The Best Companies For Buying A Domain Name

^{At spotcoolstuff.com we usually write about unusual hotels, great gadgets, cool music and things that make us go WOW. Recently, we've gotten a lot of questions about the more mundane stuff of starting a website. So we're taking a quick interlude from our usual topics to write a series of five articles on web hosting and website domain name procurement. The other four articles in the series:}

• How To Buy (And Sell) Domain Names Through eBay
• The Best Places To Make Money Parking A Website Domain Name
• The Best Website Hosting Companies: The Top Two Hosts
• The Best Website Hosting Companies: The Two Best Value Hosts

_{And with that . . .}

If you are building a website, choosing a domain name (like spotcoolstuff.com, to take a random example) is one of the most important decisions you'll make. Your virtual address isn't only your name, but the name has value in its own right -- value that will go up over time if you choose wisely. There are easily over 100 domain sellers, or registrars, online vying for your business. We've found the best ones:

GoDaddy

Technically, there are other companies that have slightly lower domain registration fees than GoDaddy. No one has a better combination of cheap prices, excellent customer service, user friendly interface and website hosting.

Also, the day may come when you want to sell your domain. On that day you’ll be glad you are with the world’s most popular registrar. That’s because it is free to transfer domains between GoDaddy accounts. If the people who are interested in buying your domain don’t already have a GoDaddy account they’re almost certainty familiar with the brand. We estimate that domains sold on eBay get a 10% to 25% higher price when registered with GoDaddy than with another registrar.

1 & 1

1 & 1 is a good company to register domain through; their very reasonable registration prices are almost identical to GoDaddy. 1 & 1 is also a good website host, with quality customer service and reliable up-time.

Combine those two -- the registering service and hosting service -- and you have the web's superlative two-in-one registrar plus host. And, happily, 1 & 1 includes *free* domain names when you sign up for a hosting package: You get two free domains at their $4.95/month hosting package and five free domains at the $19.95 level. Recomended!

eBay

There are some amazing deals on domain names to be had on eBay. We've purchased some decent domains there for a little as $1. Some of the domains we've purchased in the $25-70 range we've resold in the GoDaddy used domain market for more than $300. (Our biggest profit was a $30 domain we resold for $1,100). Maybe lady luck has been on our side, but we've never had a problem buying domains on eBay and never taken a loss on a domain we purchased there with the intention of reselling it.

eBay is also a great place for buying used domains because several of them come with history and backlinks. Some even come with traffic and page rank. For those reasons, buying a used domain is actually preferable to buying a new one. And the prices on eBay are cheaper than the other used domain markets. Also, most domain auctions on eBay run for at most 10 days. At a domain auction service like GoDaddy, for example, auctions typically last 90 (!) days; there's nothing worse than finding the perfect domain at the perfect price and then having to wait three months to get it.

That said, there are some important tips to know when buying domains on eBay. Check out our article of eBay domain buying tips.

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