Best Domain Registrar - Internet.bs
A domain name is the text that comes after http:// or www. and includes the .com, .org, or the myriad other possible suffixes. Your domain name is your address on the internet. It is not the plot of land; that is the web hosting package which is often best to buy seperately and allows you to store your website files online. I talk about this HERE. To get an address, you must register your chosen name with a domain registrar. There are thousands available!
The most popular seems to be Godaddy.com but I found their site a bit oversold and their ratings skewed by well-rewarded affiliate marketers.
I did a lot of research into the different registrars in late 2010 and early 2011 and waded through a mass of meretricious 'Best Domain Registrar', 'Cheapest Registrar', 'Top Domain Names' sites and blogs. Most of these are worth avoiding as they are usually set up to profit through your choice based on their biased reviews.
I settled on a fast-growing company called Internet.bs. They are very cheap, which is good because paying more doesn't make much difference when buying a domain name in my experience. They also include a private WHOIS, which is important; There's a website called Who Is which allows you to see who registered a domain name; normally including addresses and phone numbers. Obviously hiding this is essential.
They've got several other worthwhile features that swayed me such as free email forwarding (where any emails sent to prettymuchanything@yourdomain.com are forwarded to a chosen email account) and free url forwarding, which means that you can redirect visitors to your new domain to, for example, a Flickr page or Wordpress blog. So I signed up with them.
I asked them if they have an affiliate linking program which quite reassuringly they don't, so the reviews about them should be fairly reliable.
A few points to note; use Moniker to check availability and don't let your domain expire if you want to keep it. I've heard anecdotal evidence that checking if a domain is available can lead to it being bought by a domain marketeer who will then charge you an extortionate amount for it. Likewise if you have a domain that expires, it's highly likely that someone will snap it up then demand a lot of money to sell it again.
Personally I find this to be a rotten practice. Bulk buying domain names as an investment has been going since the internet began. Some domain names are ludicrously expensive; sex.com was recently sold for a record $13million. Hosting ads, it now makes about a million dollars a year.
Sex .com aside, there are countless squatters on domain names that would otherwise be put to much better use. It has to be one of the easiest and least beneficial ways to make money; buying up an intangible asset that someone else would put to good use just to charge them over the odds for it.
When people mention buying cheap domain names, they often say something about making a good living from strategically buying names that will probably be needed by a person or business later to make thousands. I don't deny that this is possible, but I can't help but think that someone must have bought, for example, Oxfam.com, Unicef.com, RNLI.com etc. with a quick and easy profit in mind.
Please don't be that person!
I can be reached at ben@benevansphotography.com, or here 
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