purchasing-a-domain-name.md

layout	title	description	category	tags
page	Purchasing a Domain Name		For Clients	workflow

{% include JB/setup %}

We're always glad to help out with purchasing a new domain name. There are a few things to know though, when finding the right domain name:

1. Just because a domain doesn't show up when you go to it doesn't mean that it isn't registered.
   • If you want to check if a domain is available to purchase, go to a site like Namecheap which allows you to register the domain and search for the name you want.
     • For example, this is what shows up for the domain lep.com on namecheap:
   • If it says "Make Offer" next to the domain, or the domain name is greyed out, you know that the domain is currently taken. If you click on the "Whois" link below the "Make Offer" link, you can see who owns the domain, and when it was registered.
     • Here is what the "Whois" for lep.com looks like
     • You can see above that the expiration date for this domain is 2016-08-08, or August 8th, 2016. This doesn't mean they will lose this domain at this point, it simply means they will need to renew their registration by then. Domains are registered yearly for a fixed amount (usually around $10/year), though they can also be registered for a longer period of time as well.
   • If it has a price next to it (i.e. $9.98/year above), the shopping cart button, or is not greyed out, the domain is available to purchase. Above, you can see that the domain "lep.tech" is available, along with "lep.rocks".
2. Short domains are very hard to acquire
   • Almost all three letter (and below) .com domains (e.g. YYY.com, ABC.com, 123.com) have been taken for many years, and will never be up for registration unless you pay thousands, tens of thousands, or sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase one.
   • There aren't that many four letter .com domains left either (e.g. abcd.com, a0b1.com, etc). The ones that are normally available are the ones that would be pretty difficult to remember, like y7jq.com.
   • This means that sites like lep.com and lhep.com, we knew even before we looked them up, were very unlikely to be available.
3. Dashes are many times not great domains
   • There are very few commonly known domains that have dashes in them (e.g. word1-word2.com). This is generally because it is harder to convey the domain to others in a way that they will be able to recall easily (think about telling someone your domain verbally, and needing to say "hyphen" in the middle of the spoken domain name). The only one that comes to mind is coca-cola.com, but to be fair they also own cocacola.com as well.
   • If you do end up getting hyphenated domain name, try to also purchase the non-hyphenated version as well (just in case someone mistakenly types it without the dash; if you own both domains, you can redirect people from one domain to the other automatically with your domain settings).