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Article by Sam Martin, PE, CVS, President of OfficeOnWeb, Technologies. 5/1/2000

Domain names - businesses that glimpsed where the net was going two to three years ago had a chance. Today, the availability of your domain name is in doubt. Not because it cannot exist, but because some other business has probably already purchased it. Domain names are being taken at the rate of one every four to five seconds.

I truly believe that a business that does not obtain an Internet presence immediately will significantly regret it within the next three years. One reason for this belief is the dearth of availability of web names. If you don't acquire one soon, you will find it very difficult or costly to obtain one in the future that you would want to use. We have already seen significant evidence of this. First the hotel.com, evergreenlodge.com and other types of names were taken. Most of these went by 1995. Then people started the i- craze. The i- was done to indicate internet business and it was i-hotel.com, i-evergreenlodge.com, and so on. When the i?s ran out, e- became the next craze. Now we are seeing m- for marketing or mall, etc. Thus, if a business doesn't get their name now, they may have to settle for a poor name like xyz-mybuziness.com.

Another reason for this belief is how the web works. You actually obtain higher ratings by search and listing services when you have held your domain name a long time, and have had pages registered for several years. A business obtaining a presence today is automatically at a disadvantage from one that secured a presence more than two years ago. Providers such as ourselves can help mitigate this, but not by a large amount.

How do you register a domain? First, don't do it yourself! You will cause yourself much grief and money in the long run. If you do it yourself, you will find that there are many hidden costs that you never knew where there. The cheap deal you may find will end up being a costly one with lots of add ons when you decide to use it. We have customers that have had to pay large amounts to use the domain they thought they owned, and others had to wait as much as six months to use their registered name. Some have even abandoned their domain as being too hard and costly to use.

Register your domain through a provider or a provider service such as ours. We have a web site specifically for this service at www.mynameonweb.com. The cost is $70 for the initial registration ($35 per year with 2-years required in advance), and you won't have difficulties using the domain you purchase. You might also call us for advice. For one thing, if you cannot get the ".com", we recommend you don't buy the ".net", or ".org". Also, in general, if you can get the ".com" get the other two as well. Exceptions to these rules are present but an expert can tell you why these things will be important to your business. We would be happy to explain the large number of reasons for this, should you wish to call one of our representatives.

May your business always fly with the speed of the electron.

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Did you know that in 1998 more than 95% of OfficeOnWeb's new customers made a profit from their web site within their first year of operation? Sad, but it is true. This compares to less than 20% industry wide ever even breaking even. Why? Professional and directed expertise. This industry average for people leaving their current web service provider is 4% per month! That's nearly 50% over a year! Ours is less than 1% per year. That is because we endeavor to make our clients money and don't just offer a "pat solution" that we know has a low probability of ever making our client a profit. Some of the features that make up the level of success that our clients enjoy are:

 Five redundant backbone connections

 99.999% up time on UNIX servers

 Redundant OC-3 connect to all five backbones

 Full data center services

RAID 5 system with weekly backup of critical systems

 True Web Developer Services

 Large support site for clients and visitors

 Four level or higherencryption on all e-commerce solutions designed by Office On Web (this is the government standard required if Government people are to use a site)

 We NEVER host a commercial site on an access server (that is really bad, but common in dial up providers)

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