The do's and don'ts of picking a domain name

Questions

Course info

9 lessons / 0 hours

Overview

This course is to help people who are looking to buy their first domain name. Without any experience this task can be daunting for newbies.

The course assumes no prior knowledge of web or websites. We'll start right at the beginning with tips on choosing a domain name. Then moving into actually buying a domain name and deciding what to do if your domain is gone.

You don't need anything other than an internet connection to follow along with the videos.

Websites and online businesses can be tricky when you're new. There are a million options out there. My courses were created to act as a guide to show you your options and allow you to make informed, experienced decisions even on your first try.

What are the requirements?

  • You will need nothing to follow along with this course.

  • There is a cost involved with buying a domain name but you don't have to spend any money to get full value from this course. What am I going to get from this course?

  • Over 9 lectures and 30 mins of content!

  • Choose and purchase a domain name for their business.

  • Decide on either a local or .com domain name.

  • Know what costs are involved.

  • How to setup a domain name using Godaddy.com

  • What to do if someone else owns the domain you want.

  • How to use domain suggestion tools.

What is the target audience?

We'll start right at the beginning and work step by step through the ways to purchase your first domain name.

This course is for people completely new to web sites and online business. It's aimed at people who have no idea how to buy a domain name.

This course is for absolute beginners. If you understand the basics of website creation or have purchased your own website domain before then this course might be too simplistic for you.

Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

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Transcript

Hi, my name is Daniel Walter Scott,  and I'm a trainer here at Bring Your Own Laptop. Now, in this video we're gonna look at the do's  and don'ts of a domain name. Now the first one is numbers. Uh, stay away from numbers if you can. Um, you don't wanna curse yourself to a life  of gardening supplies for you.com, where you're on the phone  and it's Daniel at gardening supplies  for you.com. Yep.

No, it's the, yeah, no, uh, for,  just, just the number four. Yep. And you, yeah. Just, just you, you by itself. Yep. Okay.

Don't do that to yourself. Also, stay away from ens if you can. Hyphens generally mean that the good domain name's gone. Um, you've, you've searched  and you've found gardening supplies  or green gardening supplies.com. Okay? And it's gone.

So what you do, sneaky trick  as you go green hyphen gardening, hyphen supplies. Okay. Uh, to get round that, okay. The problem with that though is  that there's an existing business with the shorter version  who are working hard at building their domain name  and their brand around that domain name. You are gonna start doing the same thing. And what tends to happen is some,  your traffic is gonna end up back at them  because that's the correct way of writing this one.

You've got the kind of, uh, weird way of writing it. So keep a unique domain name if you can,  and stay away from hyphens. And another question I get asked is, uh,  what if I just buy lots of domain names  and have lots of them pouring into one website? Why don't I get lots more traffic? And that doesn't work. What happens is, is a website has one primary domain name  and all the rest of the domains that point to it, um,  they will redirect, but they won't bring an equal amount  of extra traffic in.

Okay? Um, a good thing you can do though  with extra domain names is to protect, uh, the domain name. So say, for my Australian business,  I have the bring your laptop.com au,  but also the BYO l.com au just to protect those two, uh,  what the acronym and the longer version. Um, also useful if you plan to go into kind  of other localized parts of countries. So, um, if you plan to not only do the US but also the UK  and Australia giving the.co uk the.com au  and, um, all the other localized ones can be really handy. So, um, we'll talk about that in the next video actually,  'cause that's actually quite an important part.

Deciding whether to buy.com  or the localized say.com au for Australia. Alright, let's, let's go check out that in the next video.
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