Once you’ve decided to get your business started online – one of the first things you’ll need is your domain name and hosting.

Here’s an example of how these things relate to one another: your hosting is like your house and your domain name is like your mailbox.  In other words, the meat, the property is sitting on your hosting, but you don’t get mail (traffic) without your domain name.

So what does that mean, right?

Here’s the bottom line for domain names:

OWN your OWN domain name!  Don’t let some third party go about being the “registering agent”.  If you can’t control your domain and business get’s cranking online, you may find yourself in a situation where you are paying through the ears just to keep the domain name active and allowing traffic to your hosting.  If you aren’t sure whether or not you own your own domain name – you can always look up the records through any “whois” service.

Be sure, when you register your own domain name, that you never, ever pay more than $10 per year.  If you are, you’re making a sore mistake for a false sense of security.  That’s just huge margins in someone’s pocket.

Moving along to hosting… now a rule of thumb for hosting is this:

If you are just hosting ONE website (regardless of how many domain names are pointing to it) never pay more than $5 per month.  If you are looking to have a static IP or host multiple websites on the same hosting account (like having 5 acres with 4 houses, etc.) then keep the price under $10 per month.

Domains and Hosting are an incredibly cheap resource these days and if you are unsure of where to do, you can always use the resource I setup years ago for my clients: TUPOS Domains

Once you have your domain and hosting, it’s just a matter of getting your website/blog/or whatever you’re planning, live!

If you require assistance with any of your web contact TUPOS

Joshua Jones