoming period.

If you have 4 or 5 domains then you can surely shed the amount from your own pocket. But when the figure goes around 100’s and 1000’s it is very hard to renew the domains for the future.

My advice to newbies would be to stick at 25 to 50 domains. They can earn for 10 or 20 renewals per year if your names are below average. Some domain might get you more revenue and it can fill the gap for you. Ultimately the main thing is to not lose a domain for nothing. You should at least get its registration fees from it. This will not start downfall of your domain empire which you want to build. 1 dollar loss is also a big loss if you have more then 100 or 500 domains in your domain portfolio.

So what kind of domains you should buy?

Choose wisely on which name you are putting your money. Three characters .com’s are creating a lot of chaos right now in the market. Their prices goes sky high in domain name aftermarkets. Generic dictionary words are also long gone. New TLD’s are not so stable right now, dot-com still rules the internet. You might get lucky in some other TLD’s but I wouldn’t advice you if you are new in the game.

4 letters have 456976 combinations from AAAA to ZZZZ. Of them only around 5000 are left. Which is of course the garbage.

What do we do now if we still want to get out feets wet in this?

Look for some guy who is willing to sell his domain for less. There are plenty of places to find this kind of domains available for sale at lower prices. You can go to forums specially created for this kind of discussions. If you don’t know any then here is the one http://www.nameslot.com Go there look for some domains which might fall under our category and then approach the seller. Here also lookout for trademark issues and blacklisting for that particular domain. You can generally get this info from doing a whois search for that domain here http://www.whois.sc

Keep your eyes and ears open for latest news. It might shed some light and you might be the lucky one who grabs that name for just registration fees and sell it for 1000’s. Work on them and get every cent out of them. This will keep you in the game. The main thing over here is not to win the game but to be in it and be till the last.

Hope this helps you get started on your journey to the way towards selling you name for millions.

For more info logon to http://www.nameslot.com/

Listen up I am going to share with you here a GREAT, EFFECTIVE and almost FREE way to drive targeted traffic to your business AND get +100 link popularity INSTANTLY!

Yes! This technique is that simple AND powerful! And it’s called: Expired Domain Traffic.

If you did not hear of this method, I am going to show you here a step-by-step procedure to use it to increase the traffic to your websites and affiliate programs. In the case you know about technique, you find this article useful because it will show you a complete different view and allow you benefit from expired traffic in a more effective way you never thought possible before!

Let’s start immediately then with crucial facts you must know about:

Fact #1:

Every day +1000 of domains are forfeited by their owners who fail to renew or pay for the registration fees on their expiring domains.

This creates an incredible, yet little-known opportunity for you to own a domain that may have been registered as long as 3 or 4 years ago! Here are the current statistics:

Domains registered: 36,645,520

Domains deleted: 23,432,480

Fact #2:

4% of the total forfeited domain names are actually available after long years of promotion!

If you are the one to register it, you will get a popular domain name that still drive targeted traffic due to the huge link popularity it has. In other words, you benefit from thousands of dollars and years of marketing promotion for you instantly!

Fact #3:

There are still plenty of excellent domain names out there! You will soon discover that all the best domain names are NOT registered …yet!

Prepare to be amazed!

"But What is the Expired Domain Traffic?", I hear you say. I’m glad you asked.

The technique is to register domain names with existing traffic and link popularity and point them to your own websites. Resulting on an immediate targeted traffic boost, link popularity increase and additional advertising for almost nothing. It is that simple!

Now I think you realize the HUGE power of this technique.

With that said, let’s go further. Unlike all the WhoIs websites out there, you should not register any available domain name out there and hope it will bring traffic to you.

No!

You need to register only highly valuable domain names. In other words, you have to locate the domain names with existing targeted traffic and popularity first. "This sounds great!", you’re probably thinking. But, how can you do that? Some work involved. Lots of profit potential.

With this crucial precaution in mind, we can start the process of redirecting targeted traffic to your own websites…

How to Locate Such Valuable Domain Names?

All you have to do is follow these simple 5-steps instructions:

Step #1. Compile a list of keywords:

You have to make a list of key phrases (not keywords!) related to your business. Each key phrase could contain 2 up to 3 keywords. I suggest you make different combinations for every key phrase. For example, let’s assume you want "cooking" and "book" as keywords. Then you should include the following domain names:

"cookingbook.com", "cookingbooks.com" and "bookcooking.com".

You can even add different top level names:

"cookingbook.net", "cookingbook.biz" or "cookingbook.co.uk".

You can also use dashes (hyphens) in your domain names.

You probably heard some voices that will tell you to avoid them. But I think that it is useful for multiple domain names like we are looking for. Because dashes separate important keywords making it more easier for search engines to index your web page. However, I agree that you should not use a hyphenated domain as your primary domain. In our example, you can include: "cooking-books.com".

Step #2. Browse the WhoIs database for relevant domain names:

Now that you have created the domain names list, it’s time to start the search! You need to browse the WhoIs online database. The directory of registered and available domain names. There are plenty of these websites on the Net. Just check out the Google results for "whois search". I have listed some below to save you time searching. While surfing the Internet, you can do more research on your own:

http://www.allwhois.com

http://www.coolwhois.com

http://www.whois.net

whois.enom.com

Type in the domain together with the extension (.com or .net) for each domain names in your list. And report the available domain names in another list. You may call it: the Domain Selection List. You can also visit the deleted domains website. Here is the link:

http://www.deleteddomains.com

The automatic search engine is worth the try.

Step #3. Select the most valuable domain names:

Before you go registering all the available domain names in your "Selection List". You need to pick out the most valuable ones.

Just point your web browser to http://www.google.com and use the "link:" operator to check out the popularity of a domain name. For example, search Google for "link:www.cookingbook.com"

The result is a list of the pages that link to the that domain.

The results page will tell you how many website are still linking to that domain name. Pick out those with the greater link popularity. And repeat this task for all the domain names in your "Selection List". Upon completing the process, you should find a wealth of optimized and valuable domain names!

Step #4. Register them!

You will need to register the domain names in order to point their traffic to your primary website. The registration process locks your domain name so that no one else can take it.

There are plenty of registration services online. You can search Google for "domain name registrar" or you can simply use the one you are familiar with.

Step #5. Redirect them!

Here is where the fun begins. All you have to do is redirect the existing traffic to your own website. And see your website hits stats soar!

Please note that we are talking about targeted traffic not any prospects out there. Because we have already selected domain names for your specific keywords. During step #1. Remember?

So you can do that, if you just place a redirection page that points to your official website into your "fresh" domain name!

Enjoy!

In closing… There you have it; 5 steps to unleash the power of expired domain traffic to your website.

Of course there’s an automated, faster and powerful strategy to grab those valuable domain names. I will cover this strategy in detail in my website. I highly recommend you review it as soon as possible. See you there!

I’ve just released a brand new software program that literally walks you through the entire process of registering the most valuable domain names EVER — The Domain Name Monitor! Get a FREE consultation. Details at my website. For details and download link, send a blank email NOW to: mailto:domain-name-monitor@sendfree.com

Your choice of domain names is as wide and as fresh as your imagination or as near as your dog, your street, or your own name!

Here are some of the types of names being registered:

- Full names

- Family names

- Pet names

- Team or club names

- Names of books, poetry, music, movies, literature or art that people have created or plan to create

- Names that will be used for marketing a business in order to track advertising results. For example, a farmer named Joe can register an everyday domain name such as joefarmer.com. He can also register a special domain name, such as www.myfarmweb.com. When Joe buys print advertising, he can use "myfarmweb" as the contact web address in the ad and point this URL at his regular farm website. He can then track the number of "hits" to his website generated by that particular ad.

- Toll-free phone numbers (this is very popular in Asian countries, because Asian characters cannot be registered in the global data base)

- Names that protect a brand. People are registering the .com, .net, .org and .ca domain names for their companies, in order to stop cybersquatters from taking advantage of their success.

Shaun Cronrath is the President & CEO of DomainPurpose.com, a domain name registration company offering all the major domain extensions –.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .name, .ca, .us, .cn, .eu, .de, .pro and more.

In this digital age, your company’s web site is your electronic business card. A strong domain name is the key to your Internet presence. It should be recognizable and relate to your business name, brand, product, and/or activities. Make sure it fits on a business card and is easy to remember whether seen in print or mentioned over the phone.

Use the name people know you by. Don’t abbreviate, unless the abbreviation is your company’s trademark. Ask your co-workers, your customers, your friends, and your family what domain name they’d expect your company to have.

Don’t forget to include your domain name in your site’s logo. And put your domain name on all company promotional materials such as business cards and stationary.

Length Matters
Conventional wisdom states that a good domain name is easy for customers to remember, easy to spell, and short. That said, it’s increasingly difficult to secure short domain names among top level domain names such as .com, .net and ,org. In these cases (and you have 67 characters to choose from), it’s preferable to choose a meaningful statement such as Lawreferralservice.com" or Hotelreservationservice.com," rather than lrs.com or hrs.com Give a Good Impression

We all know that first impressions can be crucial, so choose your domain name carefully. Domain names often come without spaces, so pay careful attention to the total package. For example, PatternsExchange can look like patternsexchange.

Select Alternate Names
If your first domain name choice is not available, you can check the "whois" information box for the domain name, contact the person listed, and see if they’re willing to sell it. If they want to sell, they will likely charge more than the $24.95 registration fee. An easier alternative is to register a variation of your first choice.

For example, if your company name is Mrs Smith’s Cookies, but mrssmithscookies.com and the more obvious cookies.com are registered, try adding a small letter such as "e" to indicate that it’s an online business. Or add the word online. Or add your location to attract local customers:

ecookies.com
Cookiesonline.com
CookiesNewYork.com

Alternatively, try registering a local domain name:

mrsmithscookies.ca
mrsmithscookies.us

Use a little creativity, and you may find your alternative beats your original choice.

Once you’ve got a list of alternatives for your online business, test them with your friends and colleagues to see which ones they like best. Make sure these names can be easily pronounced and spelled by your test audience. Then, rank them in order of popularity.

Consider Spelling Mistakes
Consider mistakes people will make when typing your web site address and how your domain name sounds when you have to read it over the phone to a customer. Explaining special characters, abbreviations, and spelling is awkward and doesn’t make good business sense. Will customers accidentally make spelling mistakes? Will they use the plural form of a word instead of the singular form, or visa versa? Make a list of possible mistakes, and register additional domain names that incorporate these mistakes.

Register Multiple Versions of Your Name
Register all possible domain name variations related to your company name. If your company’s name is hard to spell, register common misspellings. Register every domain people might use to find your company. It only costs $24.95 a year to register each domain name, and that’s a small expense to keep a customer.

Take this example: Before America Online acquired Time Warner for $178 billion, it registered at least 21 domain names that might be useful to the new company, named AOL Time Warner, from AOLTW.com to AmericaOnlineTimeWarner.com. Alternatively, web sites exist that capitalize on misspellings using them as advertising vehicles and diverting customers from your site.

Register Product Names
When users search the Internet for a particular product or service they often search by product or service, rather than business name. To increase the chances of having your site found, register extra domain names that relate to your core business or products. If you owned the hypothetical company name of Widgets & Widgets co. but you sold an array of household products, you could register generic domain names relating to all aspects of household goods. You may be too late to snap up obvious domain names such as detergent.com or vacuum.com, but a little creative thinking into alternatives can be lucrative. These alternative domains can be easily linked to your main web site.

Avoid Trademarked Names
Ensure someone else has not trademarked the name you register. You cannot register names already registered as copyright (for example, McDonaldsâ"¢). Like company names, domain names are unique and cannot be duplicated. Avoid registering domain names that are similar to your competition or to famous trademarks. Businesses have lost their rights to registered domain names due to conflicts with existing trademarks for off-line companies.

Register Locally
If your company is located in Canada, you can register a .ca domain name even if your business activity includes export trade. If you have an international presence, a top-level domain such as .com, .net , or .org is more suitable. Many businesses choose to register all three, and we suggest doing so. All three addresses can "point" to the same e-mail account and web site.

Conversely, you might open a virtual office in another country. For example, bread.com could also register bread.ca, which may "point" towards the same site, attracting a larger audience. Don’t forget to check to see if a local presence is required in the country you wish to register.

Use a metaphor
If your .dot com businesses does not have a name, the world is your oyster. One Internet incubation company decided on the metaphor campsix, referring to the final basecamp on the Everest climb rather than a straight description of services. The name reflected the difficulty and challenges of building an Internet company to the scaling of Everest. Bear in mind that if your web site is the primary tool for business, the company name must be the company URL.

Shaun Cronrath is the President & CEO of DomainPurpose.com, a domain name registration company offering all the major domain extensions –.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .name, .ca, .us, .cn, .eu, .de, .pro and more.

Choose your audience

The first thing to do when picking a right domain is to pick your audience.Your audience can be classified based on your clients, customers,geographic locations and so on. TLDs or top level domains like .com .net .org are fine even if you don’t have a global presence. But if your strictly targetting a particular country say the UK or Japan, then a .co.uk or co.jp might do the job.My advice would be to stick to a dot com as its already captured the minds of the people.

Make it Crisp and Easy to remember

Short domain names are often a big hit.This is because of the normal human tendency to forget long words. Restrict your domain name to one or two words maximum and let it be easy to remember.

Strong Keywords

Use a popular keyword in your industry if possible in the domain name

Offline Business

If the domain name is going to be used to promote your offline business then, choose a name very close to your business

Dont Deviate from your business

Just for the sake of the domain not change your business image.This means that dont mislead your audience by choosing a wrong domain name.

Numbers

There has always been a debate regarding the use of numbers in the domain name.Numbers like 0 and 1 are confused with characters like O and L.Avoid numbers in domains.

Avoid Hyphens

Hyphens are known to be popular SEO tactic. But still,getting people to remember the "-" is a impossible task. Stay away from hyphens.

Get a proper registrar for the domain.

Most often people complain of domain hijacking. You can avoid this by using reputed services like GoDaddy or ENOM for the registration.

Register for a long period Its a good practise to register a domain name for atleast 5 years or 10 years although your business might not be centered around it.This helps your avoid bad experiences like some one lese using the domain you advertised.

Last but not the least

Think twice before getting a domain name.and stick to only one domain for a business.

Varun Krishnan is a mobile phone/web enthusiast. He is a web developer and SEO consultant. Hes currently heading http://www.FoneArena.com

I’ve just recently stumbled across a few web sites like namepros.com and dnforum, websites that focus solely on the buying and selling of domains. And I "gotta tell ya" I was quit impressed to hear some of the success stories.

Now from my understanding, I thought profit from domain sales died at the end of the dotcom Boom. But from what I’ve seen and heard, It seems like it can be a lucrative business. Naturally there’s more to it than buying a domain name for $5.99 a year and turning around and selling it for $4,000. To come across a domain name (whether self created, expired, or purchased) spending time advertising it, sending traffic to where it’s parked, finding a broker, doing the things you need to do to up the value of the name, it’s seems like a very time consuming business.

But if you go to Sedo.com you’d be amazed at the prices that some of these domains are going for, $5,000, $10,000, even more.

It seems to me like a hidden art. There’s not very much talk about it in the general internet marketing forums. And everywhere on the net you see ebooks on "How To" write ebooks for profit, do JV (joint venture) deals, ebooks on site traffic, blogging techniques, affiliate marketing, rss feeds…… on and on and on and very little information on the business of buying and selling domain names. So that means it’s a business who’s time has passed or a very lucrative one that’s hidden from the people who jump on the bandwagon.

Just looking at current events and doing domain checks on certain subjects tells me how quickly good domains get snatched up. Believe it or not the name Farris Hassan dot com (16 year old boy who went to Iraq) is already taken.

From my studies it seems that there are a select few who are generously profiting from the buying and selling of domain names. As I mentioned above there is alot of work involved but if your willing to join a few membership sites, learn a few advertising tricks and get into the game, the selling of domain names can be a very lucrative business.

Buy Domains! Yahoo, GoDaddy, 1&1 Domains starting at $1.99/year http://www.wbwebhosts.com/iminate_domain

(this link must be active on your website in order to use this article)

Does a website come with a domain name? If not, what comes with a website and how do I get a domain name?

New website owners often seem confused about how and when domain names come into play. The questions usually boil down to: "Does a website come with a domain name?" and "If not, how do I get a domain name?"

Web hosting and domain name registration are usually separate services. Although your hosting company may give or sell you a domain name with your website, most hosting companies are not domain registrars, and chances are they’re procuring it from a third party. (Domain registrars often give you a website, but they’re usually not "full featured" websites, and another issue.)

What’s more, despite the fact that hosting companies will generally take care of your initial domain name registration, becoming familiar with the basics of domain name management can save you anywhere from a few bucks to a little bundle. (For the definition of "bundle," forget Webster’s Dictionary. Look at your monthly statement from your hosting company; if it gives you that sinking feeling, that’s a bundle.)

Registrars like directnic.com and enom.com, for example, charge $15 and $30, respectively, per year, per domain name. In bulk, you can get names at enom.com for as low as $9. And with a little shopping around, you can do even better than this.

Managing your own domain names will usually have its biggest payoff if you should decide to get more than one domain name, a common practice that can sometimes enhance your web presence. How? Let’s say, your business name is "Grumpy’s Hardware and Paint." Some people know you as Grumpy’s Hardware, some as Grumpy’s Paint, and some as just plain Grumpy. You might want to get three domain names — grumpyshardware.com, grumpyspaint.com, and grumpy.com — so your site can be reached no matter what a surfer enters in his browser.

The way this would work is, you’d open your hosting account using, let’s say, grumpy.com. Then you’d add on, what’s called, "parked" or "mirror" domain names, grumpyshardware.com and grumpyspaint.com. Parked or mirror domains are not separate websites; they simply point to an existing website, grumpy.com, in this case.

The problem is that some hosting companies will charge you setup and/or monthly fees for parked domains. These fees are above and beyond the yearly fees you already pay for registering domain names. And these fees can add up.

By managing domain names yourself, however, you can avoid all "parking" fees, not to mention shop around for a better deal on the names themselves.

The fundamentals of domain management begin with two basic methods of directing domain names to your website. That is, the process that gets a surfer from the browser to your website involves a mechanism that takes the surfer (unbeknownst to him) to your domain name registrar and then to your website. The journey from your registrar to your website can be accomplished by one of two methods — "pointing" or "forwarding." It’s your choice as to which method to use.

What’s the difference? There’s a huge difference.

Although the menus for setting up these features vary from registrar to registrar, the concepts are the same. "Pointing" involves assigning a DNS (Domain Name Server) address, obtained from your hosting company, to your domain name grumpy.com. This is done at your registrar account.

Then, you must inform your hosting company to "set up" grumpy.com on their end, if they have not yet done so. And this is where domain name setup and monthly fees at your hosting company come in.

"Forwarding" (also referred to as "redirecting"), on the other hand, works a little differently. Let’s say you wanted to set up grumpyspaint.com for your website. Instead of using the DNS method described above, you would simply "forward" it to grumpy.com, which would already be pointing to your website. In addition to being a little simpler, it’s likely you’ve just saved yourself some money.

How?

When a surfer enters grumpyspaint.com, they simply get forwarded to your other name, grumpy.com, which is already pointing to your website. It’s almost as if the surfer entered grumpy.com directly. And you don’t need any additional setups at your hosting company when you use this method, no matter how many additional parked domain names you have. So, no setups, no fees.

To put it all together, if you had let’s say 20 domain names, you’d need to set up only one domain name at your registrar using the DNS method, and you’d need your hosting company to "setup" that same name on their end. The other nineteen names would need no setup whatsoever at your hosting company. All you’d have to do is redirect (at your registrar account) all nineteen names to that one name you already have set up. And, thus, you’ve saved yourself setup and/or monthly fees for nineteen parked domains.

How much can you save? Some hosting companies can charge as much as $20 setup and $5 per month for each parked domain. Figure it out.

Be aware that some registrars charge extra for features such as "forwarding." But there’s no need to pay extra even for this. Many registrars, like directnic.com and enom.com, include forwarding and other features at no extra charge.

So, even if you do not necessarily take care of these domain matters yourself, but relegate it to a friend or coworker, being aware of the ins and outs can help you avoid getting ripped off by a hosting company whose job is not necessarily to keep you informed of the most budget-conscious way of running your operation. After all, the information super highway should be for surfing, not for being taken for a ride.

by Josh Greenberger from shopndrop.com

Josh Greenberger: A computer consultant for over two decades, the author has developed software for such organizations as NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, AT&T, Charles Schwab, Bell Laboratories and Chase Manhattan Bank. Since 1984, the author’s literary works have appeared in such periodicals as The New York Post, The Daily News, The Village Voice, The Jewish Press, and others. His articles have ranged from humor to scientific to topical events. Visit him at http://shopndrop.com