Register a domain name | Pieter's Blog

How and where to register a domain name

If you run your own business or if you want to make money online, owning your own domain name and your own web site became a non-negotiable necessity in the online world.

You MUST have your own web site and you MUST own your own domain name.

But how and where do you register a domain name?….

For those who do not know yet, the domain name is the address of your web site. Just like your home has its own unique physical address, the same way your web site has it sown unique address. This “address” tells people where to find your web site. For example this web site’s domain name is “pietpetoors.com” . If you are searching for something on the Internet you will probably go to “google.com” which is the address for the Google search engine. This domain’s address is actually 65.98.75.110 but you would agree that there is no way the Internet could be user friendly if we all had to remember all these numbers (IP Address) to get to our favorite web site. So the name www.pietpetoors.com is a user friendly way of telling your computer to go to 65.98.75.110 and get the information you need.

Domain names are issued world wide on a “first come first serve” basis.Unless of course your business name is a registered trademark and you can prove that somebody else registered your trademark as a domain name.

Each country has its own unique post fixes. Example: If a domain name ends with .co.za you know it isa South African web site, if it ends with .co.uk you know it is a UK based web site. You get various extensions like .net, .ws, .tv, .com, etc.

.com is probably the most common domain to register. But it will depend on your target market. If you run a business where you target market is purely South African and international clients will be to no benefit to you, there are no real benefit in registering a .com domain. Owning a .co.za domain does not mean that International clients won’t be able to see you, they will still see you. But the search results on search engines would rather list you web site highly for clients searching for your type of product or service from within the country your domain resides, in this case South Africa.

Let me explain better; if you offer a cleaning service in Pofadder you will not benefit from International traffic. Let’s presume you register www.pofaddercleaning.co.za . If anybody anywhere in the world type in the domain name www.pofaddercleaning.co.za they will be able to see your web site. But if Mr X in Toronto Canada goes to Google and search for “cleaning services” then the search engine will most definitely not show your domain as a result to him. It would rather give preference to cleaning services web sites in Canada.

This also do not mean that your results will not show up at all, it only means that the web sites related to his country will receive preference. I sell my eBook at http://www.passive-income.co.za . Although it is a .co.za domain I have many International clients buying my eBook. Strangely enough mostly from the UK and Canada.

But if you sell offer a service or sell a product which you would like the whole world to see or know about, then it might be a good idea to register a .com or .net domain.

To register most of the popular domain types like .com, .net, .tv, .mobi you can use one centralized web site you can use. You can use godaddy.com. They are the World’s Largest Registrar of domain names. They have been around for many years and are one of the most cost effective registrars on the Internet. I personally have been using Godaddy for the past 7 years. All you have to do is go to www.godaddy.com , search for a suitable domain name. If it is available pay for it and decided if you want to park it, host it or build a web site on it.

Although their domain registration is the best priced on the Internet one can unfortunately not say the same about their hosting plans. For hosting I suggest you have a look at Bluehost or ThinkHost.

Registering a .co.za is far more complex than mentioned above. If you want to register a .co.za domain you first have to get a host who will host your domain for you. Like Bluehost or ThinkHost. You can use local hosts but unfortunately I found that locals hosts are too expensive and those who do offer a cost effective hosting also use International servers. But hosting on local servers remains a rip-off in South Africa.

So fist you have to find a host, then you have to setup your web space on the host’s server. Only then can you go to http://.co.za to register your domain name. To search for a suitable domain you can go to http://co.za/whois.shtml to search for an available domain name. If you found a suitable domain name and you already setup the space on the server then you can follow the complex instructions at http://co.za/intro/how.shtml . Registering a .co.za domain is far more primitive than the rest of the world, but once you got the hang of it, it is easy.

Good Luck