The Easiest Way to Buy a Domain Name

You’ve started your business and you’re ready for a website, right? Or maybe you’re in the beginning stages and just want to see if a certain domain name is available for your website. Here is the easiest way to purchase a domain name for less than $15.

GoDaddy is The Daddy of Domain Names

While I don’t use GoDaddy for their website hosting plans, I do highly recommend them for purchasing domain names. Here are a few simple reasons:

1. Price – Most domains are $8 to $15 per year on GoDaddy.
2. Full Control – This might not seem important to you now, but having full control of technical aspects like DNS, forwarding, redirecting, etc will be something you’ll need at some point. Many providers require you to go through them to have access to this information.
3. User friendly purchasing and transferring – Whether you’re buying a domain or transferring one in or out, GoDaddy is by far the easiest company I’ve ever used.

To get started, simply go to www.godaddy.com. Right away you’ll see “Type the domain you want”.

GoDaddy starts by prompting “type the domain you want”.

Type in your domain (we’ll use www.lesliewright.com) and hit the search button. If you see this screen, it means someone owns this domain name already. You’ll see “Domain Taken” and an offer to use their brokerage service to try and obtain the domain. This really isn’t necessary unless the domain is incredibly important to you.

If you see this screen, your domain name has already been purchased by someone else.

Choosing the Next Best Domain Name

Your first choice is taken – now what? A great way to get the domain you want is to add a simple word to it  – words like “now”, “go”, “the”, “a”, or “my” are always good ones to try. You can add this word to the beginning or end of the domain. For this example, let’s add “now” to the domain, so we have www.lesliewrightnow.com. Click the search button, and you’ll see that it’s available (or it was as of when I wrote this blog).

By adding words like “now”, “go”, or “the” to your domain, you can usually find a similar domain to the one you originally wanted.

Buying Your Domain Name – No Frills Needed

Once you have the domain name you’d like to own, choose the “continue to cart” button. This next page will default to  “Full Domain Protection” for $9.99 per year, but this really isn’t necessary unless you are really concerned with someone knowing your identity or stealing your domain without your knowledge. Instead, choose “Free Privacy Protection”. From this point, you can skip EVERYTHING else and uncheck anything that’s checked. You don’t need hosting or email addresses at this point. (I’ll show you a better and cheaper way to host in another blog!)

It’s not necessary to have Full Domain Protection. You can choose Free Privacy Protection now and always upgrade later if you change your mind.

Click “continue to cart” again, and you’ll be taken to the checkout page. The default purchase is set to 2 years, but you can switch that to 1 year to make the process even cheaper. Your total at this point should be somewhere between $8 and $15 depending on the domain you’ve chosen. Once you’ve decided on the amount of time, click the pay button, enter your details, and finish signing up for your GoDaddy account. That’s it!

Change the default “2 years” to “1 year” to save some more money up front.

Domain Name Purchased – Now What?

Once you have your domain name, you’ll need to attach it to your website. If you have a website already, you’ll just need to point the DNS servers to the site or change the A Record to your current website. If you don’t have a website or hosting yet, my blog on setting up hosting is your next step.

Be sure to check out my TikTok and YouTube pages for more marketing how-to’s!