Hey there Sparkbuddies! ✨

Getting your online presence sorted is super important these days. In this post (part of our Founder Resources series, btw), I'm gonna walk you through snagging your own web domain and setting up a professional email that'll make you look legit.

Trust me, nothing says "I mean business" quite like ditching that old Gmail address you made in middle school!

Let's dive in and get you looking pro on the internet, shall we? 🚀

A web domain is how people find your project online. For example, Sparkbuddies’ domain is sparkbuddies.ai.

When you look at a URL in your browser, the web domain is the two words that appear just before the first forward slash (/).

For example:

Securing a web domain aligned with your brand to host your website and email is key to establishing a professional-looking web presence for your project.

To get a web domain, you need to purchase it from a website. The two leading sites are godaddy.com and namecheap.com.

GoDaddy is more user-friendly, while Namecheap is more cost-competitive. Both are good choices. When in doubt, use GoDaddy, as many online tutorials are based on it.

The hard part is finding a web domain that’s both aligned with your brand and affordable. For example, if you are selling used car tires, you may want the usedtires.com domain, but it’s not cheap, as you can see below.

You might consider acquiring myusedcartires.com instead, which is cheaper, or usedtires.ca (where .ca stands for Canada), or tires.cc.

Pro tip: If you want people to trust your brand, stick with the classics like .com, .net, or .org. Or, if your project is specific to a country, go with that country’s web extension (like .ca, .fr, or .sg). If you go for something more unusual like .site, .vip, or .shop, your project might give off major scammer vibes!

When you’re just starting your project, try to keep your web domain spend under 40 USD a year. Since most of the obvious names are probably taken, you’ll need to get creative to score one that’s both catchy and budget-friendly.

Here are two ways to do it:

Once you've picked your perfect domain name, hit that purchase button! 🎉

Boom - you're officially a domain owner! Pretty cool, right?

So the website where you bought your domain (like GoDaddy) is called your "domain host" - they're basically like your domain's home base. They usually handle these things called name servers too, which are like the GPS of the internet, telling other computers where to find all your stuff online.

Quick nerdy side note: You can actually move your name servers to other services (Cloudflare is popular with the tech-savvy crowd), but let's keep things simple for now! Sticking with GoDaddy for both domain hosting and name servers is totally fine for getting started. 💫

To send and receive emails using your shiny new domain, you'll need to hook it up with an email provider. There are quite a few options out there - Google, Microsoft, Hey, and others.

We recommend Google, as it’s the most user-friendly! 💌 You'll feel right at home since it looks just like Gmail, but this time you're getting the grown-up version called Google Workspace. Fancy, right?

Head over to https://workspace.google.com to get started.

The Starter plan is 7 USD a month and will get you everything you need for a professional email setup. If you're planning on living in Google Meet calls, maybe splash out on the Standard plan at 14 USD/month. Pro tip: Snag that 14-day free trial to save some cash! 🎉

Ready to set this up? Let's do it! Here's your step-by-step:

Now comes the slightly techy part - but don't stress, we've got you! You'll need to verify your domain with a TXT record on GoDaddy. Usually, Google's pretty smart and will offer to do this for you (thank goodness! 🙌). But if they don't, here's what you do:

Hop into GoDaddy → Domain → Manage DNS → Add new record, and copy over the info Google gives you. It'll look something like this:

Quick heads up - these changes can take up to an hour to kick in, so maybe grab a coffee while you wait! ☕

Next up, Google's gonna ask about MX records (more DNS stuff, stay with me!). Again, they might handle this automatically with GoDaddy (fingers crossed!). If not, you'll need to:

Almost there! Just breeze through the rest of Google's setup pages (or skip 'em if they're trying to get you to add more users).

BOOM! 🎉 You've got yourself a Google Workspace account!

Pro tip: Create a fresh Chrome profile for this account to keep things organized and avoid accidentally mixing up your personal and professional stuff. See below:

Give those DNS changes some time to do their thing, then test out your new email by sending yourself a message. Look at you, all professional with your branded email! 🌟

Alright, let's recap what you just leveled up on! 🎮

In this guide, you crushed some major online presence goals:

Now you're ready to show up online looking totally legit! Your future customers won't know what hit them. 💫

Keep crushing it, friend! This is just the beginning of your epic online journey. 🚀