Sara Nguyen

Helping Sassy Solopreneurs Reach more people and get more clients

How to buy a domain name (step by step tutorial)

Do you want someone to show you how to buy a domain name step by step so you can start setting up a website for your business or special project? In this video, I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know to buy or register your domain name quickly and easily. Stay tuned.

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How to buy a domain name (step by step tutorial) – Video Transcript

Hi, I’m Sara Nguyen, and on this channel, I make tech and social media easier for awesome entrepreneurs like yourself. If you’re new to this channel, consider subscribing for all of the latest product reviews, social media marketing tips and training. 

And at any time during this video, check out the description for links to all of the resources mentioned in this video.

Your domain name is your website’s address or URL on the Internet. It’s where you tell people to find your website on the Internet. You’ll need to register and pay for your domain name in order to set up your website.

Domain names also need to be renewed each year. If you want to keep the domain name, I’m going to show you how to go about registering your domain name as well as cover some crucial things you need to consider. Let’s go over to my computer now.

Now just a few words. I feel like this is a public service announcement. Just a few words before we go step by step into what you need to do to register your domain name or purchase your domain name.

I get a lot of questions about buying a domain name, and I wanted to address them before we actually go into the step by step, so that you can have everything ready and the main questions answered before we actually get started.

So here’s a couple of things that I’m going to address because these are the most common questions that I get asked about purchasing a domain name.

So when buying a domain name, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Firstly, you want to make sure that it is easy to remember and spell, and here’s why.

One of the, I wouldn’t call it regrets, but the things that I look back and go, or that may have been different had I have thought of it differently back at the time when I was purchasing a domain name, is that when I had a domain name for my social media business, which is Social Media Rocketeer.

I thought it was great because it had social media as the keyword. Rocketeer was something a bit quirky, but the problem with that, is that rocketeer is not easy to spell and it’s not that easy to remember.

So when I’m telling people about my website, I’ve always had to spell rocketeer. And rocketeer, people aren’t that familiar with the spelling, even though I think it’s quite a common thing.

So they’re like, “rocketer?” “rocketeer?” “How do you spell rocketeer”? So try the best that you can when coming up with a domain name to make it easy to remember and spell. You can use keywords.

Now Google came out and said that keywords in the domain name don’t necessarily help you rank for keywords, but there is a but. But I’ve found that if you do have a keyword in your domain name, it helps in terms of people being able to quickly recognise what your website or what your brand is about.

So whether, for example, I have Social Media Rocketeer, The Sewing Space if you’re into sewing, using or peppering the keyword some way into the domain name is a way of helping people identify your business and what you do quickly. Get the .com if you can.

Now, this is a little controversial. A lot of domain names are squatted.

So what that means is when you go to actually register the domain name, you will find that a lot of people are sitting on them and they don’t actually have a website with the domain name that you want because they want you to pay a premium for the domain name. I’m not a fan of that. I think it’s actually not very fair and kind of poor form.

However, if you can get the .com, get it. There are heaps of other domain name extensions, and you’ll see what I mean when we go into the example of the step by step, but get the.com if you can.

If you can’t, it’s kind of okay as well. Using your own name is all right as well. So people kind of like, “What if I don’t know what domain name I want? I can’t come up with a brand name.” use your own name. That’s okay. Use variations of it.

And number five is extremely important. Make sure you register the domain name yourself. Do not get your virtual assistant to do it. Do not get your brother or your sister or your cousin or your next door neighbour or your best friend to do it. You need to register the domain name for your own website yourself.

And let me tell you why. Your domain name is a legal title to that name on the Internet. So if you get someone else to buy it for you, they actually own that space.

So something happens, it’s a little bit of a pain in the butt to transfer ownership of the domain name, so buy it yourself. Don’t let someone else do it for you. Do it yourself in your own name and don’t stress.

So this is not a difficult part of setting up a website. This should be easy, and this should be pleasant because worst case scenario is you come up with a name that you want to change later, and that can be done, people do it all the time so don’t stress just yet.

Now let’s go into how to actually register a domain name. When registering a domain name or purchasing a domain name, I always recommend that you look at two, three maybe, but at least two different domain name registers.

So I have GoDaddy, and I also have Namecheap. And the purpose of comparing two is to enable you to go with the cheapest one.

You want to go with the one that’s cheapest in the first year and also cheapest in the renewal because you will need to pay for your domain name every year if you want to keep it. So have two open.

There are lots of domain name registers out there — Crazy John’s. Your website host may also offer it. So compare the pricing across as many as you want. I’ll just do two for the purposes of this tutorial.

So in GoDaddy, I will start typing the name of the domain that I want. And then I’ll do the same in Namecheap. Now I’ve actually already done this research, so the results aren’t that surprising to me.

Surprise, surprise. Someone has squatted on the domain name. I’m not okay with paying $4,797 that GoDaddy says is the approximate price. What does Namecheap say? Oh, they want $5,000 here.

That’s probably because GoDaddy is in US dollars. So I’m not okay with paying that price.

However I am okay to get a variation of the domain name, and for me, I’m going to get the .com.au, I’m an Australian business, so I qualify for the .com.au.

I’m also happy to go with variations. I could possibly also get the .net. So if I look at the domain names available, I can see that the .com.au is available. Let’s confirm that.

So I can see the pricing here. Okay. So the .com.au is available, and it’s currently $9.95 for the first year, and on renewal you see it struck out here, it’s $16.95.

This is the Australian sites, so this is in Australian dollars, and the price varies depending on the domain name and depending on obviously the currency that you’re working with.

I’m going to check the same thing here in Namecheap. Let’s go thesewingspace.com.au. This is also available. So it’s $21.18 and renews at $24 per year.

So domain name registers are kind of like banks, you don’t need to be loyal to them so you can go with the cheapest one. I tried to get a domain name provider who has 24/7 customer service. Early on the premise that something goes wrong and I’m able to contact somebody.

So I’ve been happy with GoDaddy and Namecheap. I haven’t had any issues with either of them. I know there are lots of mixed reviews, but my experience has been pretty positive. So I’m pretty happy with that.

I select the one that I want. So I got the .com.au. I’m going to add that to my cart. I am going with the cheapest one because that’s what I believe in in terms of domain names, they’re all the same.

Okay, so here where it says what will you do with it? I’m going to deselect any of these options. You don’t really need them.

They kind of add them there to, I guess upsell you, but I really don’t need the extra email address. I can set that up with my web host, and I don’t like the free stuff that GoDaddy provides anyway.

I’m going to select continue to cart, and if you’re not already a GoDaddy customer, they will ask you to fill in your details on the left-hand side here. So make sure that you fill that out properly with your name, contact details, the correct address and the correct phone number as well.

I’m already a customer, so I’ll just fill in my username and password in order to log in. So once you’ve either completed this form here, select the submit button or if you’re already a customer, just log in using your username and password.

And then you just follow the prompts that GoDaddy or your domain name register asked you to complete because this is a .com.au they’re asking me to provide the name or the legal entity name as well as the entity type and the ABN which is Australian business number.

This is specific to a .com.au. It’s an Australian domain name. It may look a little bit different to you if you’re just registering a .com or a .net so this is specific to a .com.au, but just fill in the prompts and then read the terms and conditions because I know everybody does that and select continue to check out.

So then you’ll be taken to the payment screen where you can add your credit card to pay for the domain name registration. You’ll see the pricing that you will pay now and also the renews at pricing as well.

So the yearly rate that you will renew it at and you can add your credit card for GoDaddy, or you can pay with PayPal or UnionPay. You’ll see the billing information or the address just below it there.

And once you’ve put in your PayPal or your credit card details, you’ll be able to select the complete purchase button here. And that’s it. And then you’ll see the congratulations. Thank you for your order.

And I’ve now registered a domain name to my account.

So there you have it, my step by step tutorial showing you how to buy or register your domain name. Once you’ve registered your domain name, you can connect your domain name to a web hosting provider such as SiteGround or add it to our website builders such as Squarespace or Shopify. 

Web hosting is the place where the actual web pages that people will see when going to your website is stored. I covered this in another tutorial. Check out the description for the how to set up a website playlist.

If you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel. And if you’re looking for more ways to grow your business, check out my Social Media Checklist.

I outlined all of the things you need to do to get up and running on social media so you can start leveraging the power of social to make more sales with ease. To get your hands on it, simply click on the link in the description below and thanks for watching.

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