Internet Marketing School - Lesson 1 - What Is A Domain Name?
Internet Marketing School - Lesson 1
What is a domain name?
A domain name is a URL.
URL is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator and points to a resource on the Internet.
Google.com, www.Google.com or http://www.Google.com or mywebsitename.com, www.mywebsitename.com or http://www.mywebsitename.com, are examples of what a domain is.
Just like your home has a street address, it is the world wide web’s (www) address to a particular website.
Often time’s people refer to a website and a blog as the same thing and I suppose they are and yet they are a different part of the same thing each part contributing to the overall site.
In the offline world of the real estate industry you have renters and owners. Owners hold the title deed to their property. Renters do not. The renter actually lives in someone else’s property.
It is similar in the online world where you can pretty much rent (most times for free) a space to house your website.
For example, you can sign up at various websites like Squidoo.com, Tumblr.com, Weebly.com and build your own website/blog.
However, you are renting space from them and you do not hold the title deed to your website.
If I signed up with squidoo I would have a domain name like…
Bigdog.squidoo.com/mans-best-friend
Or, at Weebly my site name might be iLoveToEat.Weebly.com
Or, iReallyLoveFood.Tumblr.com.
Now all of these and similar sites are just fine and you can find some good and useful information on them. But, the down side is most of these places, that you are basically renting space from, have the right to place ads on your site.
Since they own the title deed, so-to-speak, they can do what they want. These ads pull visitors away from your site and they capitalize on all the traffic you are sending to the free website/blog.
Again, these can be beneficial as long as you are using them for fun and hobbies but if you really want to make money online from home then you would want to invest in your own website domain.
Here at WA you can not only get a free website (again you wouldn’t technically own the real estate) but you can buy a domain name of your own (only cost about $10.00 or $12.00 per YEAR) and house your website at Wordpress.org.
As a member here at Wealthy Affiliate you do not have to pay for hosting. You not only get your site hosted for free but you get the benefit of all the Pay-it-Forward community we all enjoy.
As an online newbie, any time you get stumped there are thousands of people that are willing to help you and give you direction.
You can learn more about getting started for free here.
Here is a good article by Kyle about how to choose a good domain.
Together step by step,
Randy
Recent Comments
2
I am definitely buying my domain. I was on to ...cheapnames.... last night. Put in my site name... cobbleyourhealth.com. available! Yes! €13.49. Great..... next up popped............. .org-.ie- dot something or other at a 60% discount. My question is this. Is there any other benefits. Other than the obvious. Stopping someone else from using my name? Thanks for discussion on this subject. Cheers.
Kyle here at WA says to stay with a .com or a ,org extension for your site. Those are the extensions that Google likes most for ranking your site.
As for preventing someone else buying the same site name with a different extension, say, a .net or a .tv or what ever, not really unless you bought all of those up yourself. However, that wouldn't be unnecessary. It will all depend on the quality of content that is at your site and what keywords you are targeting if you rank better then your competition.
Hope that answers your question.
Together step by step
Randy