Getting your own domain for business or personal use is very easy and relatively inexpensive — about $10 a year. You can pay the initial yearly registration fee or pay for up to 10 years in advance at any time. Ric Wallace recommends people pay for 5 or 6 years at time of registering. If money is an issue, a year at a time is another option.

He likes to refer people to 10Dollar.ca as their system is simple, reliable and at a good price. Other services like GoDaddy make you jump through hoops getting into your control panel every time and send you a lot of emails of their promotions. Ric Wallace has used them in the past but have pulled all domains away from them.

Choosing a domain name is a very important process; it will have a direct impact on how people visit your site online. You want a domain that is short, easy to remember, and without creative spelling, so that people can find it without difficulty.
WinBig.ca is a simple, easy to remember, and is reflective of the lotteries promoted on the site. Having a domain with a .CA extension helps promote it as Canadian content. The domain is registered through 10Dollar.ca.

Stay away from domains that infringe on the copyrighted name of an already existing company or trademark.

This helps if people are searching for the site and can’t quite remember the site domain name. More important is blocking others from capitalizing on the site’s traffic and name. Having an offensive adult content website coming up when someone misspells your domain name can be very damaging.

A domain is like a personalized license plate for a car. Website hosting is where the files that make up your site reside. When someone types in your domain or uses a search engine they are directed to your website. Think of it as your electronic house or address on the internet.

A website or blog can act as an electronic store front, selling products, offering customer support, manuals, instructions videos, etc. A website or blog can even be just a simply online diary, telling your story or whatever what you want to share online.

All businesses today need a domain and an online presence to be competitive. Years ago we did a site for a fire restoration company and their main concern was to have a 3.5 minute video online. They calculated the cost to mail out a video, cost of the VHS tape, packaging , postage and employee time was about $30 per video. Referring people to their site instead of mailing out 300 videos could be a cost savings of $9,000+ a year. Another customer has their catalogue of their wood trim profiles online. In the past they would spend thousands on printing and mailing their catalogue. Potential customers now can print out out their own catalogue using their paper and ink or toner at a cost savings to the business that produced the catalogue.