Some other registration sites with good prices are:

http://www.budgetregister.com 14.99 per year http://www.dnscentral.com 15.00 per year http://www.123domains.com 13.99 per year http://www.000domains.com 13.50 per year http://www.domaininvestigator.com 20.00 per year http://www.joker.com 12.00 per year

For a complete list of alternatives go to http://www.newregistrars.com/registrars.html

If you have someone else register name for you, like your host, make your name is put down as owner and administrative contact. The only place host's name should go is under "technical contact." If they set themselves up as owner they will then have complete control of your domain, which could be a nightmare down road if you ever decide to change hosts. Trust me on this, I've seen it happen.

For help choosing a name try NameBoy http://www.nameboy.com It works great for generating new ideas.

Registering a domain is not difficult. When you're ready to do it, make sure you shop around and compare prices and features. You'll be glad you did!

In no event shall total unexpired term of a registration exceed ten (10) years.

So there you have it folks, right from ICANN themselves. If you have a lot of domain names - like me - you may want to keep them reserved one a year at a time, to keep your costs down. Or, if you have a company name not likely to be sold in future, you can register it for 10 years at a big savings off of regular price.

After digging and digging around, at several ICANN accredited registrars, I was hard pressed to find even one that allowed anything but old two year registrations. I did finally find one Canadian company that does one to ten year registrations (partnered with Melbourne IT an ICANN accredited registrar). The fact that they have a shopping cart to allow multiple registrations and a real time database is just icing on cake.

https://secure.kudosnet.com/domain/k2/r.dmc/

With 21 domain names to register, I'm happy to say that I saved over $600 US by being able to register them for a single year, instead of two, and I submitted them all with a single mouse click.