Britney Spears cruised the town panty-less "accidentally" flashing her inner treasures to the entire world to reassure herself and us that she's still of significance in the celebrity-social stratum-- motherhood notwithstanding--while her new very-best-friend Paris Hilton, exhibiting unusual modesty, vainly attempted to keep Spear's inner-thigh secrets...well secret, from the rest of the world.

Decades ago, film producer and director Roman Polanski fled the Us to France after running afoul of the law.

Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy.com embarked on a shooting safari in Africa where he did eventually get to send an elephant to the land of Forever-Tusks and the great beyond.

So what has all this got to do with domain name registration and GoDaddy?

Well thing is, somewhere along the line all the aforementioned names produce or have produced great products at some time or another. The point being made here is that it's the great product you should be concerned about not the personality.

Though I truly and honestly can claim to have never been a fan of Ms. Spears (or whatever name she goes by these days) I will sheepishly confess to having found my legs unwittingly reflexively twitching spasmodically one night to a dance song in a bar, only to discover with shock and horror that the chanteuse was none other than Britney "Oops-did-I-really-let-you-see-all-the-way-up-there" Spears.

Anyway back to GoDaddy and domain name registration.

I may not agree with Bob Parsons shooting an elephant, though it should be noted that the elephant would have been killed anyway. Zimbabwe, (I think it was killed in Zimbabwe) have a nationally supported culling system to keep the numbers of elephants within the boundaries of acceptable limit (acceptable from the point-of-view of the most ferocious earthbound predator--Man!).

But whatever my take on his shooting safari or other celebrity shenanigans, here's why I still register my domain names with GoDaddy.com and recommend them as far as domain name registration goes:

1. They are the biggest domain name registrar in the business which means they aren't disappearing anytime soon.

2. Their prices may not be the cheapest but it is still cheap; no point being penny-wise and pound foolish!

3. By registering your domain names with GoDaddy.com you can be confident that you won't have to contend with some pesky lawsuit somewhere down the road because you were inadvertently issued a domain name that apparently belonged to someone else.

4. You can rest easy in the knowledge that you will get ample notification when your domain name registration is expiring.

Be aware that if your domain name expires because your domain registrar never bothered to apprise you of its impending expiration, it could cost you a fortune to get it back. This actually happens more commonly than is acknowledged, most especially with the cheaper domain name registrars. You see there really isn't much money to be made from plain domain name registration.

Why?

Because domain name register services are charged $6.00 per year per domain name by companies such as VeriSign which by the way is the authoritative directory provider for all .com, .net, .cc, and .tv domain names and is solely responsible for handling the backend system for .com names, which currently constitute the greater percentage of the 105 or so million sites registered worldwide.

On top of that domain name providers or registrars have to pay ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)a non-profit fee of 25 cents per name. Consequently those companies charging less than $7.00/year for domain name registration are making no profit whatsoever and are even probably losing money.

So how do domain name registrars contend with this trifling inconvenience?

The bigger domain name registration companies make their real money on backend or added feature sales, such as hosting. The lesser and cheaper registration companies make do by shaving costs by eliminating important features such as automated-expiration-date notification.

Bottom line: As far as GoDaddy is concerned, register your domain name with them but skip the hosting offers and other enticing features!

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About the Author

Ba Kiwanuka is the webmaster of http://www.internetbusinessmart.com