What's the best website address?

Now that the prices of internet stuff is falling like a stone, folks are finding out that they can get addresses very cheaply. My recommended site, godaddy.com normally sells .com addresses for $8.99 a year, and runs frequent specials.

Godaddy sells alternate endings (.info, .us, .biz, etc) for even less. Sometimes you can even get a .info site for free. (The company hopes to make money on hosting fees for your account).

But unless you have a very good reason, I recommend using only .com addresses.

The primary reason is that people still have a mental default to think of .com for websites. If you want to use another one, you'll need to emphasize the ending (.info, .us, .biz, or whatever) and you want to be able to emphasize instead the actual address.

The bad news is that -- even on the "lesser" addresses -- almost all of the one-name addresses are gone. It's especially true for .com addresses, but others are taken too.

The good news is that there are lots of very good 2 and 3 word addresses available. With a bit of thinking, you can probably come up with a name that expresses your business or practice well.

At the godaddy.com site, you can search at no charge or obligation to see if a site is available.

The Best and Cheapest Place to Get Your Domain Name and Website

When I first registered this website (networkfornurses.com) it was sometime in 2000, and domain names were not cheap. I don't remember the exact amount, but it cost me around $125 to register the site.

That didn't include hosting or any of the other stuff you need for a site.

Now, websites are cheap and easy to get. And if you have a business or professional endeavor, you need a site. If you don't have one, you are severely handicapped.

The company I use for registration and hosting is godaddy.com Their normal fee for a .com address registration is $8.99. They also run frequent specials, so you may be able to get them even cheaper.

(Amazing to me: some companies still charge $35 or $40 a year for registration. Don't be taken in by such fees. If you don't use godaddy.com, you can still find sites that do it for half of the $40 some of the big guns are charging).

Even better than godaddy's inexpensive prices is their excellent customer service, and helpful personnel. I recommend them highly.