What To Do If Your Dream Domain Name Is Taken

When you finally decide upon a domain name, you have made a monumental decision in the future of your website. You have finally figured out the perfect URL, one that will be easy to spell so that your less web-savvy clients and customers can find it easily. Yet, at the same time, this domain name if your dreams is memorable and catchy; it makes an impact, and is not so generic as to make it boring. This is an exciting occasion, indeed.



But it is not over until the fat lady sings, as they say. In this case, the fat lady is the domain name registrar that you need to contact in order to rent or buy your website address. These services allow you to choose the website name of your dreams, and pay a yearly registration fee in order to keep it. Usually this fee is between $10 and $50. It makes sense to shop around for the best deal. But once you get there, there is an important step in the process about which you may have forgotten. You have to check to see if your dream domain name is still available! That’s right, it is possible that someone else has taken the URL upon which you have decided. If your business is called Smith Auto Parts, there is a good chance that whatever version of your name you had decided upon to go between the "www." and the ".com" has already been snagged by another similarly-named business. This is one of those rare in cases in which it might make sense to have a business with a weird name! It would certainly make the process of registration a bit faster.



But now that you have discovered that your dream URL has been taken by someone else, you need to figure out a plan of action so that you can finish creating your website. The first option is to contact the owners of the URL, and see if they are willing to sell you the website address, and for how much. This can be a tricky process of negotiation, because they know that you are somewhat desperate to have this name if you are actually willing to buy it from them! They have the upper hand in the bargaining process, and that is never a good thing. This is when you want to decide on how much your heart is set on that domain name. If you have an established business name, product, or brand, then it might be important to get that URL. But if your situation is a little bit more flexible, you might want to simply move on and look for a URL that is free for the taking. If you can slightly alter the web address, like making it smithautoparts.com instead of smithparts.com, that might be worth the savings. The key here is to make sure that you are not changing the domain name to the point where it is going to be confusing for your customers and clients.



Check here for available domain names. Network Solutions will help you find the perfect URL for your site!