Enjoy working in the new Domain Manager. More changes are on the horizon, so stay tuned.

Understood around the world as an abbreviation for company, corporation, or commerce, .co domain names are easy to recognize, simple to remember, and flexible to use.

See About .co Domain Names and Registering .co Domain Names for more information.

Registrants can make updates to their contact information in the Domain Control Center. Take a look at the images below to view the update process:

Here are five reasons why your business needs to be online:

1. Expanded Audience: How else can you reach your new customers without breaking the bank? You might be a local business, but with the internet you can expand your brand as far as you want.

2. Constant Availability: In a world of technology, people want information fast. With a website, customers can learn about your services, products, and business without waiting to contact you during normal business hours. Talk about instant gratification!

3. Established Credibility: More often than not, customers want to do business with companies that have a website. It reassures them that they are doing business with a credible source. Don’t drive customers away — use a website to strengthen your brand.

4. Gather Information: Online tools make it possible for you to track who and where your customers are. Determine your target audience, find leads and solidify your place in the market, all through the Web.

5. Stay Current: With a website, you can continually update your inventory, maintain accurate business information, share latest news, and answer customer questions. Your business might not be open 24 hours a day, but your website is. What a great benefit to your customers.

Share Information: If you want customers to learn more about your business when they visit your domain name, then a website is the way to go. On your website you can list contact information, information about your services/products, testimonials, and much more! You can use Website Builder to publish your site quickly.

Contact Customers: Email is a must if you want a custom email address that your friends or customers can use to contact you. Gmail® and Hotmail® addresses are commonly used for personal email and aren’t professional. If you purchase a domain name like coolexample.com, you can have an email like myname@coolexample.com.

Sell Products and Services: If your business sells products, then an eCommerce site is exactly what you need. It lets you collect payments online, share information about your products and services, and track online orders. Just think of how many customers you can reach when you’re available online! Many customers use Quick Shopping Cart® to create their online stores.

Make Money: If you are interested in selling your domain name for a profit, Go Daddy Auctions® can make this possible. Many customers make a significant amount of money by “flipping” domain names. If you think you have something worth selling, give it a shot! You have nothing to lose. Click here to learn more about Go Daddy Auctions.

Visit our Online Essentials article collection to learn about how the Internet works, more ways to use your domain name, and how to promote your business online.

1. Keep it Short and Simple: It’s an obvious strategy, but registering a domain name that is short and easy to remember is key to online success. Finding an available, short domain name is tricky, but when you find one with a few words or characters, the more likely your customers will spell your domain correctly and find your site.

2. Use Various TLDs: A top-level domain name (TLD) is the part of the domain following the “dot,” or the domain extension. The most common TLDs you see are .com, .net, .info, .biz and .org. They describe your company and sometimes give your site regional recognition. Purchasing your domain name along with its various TLD extensions ensures that competitors won’t snag the .net or .info version of your name. Learn about the TLDs we offer and their restrictions here.

3. Don’t Forget Misspelled Versions: It’s easy to misspell domain names. If you know the common misspellings for your domain name, register them! That way, you can forward the misspelled version to your actual site and no customers will be lost.

4. Protect Your Brand: Competitors are vicious, and some might even register domain names similar to your own to distract or pull customers away from you. To avoid this, register domain names that customers might confuse as yours. That way they’ll keep your customers’ business!

5. Think about Geo-Domains: Many businesses are location-specific, which is why registering a geographic domain name can be very beneficial. When you register a domain that has both your business location and a keyword that describes your services, you’re combining the two things customers search use to search on Google: location and service type. See Working with GeoDomainMap for more information.

6. Use Domain Backordering: If you have your eyes on a domain name that’s registered by someone else, give your eyes a rest and let our system monitor the domain name for you! Our backorder system emails you if a domain’s registrant updates the domain’s settings or renews it. See Backordering your Monitored Domain Name for more information.

7. Buy in Bulk: Take advantage of our bulk pricing when you register multiple domain names at once. Give your wallet a break and register those domain names you’ve had your eyes on.

8. Use Long-Term Registration: As more domain names become unavailable each day, the price of domain name registration continually goes up. When you find the perfect domain name for your site, buy it for multiple years! You’ll save money and won’t have to worry about renewal fees for a few years.

9. Try Go Daddy Auctions: Buying and selling domain names is a very profitable business. People who are experts in domain transactions, called domainers, will often sell their domain names via Go Daddy Auctions®. The inventory of available domain names costs more than most but is worth a look! Learn about the options available through Go Daddy Auctions right here.

10. Check out Domain Buy Service: If you’ve found the perfect domain name, but it’s already registered by someone else, don’t give up just yet! Our domain agents can reach out to the domain’s registrant and work to negotiate a deal so you can get the domain name. Find out how you can get the domain name you want.

Many people don’t realize that when you register your business’ domain name, and even common misspellings of that name, you will:

• Keep your customers with you and prevent your competition from registering a domain name that draws visitors away from you
• Promote your business, products and services
• Provide customers with more ways to find you
• Protect your brand and online identity from unsavory parties

Don’t make this online mistake. Even well-known entrepreneurs have missed the opportunity to register their domain name, and and watched someone else snatch it up to create a mock website.

The moral of the story is: if you’re interested in starting a new business, register that domain name! It’s that simple. Domain names are small investments that can save you from a major headache or embarrassment in the future.

But what happens when a visitor mistypes your domain name or stumbles upon your competitor’s similar, but different Web address? Fingers crossed they ditch your competitor and find you, right?

If you have the domain name coolexample.com and your competitor purchases coolexamples.com or coolexample.net, what’s going to keep your potential visitors from going to their site? It’s your company and your name, you need to protect it. Listed below are a few ways you can easily protect your brand. Check them out:

Various TLDs
Finding the perfect, available domain name can be tricky, so when you lock eyes with it, don’t let it go! The same goes for additional TLD (top-level domain) versions of that domain name, too. For instance, if you purchase coolexample.com domain name, you should consider purchasing the .net, .biz, .org, .info and .co versions as well!

Misspelled or Mistyped
It’s easy to misspell or mistype a domain name. And like it or not, it happens all the time. If you know a common misspelling for your domain name or business name, you should purchase it! You and your customers will both appreciate it.

Branding
If your company wants to sell a revolutionary product with a unique name, you should consider registering its own domain name. It would be a total bummer if you lost website traffic or customers went to other sites, even competitors or detractors, when trying to find information about you and your product.

After protecting your brand by investing in various domain names, you can do several things with your new domains, but the most popular option is forwarding, which lets you redirect your visitors to your main site.

Now, go protect your brand!

Previously, we offered only check payments for the Premium Listings you sold on GoDaddy.com. Because we manually processed check payments on a monthly basis, it took up to 45 days to receive payment.

Great news: We sped up the payment process! Instead of waiting to receive a check, you can now select a different payment method and get paid much sooner.

Click here for instructions on adding a payee account and information about the available payment methods.

IMPORTANT: We encourage you to add payee accounts for your Premium Listings by Jan. 1, 2013. Otherwise, your payment method will default to check and incur a $25 processing fee.

Get paid faster and avoid the check processing fee — add a payee account today!

For more information, see our Premium Listings page or What are Premium Listings?