How to Choose a Domain Name for a Web Site

Video Transcript

"Hello. My name is Luis Estrada, and I am a software developer. In this clip I'll show you how to choose a domain name for a website. This is a very important consideration, whether you rent space on a web server or use free hosting in a blog. Your website's domain name is what gives potential customers an idea of what your website is all about, before they even visit it. When people use a search engine to find products or services to consume, the search engine provides the title of your web page, a description of the website and the domain name at the bottom. The title and the description are things that you can change at any time and they can contain just about anything that you want. The domain name is the address that your users will have to remember in order to return to your web site. You should try to choose a domain name that is easy to remember and that is relevant to the product or services that you commercialize. A good domain name is short and uses a common word, avoiding the possibility of misspelling it. There are many types of domain names. They're, they are called TLD for Top Level Domain. The most popular ones include the dot com domain. This is by far the most popular TLD in the world. The dot com was originally intended as the abbreviation of the word commercial. Meaning that if you choose a dot com domain, you would sell products or services on your website. Today, even if you do not sell anything on your website, the dot com remains the most popular choice among TLDs. The dot net was originally intended for use by Internet service providers. Networking and Internet infrastructure companies in general. Today, the dot net is the second best option when a dot com name is already taken. The dot org is a popular choice for non profit organizations. Also many companies use this TLD to showcase their charitable activities. The dot tv domain was originally destined as the country code top level domain for the island of Tuvalu. But since it is spelled as the abbreviation of the word television, many websites started to use them as a way of saying that they feature content related to television and entertainment, or to give the notion that the website features multimedia content like video broadcasting. These are the most important ones and are called generic TLDs. Also there are country level domains. For example, the dot us for the United States. The dot ca for Canada. The dot mx for Mexico, etcetera. Choose carefully a TLD from any of these options. Each TLD has a different price ranging from a dollar fifty to a hundred and twenty dollars. In the next video, I will show you how to buy any of these domain names. I'm Luis Estrada and I've just showed you how to make money with one of your websites."