Tips for buying a domain name

Posted by Felix Okoli on Friday September 14, 2012 at 11:56:15:

When it comes to establishing an online presence for business or social reasons, having a domain name that suits that purpose would be expected.

There are many things to consider when buying a domain name in Nigeria or any where else and I guess you would have to consider certain important things.

Things to consider:
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- What should be the name of the domain?
- Is it meant to be for a personal, professional or commercial website?
- What domain extension would you choose from?
- What payment options are available? eg. credit card, Payza, Paypal, Liberty reserve and so on.
- How much are you willing to spend or how much is the domain worth to you?
- How long do you intend having the website active?
- Will you be willing to buy it at a higher price from someone else if it was not available?

Steps to buying a domain name
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- Visit a domain name seller or registrar's website
- Enter the domain name eg. myname.com and search
- If available, proceed to buy it and pay with payment options
- Decide to pay for a year or multiple years
- Wait for the domain to be registered and for an email activation
- Log into your domain control panel and manage your domain name.

Domain extensions
Do you want a .com or .org? You should know that there are many domain name extensions nowadays and we even have ,com.ng for Nigeria which helps in geographic targeting. The .com tend to be the most preferred and .biz are meant for real businesses which have a physical address. .org are mostly for non profit or charitable organisations while .net can also be used when .com is not available.

Payment options
The most preferred option for making payments or ordering for a domain name is the credit or prepaid cards. However, more and more domain sellers do offer a variety of options such as Paypal, Liberty reserve, Moneybookers and even bank deposits.