If you’re trying to get your web site up and running, at some point you’ve had to think about web hosting and domain registration. Domain registration, of course, is getting your web site registered by contracting with a registrar of your choice, or with a third party reseller.

Also, say if you want an employee to have an email account running on your own email hosting service, you’ll need to invest in this setup and the associated software, such as MS Exchange.

Domain name registration, you’ll need to make some choices along the way, particularly about which registrar you choose to authenticate your domain name. You can, however, switch to a different registrar at a later time. In 2010, the annual cost of domain registration upkeep was between $7.5 to $35.

Of course this is not the whole cost of building your website, as you’ll also have to choose a website hosting service such as a free, shared or reseller or dedicated service. But domain registration is an important first step, at least. Then your registration will last 10 years, after which you’ll have to renew it, maybe with a different registrar if that’s what you choose.

Oh, and don’t forget to do a domain search, to identify if the .com, .net or .org domain name you want has already been taken! More can be found here: mynextmail.com