WHAT IS DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION ?
Have you been to the Nigeria Corporate Affairs Commission to register a business name? If you have, you will observe that on the process of registering your business name, you will be required to submit the business name you wish to register to the person in charge for verification. If after verification they found out that someone else has already taken the name you chose for business, you will be asked to choose another name. You will continue to choose again and again until you find a name, which no one else has used. And any name you chose for your business is unique. Unique in the sense that no other business in Nigeria can use the name for business.
The same is applicable to Internet domain name registration.
Domain name is also called URL - Universal or Unique Resource Locator. The body in charge of registering domain names on the Internet is INTERNIC. Registering a domain name does not mean having a website, rather a means of securing your family name or business name, which is very important.
Once a name is registered on the Internet, nobody, yes nobody, not even President of America can have it. It has to be unique, so that when someone sees it, it reflects you or your business. By the time you have your own website, if someone goes to that domain name, he is carried to that web site only and not to some other web site. Your domain name carries your ownership details. In simple terms, it means, anyone with an Internet connection, anywhere in the world can use it to know the ownership details (entered by you at the time of application for registration). Your children might want to make a generational website using your name (i.e.if someone else has not yet registered it), where your future generation can go and view your family tree.
You can register your domain name only in .com (dot com), you can also opt for a .net (dot net), or .org (dot org). Dot nets are supposed to be for ISP's and networks and .Orgs are supposed to be for Organizations like WHO, NGOs, however, there are no checks to stop this, so, if you want, you can register them. All of them are renewable after one year.
Another, new option is the seven new Top Level Domain Name extensions recently introduced, of them, .biz (dot biz), .info(dot info) and .name (dot name), are particularly interesting and lucrative. There is no problem with them. While they may be bit costly to register, the prices will fall drastically to firm up nearby .com names and renewal will be cheap. There are very few, practically none restrictions on them and registration is as easy as a dot COM domain name registration
Your domain name should ideally reflect your identity or purpose. So, if your business is TONIK ALLUMINIUM STORES, Nigeria and you sell Aluminum sheets, you might like to go for TonikAlluminium.com or TonikAlluminiumNig.com.
HOW DO YOU REGISTER A DOMAIN NAME?
All you need to do to register a domain name is to visit websites that offer domain name registration service. There are thousands of them on the website. To get those websites, click here to check. On the website, you will find a diagonal box, type in the domain name you wish to register (e.g. if you want to register kunle.com, type kunle in the box) and then select the domain server you wish to use (e.g. .com, .net, .org, .info, etc) then enter key on your key board. If the result shown is "Unavailable", know that someone else has already registered the domain name. If the result is "Available" know that it has not been registered.
If the domain name you wish to use is already registered, then you can chose a related name. You may decide to remove any alphabet, add underscore, add a number, etc so as to register that particular name. Once you find a name you wish to use, then you pay your fee and have the name registered for you. The cost of registering a domain names on the Internet varies. Companies on the Internet charges $10 to $35 per annum to register a domain name. There are some that charges lesser too. We are ANTLEAD charge N2,500 to have your domain name registered for you.
THE HIGH RISK OF NOT REGISTERING YOUR NAME ON THE INTERNET:
If you don’t register your name or business name on the internet today, some other person will take it and you may pay dearly to get it back. Its not new, some other businesses have paid heavily to get back their business names. You might just be the next victim.
NOW HERE IS THE REAL RECENT SHOCKING DISCOVERY
Many people now engage in the business of registering peoples’ names and business names as domain names and holding on to the particulars pending when the company is ready to register it. What they do afterwards us to sell the domain name to the companies at a very outrageous price. This deal is very legal and is really thriving for people online. Believe it or not, in less than 12 months from now, it will be rampant in Nigeria.
Here are some company's domain names registered by other people and the prices they were sold to each of the companies involved.
business.com Sold for--------------------- $7.5 million
asseenonTV.com Sold for---------------- $5 million
altavista.com Sold for--------------------- $3.3 million
loans.com Sold for------------------------- $3 million
autos.com Sold for-------------------------- $2.2 million
wallstreet.com Sold for-------------------- $1.03 million
forsalebyowner.com Sold for-------------- $835,000
drugs.com Sold for-------------------------- $823,456
cinema.com Sold for------------------------ $700,000
art.com Sold for----------------------------- $450,000
engineering.org Sold for------------------- $198,895
fruits.com Sold for --------------------------$160,000
perfect.com Sold for------------------------ $94,000
AND LOTS MORE.
Presently (as at the time of this writing), antlead.com, which is my company name is selling for $250. Someone hijacked it from me and registered it immediately. Thank God I was able to quickly get the dot net.
In order for you to avoid paying huge sum of money to strangers to get back your name or business names, I strongly advice you register it immediately.
Don’t keep it till tomorrow for it might be too late.
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