Domain names. If you’ve got a website, then you need them. Your domain name is your address on the internet, so it’s very important if you want people to be able to find you.

You never own a domain name, you register it in your name for a period of time, allowing you exclusive use, and first option to renew at the end of the term of registration.

.com

The most popular domain names end in .com, they are popular and relatively inexpensive, so if your preferred name is available in .com you should probably register it. .com domain names can be registered for 1 year at a time, or up to 10 years.

All 3, 4 and 5 letter combinations are long gone, as well as most dictionary words, so you’ll usually have a combination of words or your business name.

.com.au

For Australian businesses, it’s vital to have a .com.au domain name. These are available to register only for 2 years at a time, and you must have an ABN and a closely matching business name in order to register one. .com.au domain names are regulated by AUDA (.au Domain Administration).

Pricing

Pricing varies greatly. One of the most popular registrars in Australia is Melbourne IT, and they are just about the most expensive, at around $75 per year. Go Daddy is one of the least expensive domain registrars, with .com’s available at $11 per year, which is very close to wholesale price. Most are in between these extremes.

Your website designer will often have a domain name registration service. They will probably charge their wholesale rate, plus a mark-up to cover their time administering the name on your behalf. If you are not confident managing your own domain names, this is probably your best option.

Ownership

However, make sure that you are entered as the registrant of the domain name. You can check this by using a ‘whois’ service, such as InterNIC for most domain names, and Ausregistry Whois Lookup for .com.au domain names.

Go For It

You can browse for domain names available, and register them on this website.

2010 will hardly be a revolutionary year for the web hosting industry. Nobody can say for sure, but it is hard to expect that there will be radical changes. In a sense, no news is good news. Similarly to almost any other industry, the development of the web hosting industry will be a function of the economy. This means that if the global economy finally manages to get back in shape, the web hosting industry will also benefit. However, even if the recovery of the economy doesn’t happen the way we like, here are some trends which will most certainly dominate in 2010:

• The wide scale adoption of virtualization will continue. Virtualization has already become part of the web hosting industry. Even now top 10 web hosting companies’ use a lot of virtualization but it can be adopted in many more web hosting companies, which are presently not using it. This will lead to cheaper website hosting, especially cheaper VPS hosting.
• SaaS will gain more ground. The SaaS (Software As A Service) model will conquer new territories – there will be more clouds not only because it is cheaper but also because this model is more efficient. Again, this will lead to cheaper website hosting, which is good for customers.
• Shared hosting prices will hit the bottom of $2-3 a month. The trend for cheap web hosting is endless but for some segments, namely shared hosting, the bottom is near. $2-3 a month from a major web host (i.e. a company from the top 10 web hosting companies) is reasonable and even though there are offers for even less, usually lower than that is at the expense of quality.
• Reseller hosting might become more popular. Reseller hosting is still relatively less popular than the other types of hosting but due to its benefits, such as that it could be a great form of cheap web hosting with many more advantages than just shared hosting, reseller hosting now finally stands a chance. However, since the major market for reseller hosting is web design companies and IT consultants, who later resell to their clients, the overall gloomy business climate might make it hard to find end clients to sell to.
• IDN’s will make their debut. One of the really new and exciting things in 2010 is IDN (Internationalized Domain Names). For many web hosting companies, which offer domain name registration in addition to web hosting, these domain names in world languages will become another source of income. Well, IDN’s will hardly bring in more money than the hosting itself but still it is something new for the hosting companies to try.
• Moderate to no investment in new equipment. 2010 will hardly be the year for major capital expenses. Even if a miracle happens and the economy starts its recovery, web hosting companies will be cautious to spend a lot of money on new equipment.
• Mergers and acquisitions. The process of slow enlargement of web hosting companies will continue but still since many of the Top 10 web hosts are small to midsized companies and bigger is not necessarily better, there is no reason to panic for one man shows and small companies with less than 5 or 10 employees in web hosting disappearing.

2010 might be the last year for the global recession but less optimistic predictions say it might not be so. Since web hosting is not a cheap industry, it is not possible to underestimate the money factor, which inevitably will block many projects. Still, even pessimists will agree that 2010 will be a quiet year for the web hosting industry and no major trouble is to be expected.

*This post has been submitted by a guest contributor.