At some point you may want to create an Internet presence for your business or possibly it's an online only business as a merchant or affiliate. Either is a great business model. More and more shoppers are looking to the Internet for information and to purchase products. Without a online presences you could be missing a fair amount of business and a very easy way to expand your businesses reach.

The basics for taking a business online are pretty much the same regardless of business model. There may be some differences in bandwidth requirements or other technical abilities for a particular business model and we'll try to address those difference here also. At the very least each business model will require a domain, hosting account and web page design.

Most online businesses will fall mainly into 3 categories there are variations and combinations but we won't discuss that here:

- Brick and mortar business creating an online presence - Online only merchants - Affiliate websites

The following list are needs that all 3 groups have in common major difference in requirements are noted:

Domain Name

Every business needs a name and in case you didn't know, the domain name is the part after the "www." and before the ".com" (or ,org. or .whatever). The important thing is that the domain name should reflect the type of business that you are running. Unfortunately at this point in time a lot of the great domain names have been taken, however a lot of them are auctioned or sold by different services like Afternic or Sedo . Be prepared to spend a lot on a popular name. Ideally if you have a Brick and Mortar business you would want your domain name to match the name of your business, unfortunately this isn't always possible as someone else may have already registered the name. If the name of your business is trademarked you may have a recourse in recouping the domain name. See here for additional information The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

The easiest way to find out if a domain name is available is to type it in the address bar of your browser and see what happens. If you reach a "Page Not Found" there is a good chance that the domain is available. In some cases you'll end up on a "parked domain" which simply means that someone has already registered that domain name but hasn't developed a web site for it yet. Often these domains are for sale and sales or contact information should be somewhere on the page. You can also use Google or one of the other search engines to search for www.domainname.com to see what comes up in the search results, I usually use both methods if one doesn't find any results.

Whatever you do DO NOT USE THE DOMAIN SEARCH TOOLS PROVIDED BY THE DOMAIN REGISTRARS OR HOSTING COMPANIES until your are absolutely ready to register the domain name. These are often monitored by unscrupulous individuals and organizations that immediately reserve domain names that are searched for. You'll know that this has happened when you search for a domain name, see that's it's available perform another search and then return to your original search and the name is no longer available. This usually means that a wholesale registrar just reserved that domain name, they can reserve a name and hold it for a period of time without actually purchasing the domain. Now if you still want that domain you have to purchase it from them at in inflated price.

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