AMERICANS GET BLASTED with advertising gimmicks each and every day. Some of those messages stick but most messages leave the viewers memory almost immediately. It is estimated that this year, the average consumer will see or hear 1 million marketing messages - that's almost 3,000 per day. No human can remember 3,000 messages per day. In fact try to recall one commercial you saw on television last night. You probably can't because television is so cluttered - and the web is no different. Commercial web sites are popping up all over the Internet to the tune of 1,000 new sites per day. Consumers are gaining web access to the tune of 6,000 new Internet users per day. There are 45 million people with web access and 1.5 million commercial web sites. That averages 30 people per site.

Companies can no longer forget about their web sites after they are developed. Simply hosting a site does not give the company any bang for the buck. Marketing the site in order to draw traffic is a requirement for successful web sites at this day and age. And choosing the right name for your site is the first step.

Names for web sites are called "domain names". InterNIC, the domain name registration authority of the Internet, maintains a database of all domain names. Anyone can register a domain name. Your web design firm should offer to do it for you, but InterNIC routinely takes orders from the general public. You will need some technical information, and therefore it is easier to have a firm register a name for you. You can search the WHOIS database at InterNIC's web site anytime to see if the name you want is still available. Extensions such as ".com" and ".org", etc. are in theory reserved for the type of organization applying for the domain name. The most common, and also the most valuable extension is ".com", which represents "commercial" and is the default extension for most new browsers. Non-profit organizations and civic clubs should try to obtain ".org" extensions since most web surfers know to use ".org" to find such types of organizations. The ".net" extension was originally reserved for ISP's (Internet Service Providers) but has since been opened up for other types of businesses. Finally, ".gov" and ".edu" are still reserved for government agencies and educational institutes respectively. InterNIC has plans to institute other extensions in the future, in effort to make more domain names available.

If you are committed to making a web site, then you should be committed to getting a decent name for it. It costs $70.00 to buy a name, and $35.00 every year to renew the name, and it's worth every penny. Be wary of free web services like GeoCities, TriPod or CitySearch because you'll quickly find yourself very limited in terms of marketing options for the site. These little-to-no-money-hosting operations are good for personal web sites, where you host your family photos and favorite recipes. They do not, however, portray a professional operation for your commercial account, mainly because many Internet search engines put up blocks to keep you from registering these sites within their search facilities, making marketing efforts difficult to say the least.

Most importantly, having your own domain name makes it easier for people to remember when they go to surf the net, and have you ever tried to fit a CitySearch web address on to a business card? It can't really be done. The typical CitySearch web address looks something like this:

http://www.citysearch11.com/E/V/RDUNC/0003/32/07/12.html

How many people do you know that could remember that web address well enough to type it in to their location bars in the web browsers to access the site? Not many. Not only is it long, it's non-descript. If you saw that web address you would have no way of knowing if it was a site for Certified Public Accountants, a restaurant, a travel agency, or a Madonna tribute site.

The bottom line - you get what you pay for, and with over 1.5 million commercial web sites on the Internet, it's worth the $70.00 to secure a name that is both short and meaningful to your potential clients-- It fits on your business card, it looks more professional, people can remember it and find it on the web, and you don't limit your marketing options.

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