Registering A Business Domain Name
Now that you have some good ideas for business domain names, go check to see if theyâre available on GoDaddy.com, Register.com, or another accredited domain registar.
All accredited domain registrar services have search functions that will show whether your name is available and provide alternatives to your business domain name if itâs already registered. Note that some registrars will only register names with certain TLDs.
To get through the process, you need to provide some contact information to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers âthe governing body for domain names.
Youâll pay a fee of anywhere from $10 to $35 to register the name depending on the service you use.
Next, youll need to link the domain name to your website by entering the name of your web hostâs primary and secondary servers into the provided domain manager. Note that if your website isnt live yet, you can also park your domain so that it is not active yet.
And once you score your business domain name, donât let it expire! Even the biggest brands have their domain names expire. Almost 20,000 domain names expire each day.
Donât lose your perfect business domain name by forgetting to renew it. Set a calendar reminder right when you purchase your domain for when you have to renew it. Most domain names last for one year.
Step : Register For Taxes
You will need to register for a variety of state and federal taxes before you can open for business.
In order to register for taxes you will need to apply for an EIN. It’s really easy and free!
You can acquire your EIN for free through the IRS website, via fax, or by mail. If you would like to learn more about EINs and how they can benefit your LLC, read our article, What is an EIN?.
Learn how to get an EIN in our What is an EIN guide or find your existing EIN using our EIN lookup guide.
Small Business Taxes
Depending on which business structure you choose, you might have different options for how your business will be taxed. For example, some LLCs could benefit from being taxed as an S corporation .
You can learn more about small business taxes in these guides:
There are specific state taxes that might apply to your business. Learn more about state sales tax and franchise taxes in our state sales tax guides.
Dont Marry Yourself To One Business Domain Name
If youâre set on one absolutely perfect business domain name, you might be crushed to find that itâs already taken.
Brace yourself for disappointment, and donât marry yourself to just one domain name.
And for that matter, itâs a good idea to check to see if the business domain name is available before you spend weeks crafting the name and having your creative team work through it.
If you run a check on a potential domain name and find that itâs taken, try adding a suffix or prefix that makes it unique, or use a different TLD than you were planning.
But remember, if the domain name is already taken and youâre trying to come up with something similar, you might have a problem keeping it separate from other brands.
You May Like: 866-731-6556
Find A Business Mentor
One of the greatest resources an entrepreneur can have is quality mentorship. As you start planning your business, connect with a free business resource near you to get the help you need.
Having a support network in place to turn to during tough times is a major factor of success for new business owners.
Stick To A Common Suffix Or Tld
First, it may be tempting to choose one of over 100 TLDs like .biz or .media, but these nontraditional options can actually be detrimental to your websites success. SEO ranks more common suffixes higher than more obscure ones like .company, and these TLDs can be harder to remember for your customers. The recommended standard is still .com.
Don’t Miss: How To Transfer Squarespace Domain To Godaddy
> > download A Free Requirements Checklist
As business analysts, identifying the questions to ask during requirements elicitation is incredibly important. To help you ask better questions, we offer an absolutely free requirements checklist this is just one example from our Requirements Discovery Checklist Pack and youll learn what a requirements checklist looks like in the example of Supporting Customers.
Tld: Top Level Domains
A top level domain is exactly what it sounds like: a type of domain name which is at the top level of the internets domain name system. There are over a thousand TLDs available but the most common include .com, .org, .net, and .edu.
The official list of TLDs is maintained by an organization called the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and can be viewed here. IANA notes that the list of TLDs also includes ccTLDs and gTLDs, which well talk about next.
Recommended Reading: How To Transfer Squarespace Domain To Godaddy
What Are Some Insider Tips For Jump Starting A Domain Registration Business
Business owners should concentrate on their policies before getting started. From domain transferring to pricing, youll attract more customers if the policies are as clear as possible before anyone signs up. Theres a lot of advice out there about who to sign up with and who to avoid, so make sure youre giving people plenty of options and being as fair as possible. For example, if a website owner fails to renew their domain name after a year, you may want to keep that domain name off-limits for a month as a courtesy in case the person decides to renew.
Entrepreneurs should also put some extra effort into their customer service response times. Websites by nature are incredibly immediate, and problems can happen at any time. If a person is paying you for their domain name and loses business because there’s a flaw with your equipment, then youll likely be held responsible for any subsequent loss of revenue to their brand. You may also want to think ahead when it comes to promoting new suffixes. As the .com names continue to diminish, companies may benefit from less popular suffixes with a strong start
Step : Plan Your Business
A clear plan is essential for success as an entrepreneur. It will help you map out the specifics of your business and discover some unknowns. A few important topics to consider are:
Luckily we have done a lot of this research for you.
What are the costs involved in opening a domain registration business?
Companies will first need to become accredited, which they can do through ICANN. Its currently $3,500 just to apply to ICANN. You’ll also need to pay a $4,000 annual fee to ICANN to keep the accreditation status.
What are the ongoing expenses for a domain registration business?
Ongoing expenses tend to be low for a domain registration business:
- Computer maintenance/replacement
- Rent/mortgage for a physical office
Who is the target market?
Anyone starting a new website will need a domain. With the popularity of services like Wix and Squarespace, this number only grows by the day. Trying to register your own domain name is usually either expensive or full of potential legal pitfalls, so there are few exceptions to this rule.
How does a domain registration business make money?
How much can you charge customers?
The standard fee is about $10 a year for a domain name, but this number can rise and fall depending on demand or company promotion. For example, a .today suffix on GoDaddy will cost about $25 a year as opposed to a .net, which will cost about $10.
How much profit can a domain registration business make?
How can you make your business more profitable?
You May Like: How Much Should A Domain Name Cost Per Year
What Is A Domain Name Domains Explained For Beginners
A domain name is essentially your websites equivalent of a physical address. In the same way that a GPS needs a street address or a zipcode to provide directions, a web browser needs a domain name to direct you to a website.
A domain name takes the form of two main elements. For example, the domain name Facebook.com consists of the websites name and the domain name extension . When a company purchases a domain name, theyre able to specify which server the domain name points to.
Domain name registrations are overseen by an organization called ICANN . ICANN specifies which domain name extensions are available and keeps a centralized database of where the domain names point to.
Every website that you visit effectively consists of two main elements: a domain name and a web server.
Who Are Domain Experts
Lets take a look at another DDD term related to business domains that we are going to use often in the next chapters: domain experts. Domain experts are subject matter experts that know all the intricacies of the business that we are going to model and implement in code. In other words, domain experts are knowledge authorities in the softwares business domain.
The domain experts are neither the analysts that gather requirements nor the engineers designing the system. Domain experts represent the business. They are the people that identified the business problem in the first place, and all business knowledge originates from the domain experts. Systems analysts and engineers are just transforming their mental models of the business domain into software requirements and source code.
As a rule of thumb, domain experts are either the people coming up with requirements or the softwares end users. The software is supposed to solve their problems.
The domain experts expertise can have different scopes. Some subject matter experts will have a detailed understanding of how the whole business domain operates, while others will specialize in particular subdomains. For example, in an online advertising agency the domain experts would be campaign managers, media buyers, analysts, and other business stakeholders.
Read Also: How To Transfer Squarespace Domain To Godaddy
Understanding The Business Domain
Here are some thoughts about the questions to ask and answer to get a high-level understanding of how a business works.
These questions are fairly high-level and they will lead you to obtaining a big-picture overview of the business model. As you work on specific projects, youll want to dial in more specifically and get more detailed in your questions. This is when creating a project-specific requirements questionnaire is useful.
Icann Oversees The Domain Name System
Domain names are managed by an organization known as ICANN . This organization will specify what domain names and domain name extensions are available. They also maintain a massive database of every location that domain names point to.
The domain name system essentially maps your domain name to a specific server where your website is located. If youve ever migrated hosts, then youve probably had to play around with your domain DNS records before.
Overall, the DNS system makes for a more usable and user-friendly web.
You May Like: How Much Should A Domain Name Cost Per Year
How Do Domains Work
Domain names work by acting as a shortcut to the server that hosts your website.
Without a domain name, anyone who wanted to visit your website would have to enter the full IP address. But the problem is that an IP address is difficult for people to memorize or to include on advertising materials.
In our case, Hostinger.com is the domain name. Lets say it points to the IP address 100.90.80.70. The IP address points to a server, but it doesnt resolve the website if visitors try to use it. Thats because for an IP address to resolve a website, the remote server needs to be using port 80 with a default page stored in its web-apps directory.
As you can see, messing around with server defaults and IP addresses can be both confusing and time-consuming. Thats why the vast majority of website owners opt to utilize a service like Hostinger which offers bundled domain names with annual web hosting packages.
Domains can also use redirects, which essentially allow you to specify that if people visit your domain, theyre automatically forwarded to another. This can be useful for campaigns and microsites or for forwarding people to dedicated landing pages on your main site. They can also come in useful for avoiding confusion around spellings. For example, if you visit www.fb.com, youll be forwarded to www.facebook.com.
What Is A Data Domain
Determining your data domains is an important part of your data strategy. So what is a data domain?
It actually can mean a couple of things, depending if we look at it from the point of view of data management and database management, or if we look at it from the point of view of data governance. Or think of it as looking at it from the technical side or the business side. And you might say, “George why do we care about both? Let’s just focus on the data governance side”. Well, I think that you need to be aware of both.
Even if you’re in data governance, you need to understand the technical side because otherwise when you’ll be talking to those technical data stewards and data custodians and IT, they might use the term differently than you. Even when you’re talking to vendors, I think it’s good to understand both views of the terms. Yes, I know, it’s frustrating for the same term to have different meanings, but working in data governance it’s something you’ll get used to as that’s one of the things that data governance will try to do, clarify these differences.
You May Like: How Much Should A Domain Name Cost Per Year
The Four Components Of A Url
Just like a mailing address, which is made up of multiple parts , a URL, or web address, also involves different components. In this case, think of the domain name as the recipients name in a mailing address. In addition to the domain, a URL also consists of a prefix , a subdomain , and the domain extension .