Discussing buying a domain name or two can be a sore point for a few people. For some, buying domain names is like buying shoes, or bags, or gadgets, depending on what you’re most into – cause some people are also into buying domain names, for various reasons, so they can really go nuts buying domains!
Like, some people buy domain names for investing. If you can come up with a great name, register it and try to flip it later when somebody needs it for a business idea or a product.
Or maybe you’re into niche websites so you need a domain name relevant to your niche for which you’re building a niche site to sell a product or earn money on advertising.
What you will definitely need, no matter what your motivation for buying, is a good domain name search provider that’s easy and fast to use and will provide you with a complete list of the most popular top level domains such as .com, .net, .org and many, many more. And personally, I prefer one that doesn’t try to sell me hundreds of extra “features” before I can check-out. In most cases, I just want to buy the domain and get it over with.
So what top level domain name should you buy?
TLD, top level domain, is the “.com”-part of a domain, also .net, .org., .gov and hundreds of other TLD’s out there. “.com” is the most used TLD so it can be hard to find a good name with .com unless you’re creative and/or come up with a new combination or way to spell something. Of course you can also get lucky and buy a domain name that expires because somebody forgets to renew it. Otherwise you’ll have to pay up to get the domain name you want, if the current owner wants to sell it, that is.
Often you might have to go with a different TLD, perhaps “.net” or “.org”. Back in the days, “.org” was intended for organizations. Today, it doesn’t really matter. But if your site is somewhat aimed towards a local market, you really should consider aiming your domain search at getting a local TLD such as “.se” for Sweden or “.de” for German websites, depending on your country and language of your website. It will look better for your visitors and customers and there’s a chance for better rankings in the local search engines (Google Sweden and Google Germany) by using a local domain name as well.