Want to buy a domain for sale? Not sure where to look? Well, I've got some answers for you. Having your own domain name is step one to having a successful internet business. Many people mistakenly think that it's ok to go with the free services such as Yahoo, WordPress or Blogger. If you're only building a blog so you can keep in touch with family or friends than that's a good way to go about it, but if you're trying to make money online there are several reasons why that isn't the best course of action.

For one thing, when you use the free services you don't own anything. You are completely at the mercy of the company, and their policies. If they decide they don't like something in your blog they can pull the plug, and they don't have to warn you or give you an explanation. You don't want to spend weeks, months or years building up a successful business to just wake up one day and find that your website has been offline.

The second thing is that you want to brand yourself. As you build your business you want to gain name recognition. This is a very important element to any successful business and without your own domain name it's virtually impossible. If you are using free services it just makes you look unprofessional, this is especially bad if you're trying to build yourself up as a teacher in a certain field.

Now that I've convinced you that you need to invest in your own domain names, you need to know how to pick the best name and where to buy one. For most people the best way to pick out a good domain name is to start with keyword research. Pick a list of highly searched keywords in your niche market and then try to get those exact keywords as domain names.

For example, if your niche is dog training and you find a great keyword: Quick and easy dog training. Than you would try to get QuickAndEasyDogTraining.com as your domain name. You do want to keep the domain name around 3 or 4 words max, but with a domain name like this you will get a ton of free traffic since your domain name is the exact search term people are looking for.

Now that you've decided on what your domain names should be you can go to places like GoDaddy.com or DomainCheapsters.com and do a search to see if the domain name you want is available. Many times it won't be, that's why it's important to have quite a long list of possible names. I personally recommend using other extensions than just a .com. I've found that I have just as good luck with a .net or .org (it can also be easier to get one of these extensions). If you buy just one domain name at a time for a one year period it's usually around $10 a year. You can get a discount if you buy more than one domain name at a time or if you buy it for several years in advance.

I personally don't buy my domain names for more than a year at a time at first, true you'll have to renew it in a year (the company you bought it from will let you know when it needs to be renewed) but why pay for several years for a domain name that might not be a moneymaker? I personally like to pay for one year until I know whether or not I've found a moneymaking niche, when I know I've got a profitable niche on my hands I'll pay for several years in advance.

There you go, everything you need to know when it comes time to find a domain for sale. Having your own domain name is one of the most important steps in building a profitable online empire.