| 🎯 What’s the goal? Buy and control your domain name. | ⚠️ Why does it matter? Because you want to build authority on a domain of your control and because any respectable business builds its brand identity on a unique domain. |
| 🏁 What’s the result? Own a unique domain name that reflects your brand or its content. | ⌚ When do you do this? Ideally, as soon you put your website online, only once. |
| ✅ Any special requirements?GoDaddy Account & Credit Card | 🙋♂️Who should do it? The owner of the website/company. |
⏳ How long will this take? about 10 minutes
Let’s get started, in 10-min you’ll be the owner your own domain.
Environment setup:
- We recommend that you use Google Chrome browser to navigate the web,
- You will need a credit or debit card,
Choosing Top-Level Domain and the price
- First, go to godaddy.com.
- Click on the “Find Your Domain” banner.
- Now you should search for the perfect domain name (your future website name), and more importantly, find out what’s available.
Depending on your region, there will be two different search bars.
The first version appears as “Start your .com domain search now”.
Simply enter your desired domain name and press “Go”.
The second one will be a search bar with “Find your perfect domain…” on the homepage. Enter your desired domain name and press on the search button (magnifying glass).
GoDaddy.com would let you know if a similar domain name is available if you searched the name that is already taken. You can choose to go with the name provided by Godaddy.com or try to search for another name.
- After you choose the available domain name, you will be presented with a price offer for 1st year with the “.com” domain. If there is any special offer for buying more domains or buy one domain for longer, there will be the message below.
- Click on “question mark” so you can check how much you will pay after one year.
- Add chosen domain to cart by clicking on “Add to Cart”.
- In the next window, you can choose a security plan for your domain for added protection. By clicking on “question marks” (1) you can review what is contained in each plan – note that you will need to pay for any protection plan. For this guide, I choose “No Thanks” (2). You can check other SOPs for setting protection for your website.
- In the next window, uncheck the box next to “Start your website for FREE”. We only want to buy a domain name. For setting your website, please check our other SOPs.
- It is up to you if you want to pay for a custom email address that matches your domain, in our next SOP we’ll recommend to use G-Suite for your domain.
- Click on “Continue to Cart”.
Logging in & finalizing the transaction
- The next page will be split into two sections. You should start with the right side and select for how many years you want to pay for your domain (after that period, your subscription will be renewed for a regular price. The “2 Years” discount might be worth considering (1). At the bottom right corner, you will see the “Subtotal” cost for your domain (2).
- Next, move to the left side of the screen and choose to sign-in if you have a Gmail/G-Suite account. We highly recommend you to use this sign-in method.
- After signing in, you need to enter your billing information.
- First, you need to choose your “Country/Region” and also enter your “First Name” and “Last Name”. After that, enter your “Primary Phone” number.
- Continue filling out the brackets with your “Address”, “Postal code”, “State” and “City”.
- The last two positions are not required, but you can fill them in with your “Organization” name and with your “Tax ID” if you have one.
- Click on “Save”.
- In the “Payment” section, enter your Debit or Credit Card data.
- After that, click on “Save”.
- Now move to the right side of the screen and click on “Complete Purchase”.
- Now you should see the confirmation for your payment…
- … and a welcoming message for your newly bought domain.
Verifying your email & checking your products
- At the upper right corner of the page, click on the dropdown menu and then click on “My Products”.
- The message will be displayed that you need to verify your email address.
- Leave GoDaddy Account page open, then go check your email in another tab, and you should find mail from “GoDaddy” titled: “Action required: Please verify your email address”.
- Open it and press on “Verify Email Now”.
- You should see that verification is completed.
- Now refresh “GoDaddy Account Page”.
- Now you will be able to see the domain you just bought.
Congratulations, you just bought a unique domain name for your site!
Now it’s time to start building authority on your new domain.
