Buying Domain Names
By: John Elder posted in Adsense
Hello good people!
What an amazing weekend here in Chicago. It stopped raining, the sun came out, we had near 70 degree weather, and I got to visit with my brother and his wife. All in all you can’t ask for much more out of life!
Today I want to talk about something that’s a fairly important part of any Adsense empire; namely – domain names.
I’ve mentioned in the past that it really doesn’t make a whole lot of difference which tld you use (.com, .net, .org, .info, etc). Most people simply don’t believe that. They SWEAR that you MUST use a .com address.
Of course, that’s complete nonsense. I use .info domains, almost exclusively. And what’s more, I buy them on sale for around .67 cents each whenever I can.
.com addresses, on the other hand, can cost as much as $10 each depending on where you buy them. Do the math, 1,000 .com domains at $10 each is $10,000 while 1,000 .info domains at .67 each costs just $670. Which would you rather pay?!
Google doesn’t seem to care one way or another, and my own results have proven this time and time again.
Where to buy domain names?
Many people mistakenly believe you have to use whichever domain name registrar that your webhosting company uses. That’s not true, you can use any registrar…which means you can shop around for the lowest prices.
There are a number of key domain registrars that you should become familiar with, and there are important things you need to know about each of them. Those registrars include:
- Godaddy.com
- NameCheap
- 1&1
- Others…
Each of those registrars have positive and negative aspects to them and I’ll discuss each of them in a minute. I’ve used all of them at one point or another (and many others as well that weren’t worth mentioning), so I think I’ve got a pretty good grasp on what you need to know about each of them.
Godaddy.com
I use Godaddy for all of my domains these days. The main reason is because they often run sales for .info domains as low as .67 cents. And even regularly price them at around $1.99. Some people have had problems with Godaddy in the past so you need to keep your eyes open when you use them.
Be particularly careful of adding extra services to your shopping cart accidentally during checkout. I’m talking about privacy guard, web hosting, and things like that. Godaddy makes their money on upsales like this, so the shopping cart is designed to really push those products. Don’t buy any of them.
One HUGE pitfall you need to watch out for is deceptive practices at Godaddy. I don’t want to call them fraudsters, but I have had some potentially bad experiences. Namely, when I register a domain name, I MAKE SURE that the auto-renew feature is set to “off”.
I do this because I register my domains for a period of one year each, and I don’t want Godaddy to auto-renew and then charge me for another year when that original year is up.
Why? Because I might have bought the domain on sale for .67 cents, but Godaddy will charge full price when it’s time to renew. That regular price can be anywhere from $8 to $20 depending on what the going rate is at the time. I want the option to be able to shop around when the time comes, or just let the domain name expire if it’s not performing particularly well.
The problem is, Godaddy seems to routinely go into your account and flip the auto-renew to “on” without your consent. This has happened to MANY of my domains. Is that fraudulent business practices? I’d say so…but what are ya gonna do? I guess they figure that if you have 2,000 domain names you won’t notice that 150 of them have been set to auto-renew.
So you need to keep an eye out for that sort of thing… it’s shenanigans, but it’s not that bad because their domain manager allows you to mass change things on your domains…so I can literally click one button to highlight all 2,000 of my domains, then click auto-renew to “off” and their system will change all my sites instantly.
So every couple of months I’ll go in and do that if I see that some domains have slipped back to auto-renew “on”. And I’ll definitely be sure to check them all around renewal time.
Namecheap
I like namecheap and use them for certain things. They also run sales from time to time on .info domains, as well as .com domains. So if Godaddy isn’t running a sale at the moment and you’re too anxious to wait a few weeks or a couple months, then namecheap is a decent alternative. I’ve never heard of any real shenanigans from them, but I haven’t used them all that much.
Bottom line, they’re a good alternative…and it’s always a good idea to keep an eye on them. You can use them to play off against godaddy if you have to. For instance, if it’s time to renew your domain names and Godaddy is trying to charge you $12.99 per domain but namecheap is only charging $2.49, you might call Godaddy and ask them to match that $2.49 offer. Etc.
1&1
These guys offer cheap deals on .info and .com domains all the time…usually in the $1.00 range…but I’ve heard nothing but bad things about them.
One of the big problems I’ve heard is that they will auto-renew your domain without your consent, at an inflated price, and then send you a bill…sometimes before your domain has even expired. If you tell them that you don’t WANT to renew your domain, they will send that bill to a collection agency who will then hound you for payment anyway, and trash your credit.
I personally know people who have had this happen to them… so I recommend that you stay far away from them. $1 domain names are tempting, but it’s not worth the hassle and blatantly fraudulent practices that these guys engage in.
Bottom Line: Always Shop Around!
Hopefully this will give you a good grasp of domain registrars. The cost of your domain names is one of the key components, or variables in the profitability equation for your Adsense empire.
If you can get the cost of your domain names down to under a dollar each, it’s almost impossible not to make money!
Keep on building!
-John
The Marketing Fool!
