A domain name or website address is a bit like an address for your house it tell people where they can find your website. It is the bit between the www. and the .com.
There are many websites on the internet that provide “free” websites with many pitfall, one of them being your website address ends up being www.yourSite.theirdomain.com usless you want to pay extra for www.yourdomain.com.
There are many options available when it comes to choosing a domain name ranging from what you use between the www and the .com to what you have on the end you may not want the .com.
The first thing you need to do is decide on what you want for your domain name, which will depend greatly on what the purpose of your website. If it is for a business within Australia it is important to find out if that business name is available for more information on this you can check the Australian governments website.
Is it available?
The other thing that is important when choosing your business name and domain name is to check to see if it is available on other platforms a great tool to check this is https://namechk.com/ this website can tell you if the domain is available as well as usernames for various Social Media. I will add in a warning this is not 100% accurate but it is still useful.
How much does it cost?
Another warning here, some companies charge an arm and a leg for domain names. The cost of a domain name can range greatly anywhere from $0.99 to I had someone offer me a domain for $120 and upwards if someone already owns the domain you want. Generally a .com domain name costs around $10 for 1 year and a .com.au cost double that and you have to have it for 2 years. I personally charge double that to cover the cost of my time in setting up the domain. Feel free to get your own domain to save yourself some money but be aware you will have to mess around with the DNS settings etc… this can be painful if you don’t know what you are doing.