Get A Domain & Email For Your Investing Business P2

Picking a name for your investing business was discussed in Part 1. Part 2 will cover getting a domain and company email for your investing business.

STEP 2: Getting A Domain And Company Email For Your Real Estate Investing Business.

The 2 Main Reasons For Buying Your Domain Is So:

1) You have an online address to for your real estate investing business website

2) You can host a professional business email account and stop using a yahoo or gmail account.

Even if you aren't setting up your website right away, purchasing the domain is step in the right direction towards building your new business. Consistency through your company name, website domain and the email account is very important to come across as professional.

GoDaddy.com is where I purchase all of my domains. Their site will allow you to check to see if your ideas/business names are available. I have had very good experience with GoDaddy, I have called their customer service line before and they always answer my questions thoroughly and have friendly representatives.

To purchase a domain, start at GoDaddy's homepage, enter the domain you want and be sure it is available. You will have the option to purchase the domain with a number of suffixes like.com, .org, .biz, .info and probably some you have never even heard of. I have read many theories about whether or not you need to purchase all of the suffixes, such as you may want to use the different domains later for different services your business offers, also that by purchasing more of them can give you more search engine power, and that you want to be sure the other suffixes are not purchased by someone else someday.

I personally have purchased the .biz, .info and maybe even a .org suffixes but not all of them. Also, you will see that the different suffixes are sold at different prices. You will get prompted to look at discounted bulk pricing, but I just advise you to not spend more than you need to right now.

As you go to the domain registration page – here are a couple things to highlight:

• You can opt to pay for your domain registration for different lengths of time. I personally choose 3 years for my .com domain and select 1 year for the other suffixes. (Click “View & Edit All Domains”) I choose 3 years because I have read that it can impact the search engines ability to consider the domain a serious presence as opposed to a one time quick purchase from someone that may just want to sell off the domain. You will receive a notification as your domain registration is about to expire so I don't want to pay more upfront than I need to – I can always renew the 1 year suffixes down the road.
• There is an upsell option for your domain to be certified – I have never purchased that option because I haven't found the need to put that certification seal on my sites. I see how it makes people feel more comfortable if they are purchasing something from the site, it's good to know that anyplace you put your credit card information it is legit but you may not be selling anything from you real estate investing business site. GoDaddy has their certification stamp at the bottom of their site if you want an example.
• Under Privacy – “Private Registration” is a necessary upsell that is worth your money. When someone searches for your domain, if private registration is not selected, anyone will be able to view your name, home address and contact information associated with that domain. You pay for private registration for the same duration of the domain registration so it ends up being a couple bucks a month – very worth it to keep that information confidential.
• Professional company email – What I mean by this is setting up email addresses like [email protected] –instead of tomwholesalepropert[email protected], which automatically makes your business look more polished and professional. To set up professional company email, you can go about this in one of 2 ways. For each domain you purchase, you GoDaddy gives you “1 email account credit”. So for example, today, we are purchasing 3 domains, so you will have the ability to create 3 email addresses at no additional charge. As you can see here under the “Activate Domain” section, you are prompted for the email upsell. This is the other way to get your professional company email addresses. If you know already that you will need more accounts than domains you are buying then you can purchase email hosting for 5 accounts with 2GB of storage for $2.49 a month. I recommend you do not purchase the email option today because again, why spend more than you have to. You can always upgrade your accounts or buy more later.

Then you will complete your checkout.

Now, once you have paid for your domains, here is how you access the email credits:

Click on the “My Account” along the top and there will be a left sidebar. On that left sidebar, you will see “Email,” click on that and you will see how many email account credits you have. The number of credits is the same as the number of domains you purchased because again, you get 1 free email account per domain. You will click “use credit” and it will prompt you to set up your accounts- your first name, perhaps you do an “[email protected]____” account. To access the account, you can simply log into GoDaddy and click “Check my webmail” and you access this new inbox just like you would log into a gmail account for example through Google.

If you have someone with a little advanced knowledge on email forwarding, you can either have this email account forwarded into your outlook or other email application that you use so you don't have to login through GoDaddy. If you have any trouble with this, please call the friendly GoDaddy customer service representatives I referred to earlier. It's not too tricky to have a more professional email set-up!

Your domains will stay in your account on GoDaddy and as you move towards setting up a website, you have all you need to hand off to a developer or website host you choose to work with in the near future.

It is a much better plan to have a polished email account as it gives you and your business more credibility.