How to choose your domain

Now that your niche is finalized, we should get a domain name for your project.

flipkart.com
slideshare.net
wikipedia.org

Consider the above domain names. Here, ‘flipkart’, ‘slideshare’, ‘wikipedia’ are the domain names and ‘.com’, ‘.net’, ‘.org’ are the domain extensions.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• .COM is the most popular domain extension followed by .NET and .ORG.
• .IN is a popular extension for Indian market, so if your website focusses on Indian market, .IN extension is fine as well.
• Always prefer getting a .COM domain, if it is available.

You can check if a domain name is available to register from the following site:

http://www.godaddy.com/domains/searchbulk.aspx

The above site will help you to check availability of multiple domains at once.

How to choose your domain name?

• Make it easy to type: Your domain name should be easy to type. For example: yogatraining.com is a good domain name, however yoga4u.com is not, because people will confuse ‘4’ with ‘for’ and ‘u’ with ‘you’. You shouldn’t need to tell people that it is numerical four or it is y-o-u you.

• Keep it short: The shorter the better. If your domain name is long and complex, you risk visitors to mistype or misspell it. A shorter domain name is definitely attractive.
• Avoid numbers and hyphens: Like I said, you don’t need to tell anyone it is “f-o-u-r 4” or it is numerical four. And, hyphens can be forgotten by people. So, avoid both numbers.

• Make it brandable/catchy/memorable: Well, that’s a no brainer. Your domain name should be easy to memorize. If it is catchy, that’s even better. Share it with some of your close friends and see what they feel about it. Make sure it is appealing and makes sense to others also.
   
• Make sure it doesn’t violate any trademark and it shouldn’t be too similar to any popular website.

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/200-prefixes-and-suffixes-for-domain-names/ here is an extensive list of over 200 prefixes and suffixes to help you brainstorm a domain name.

http://www.impossibility.org/

 it is a domain name generator that takes your keyword and combines it with a carefully selected list of nouns, verbs and adjectives, before searching for unregistered domain names and showing you the results

Other Useful Links

http://www.drbillbailey.net/extensions.html

here you can learn about various domain extensions.

This is it, folks! All the best to you for finding a good domain name.

Once you have shortlisted few domain names and you are still confused which one to choose then do a small survey among your friends and family. Any survey among 20 people would be useful. So incase you have 3 domain names that you like, then ask 20 people that you know to vote which one they like the most. Tell them your niche (area) and give them the list of domain names. They should select one. You can also do this voting on your facebook account and ask all your friend list there to vote. This is one of the best ways if you are confused about choosing your domain name.

Please note that .in domain names are cheaper than .com domain names. It is ok to buy any of them. If you do not want to spend any money in buying a domain name, I recommend that you simply work extensively on your blog and do not worry about creating a website. A blog and a website serves the same purpose. If you are more tech savvy and want to learn and implement more, we recommend that you go ahead and create your website as well. This will really help you in the long run.

In my next posts i will teach you how to register your domain name and get web hosting space. Things are about to get real!