Create a Permanent Email Address for Yourself

Are you tired of having to change your email address when your Internet provider goes out of business or gets gobbled up by another provider, or you move, or you just want to change Internet providers?

Informing everyone in your address book that you have changed email addresses doesn’t take a great deal of time, but it is annoying nonetheless. In today’s Shotgun article, I explain how you can create an address that is permanently yours regardless of who you use for an Internet provider.

Any time you type in a www address or visit a www address, you visit that company’s, organization’s or person’s domain. In Internet terms, a domain equates to an online trademark. As long as you pay for it, you retain the right to use its name. The main company for handling domain registrations is Network Solutions.

Network Solutions has a service where you can register a unique domain name and get a permanent email address for less than $2 per month. Here’s how:

1. Visit the Network Solutions web site
2. Click the email tab
3. Select how many email addresses you want and click Add to Cart
   
4. Fill in the form that asks you what domain name (the part of your email address after teh @ symbol)  you would like to use (ex: myfamilyname.com)
5. Choose possible alternative extensions ( .tv, .us, .org, etc)
6. Click the Search button

Network Solutions will go to work searching to see if your chosen domain name is available. If it isn’t, it returns some alternate suggestions. If it is, just follow the rest of the on-screen instructions to pay for and start utilizing your new permanent, personalized address. Additional email addressing using the same domain can also be obtained.

Two other good email hosting and domain registrat sites are NameSecure.com and Register.com that may offer better rates than Network Solutions.

Registering a domain name also gives you the opportunity to start your own web site with the name you registered at any time in the future.One last benefit of having a permanent address is the ease of which you can use almost any email program  made (Outlook Express, Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, etc) and have access to your email via a web mail account.