Are you here to learn how to buy a website name? Well, you’re in luck because I’m going to walk you through the process. It’s actually easier than you can imagine!
There are just three basic steps you need to do in order to buy a website name.
- Step #1 – Come up with a name
- Step #2 – Research your name to see if it’s available
- Step #3 – Purchase your name
I’m going to take you through all the steps with screen shots below so you can see exactly how to buy a website name.
How to Buy a Website Name Step #1 – Come up With a Name
OK, I know what you’re thinking. “Of course I need to do that, Christina!” But this is part of the process, and not only that, it’s the trickiest part of the process.
Why? 2 reasons:
- You need to come up with a purpose for your name. What are you using this name for? Are you going to learn how to make money blogging? Do you just want to hold on to a web name for later? Are you going to create an online resume, or blog about your family? What’s the purpose for your name?
- Once you have a purpose for your name, now you need to think of a good name that fits your purpose and see if it’s available. A lot of good web names are taken, so you might have to get a little creative.
For instance, let’s say you want to start a food blog. Maybe you want to create chicken recipes. If I do a domain search, I can see that chickenrecipes.com is taken.
Now I have to get a little creative.
Aha! Chickenreipesforthesoul.com is available!
That’s a pretty long name (although easy to remember), but you get my point. You sometimes have to get creative when you’re coming up with a name.
You can always default to your actual name like I did with this blog. (Assuming it’s not a popular name. Otherwise, your actual name could be taken too!) But again, you have to think about the purpose for your web name.
How to Buy a Website Name Step #2 – Research Your Web Name
I mentioned this above, but once you come up with your web domain name, you’ll need to research it to see if it’s available. Many different sites offer this service.
I do my domain registrations at Wealthy Affiliate because I also have my sites hosted there, so it makes it convenient. And also because they offer free privacy protection. Other companies charge extra for this service.
You can also register a domain at:
- Google Domains
- 1&1.com (I don’t recommend 1and1 though. I had domains here for a long time, but their site is hard to navigate.)
- GoDaddy
- NameCheap
There are tons of sites where you can register a web domain name. I’m going to show you via Wealthy Affiliate just because that’s what I use, but the process will be similar for any registrar.
As mentioned, I first tried chickenrecipes.com.
We can see that it’s not available. There is a list of alternatives that are available that could work. However, I really like .com names because that’s what most people are used to searching for.
Next, I tried to add a little to the name. 
Yes! Success! We found a web name that is available that we can buy.
Just to show you that it’s a similar process with GoDaddy, here’s how that looks.
And we can see that this name is available.
How to Buy a Website Name Step #3 – Make Your Purchase
Now that you have a web domain name, you can easily make a purchase, and you’ll have your own piece of the web!
Again, the processes will be similar no matter where you buy your web name.
You’ll just add to cart.
And then you’ll go through a checkout process.
Fill in all of your details.
And that’s it! Once you finish filling out your details your domain name will be yours, and no one else will be able to purchase it.
The one thing to keep in mind is that your web name needs to be renewed every year. If you let it expire, someone else can swoop in and buy it.
Most places have automatic renewal set up in order to prevent that from happening. If you decide you don’t want your domain name anymore, you can go into your registrar and turn off automatic renewal and it’ll become available for others to purchase again once your year is up.
If you’d like to take your new website name and learn how to turn in into a blog that makes you some money, I recommend affiliate marketing as a way to do that. Here’s my free guide, 4 Steps to Affiliate Success that you can use to guide you through the process.
Do you have any more questions about how to buy a website name? Anything that wasn’t clear? What will you be doing with your domain name? I’d love to hear what your plans are! Leave me comments down below.
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Great post! I think people sometimes get intimidated by anything related to technology, so it’s great that you break down the process so people can see that it’s not so difficult. People can really better their lives if they just take the plunge, and your post will help them get a little bit closer. Thanks again!
I can understand how people could get intimidated by technology. Thankfully, all the REAL technology is done for us. Like, how do they even connect these domain names and know which one goes where? That’s the technology that I have no idea about. lol
Our piece of it is easy. Find a name. Buy it. 🙂
You are right on Christina, coming up with the name is the most important thing. It is basically representing you and your brand. You will stuck with that name for a year and what if you have some traffic coming to your website already? I love how you tell us to be creative 🙂 Thank you for this amazing how to, will share this to my friends.
Cheers!
Yes! You can alway buy another domain if you find a better one. Thankfully they’re pretty inexpensive. However, like you said, if you start to build a site on that domain and traffic starts coming to it and THEN you want to switch your domain? That’s not so easy.
It’s best to come up with a great domain name first. Make sure you’re really happy with it before you start building.
After going through this post I really get to learn a lot from it. I really wish others could too, so am sharing the post. I was amazed how you took your time in detailing out the procedures and the steps involved in picking a name and I think a lot of lost sheep really need this steps. I am a living witness of how lost someone can be in getting names especially when the cool one I really wanted was taken.
Usually your first name will be taken, but keep searching because I still think there are tons of great names available. You just have to add a word or two. Just make sure your domain name is something that’s easy to say and remember.
Hello Christina,
thanks for such informative and descriptive article, I’ve enjoyed reading it and learning some new things today regarding buying website domains. These are very helpful advices and steps which You cover here in Your article, I will be more than sure to follow them when I will decide to start working on my second website. At first I had some problems coming up with the creative idea & name for my website’s domain because I used to significantly overthink it and I tried to squeeze in it as much of different info into the one domain name as possible, but it would come up very long and not catchy at all. However, what happened eventually is that I’ve decided to rather go with more simple & shorter name, but the one which is capable of providing instant info & idea of what my website has to offer nonetheless, without any other unnecessary hustle & confusement, and I am really happy with it.
Keep up the great work Christina and best of luck to You 😉
There are a couple schools of thought on choosing a domain name.
1. Have a short, easy to remember, brandable domain name
2. Have a domain name that matches a specific keyword for a specific niche
I don’t think there’s any wrong choice with either of those. I think it just depends on your goals. The only issues I have with #2 is that those names can be hard to remember and not user-friendly, and you’ll be stuck with the topic of your domain name, no matter what.
For instance, for my site I use my own name for my domain name. Since it’s not specific to any one topic, I could have built my website around any niche I liked. (And that’s exactly what I did!)
Even if you start in one topic and decide you don’t like it, if your domain name isn’t too specific, you can change your topic and it would be totally fine. (As long as you aren’t too deep into creating content on your site.)
Hello Christina!
My sister was looking for help on purchasing her first domain…instead of me trying to explain it to her over the phone, I took to the internet to find easy to follow instructions (she’s not super technical). After searching around I found your 3 step guide…which was by far the easiest to follow, so thank you for that. I’m sure my sister will have no trouble following these simple steps.
So, other advice I can give her when she is trying to pick out her domain? A couple of questions come to mind that she might ask.
Is it ok if the name has a hyphen?
If there is a number in the name do I spell it out or show the number?
I think in general it comes down to finding something that is easy to remember. That if you said the domain name to someone, they would get it right 100% of the time. (Might not be the case if your domain was “super-cats”…people will not remember the hyphen. Or “9livesmatter”…do I type “nine” or “9”)
Anyway, thanks for the post!
I think it’s OK if the name is a hyphen just based on what I see from Google. What I mean is, Google will still rank a name with a hyphen (or names with numbers) as long as your content is good.
However, I think from a user perspective, it’s better to not have hyphens. Instead of Super-Cats, maybe you could use something like ThoseSuperCats, or TheSuperCats, or SuperCatsExtreme. Your name will be a little longer, but easier for someone to remember.
I think the same for numbers too. If you want people to easily remember your site, I would keep it as simple as possible. Like you said, you don’t want them wondering “was that a 9 or a nine in the name?”
I don’t know which version of the number is the best to be honest if you DO need to use a number in your domain. I am thinking the actual number would be better just because it’ll be shorter.
That’s purely speculation and just my opinion. 🙂
Lots of luck to your sister!
Hi Christina Piccoli,
Wow , this is important article for me and also . Thanks for sharing this article with us . I did not know to buy the name of the website but after reading your article, i really understand about how to buy a website name . This article clearly provides all the information about how to do it . I think it is more important for all who is interested this . I will share it with my friends .
Thanks so much for sharing with your friends. I hope it helps them learn ow to buy a website name as well!