When your website is ready to be launched, meaning it's time to get your content online, you've probably already thought about your www.blabla.com. You can get free hosting, and end up with a sub-domain, but really you want a REAL domain, so you check the web, see what offers there are.

One that I've found that is very competent is Hostmonster.com, it's got all the bits and pieces that you'll ever need, but there is a big discount that you can take advantage of!

Many of these webhosting companies (many also offer free domain names) deal in affiliate programs. I've done this myself, so trust me. You can sign up for the affiliate program first, and then get money back when you register your domain name through yourself!

I go back to HostMonster, I've been an affiliate for a while now, and the terms are if anybody signs up through me, any kind of package, I get 65 US dollars. Then it was time for me to register http://ralphvandenberg.com and I registered it through my affiliate link, and yes, I will now be sent a check of $65. This works on most hosting services, and you can just take it as a nice discount to your hosting service. In short, for my 2 years prepaid hosting (plus free domain name) I paid around 140 dollars, but get 65 dollars back, makes it nearly half price!

After this, if you are a web designer, and make websites for other people, you can easily "host" their websites with your own hosting service. It's very cheap to add domain names, with hostmonster only 10 dollars per year, so you could even make money off of that. This keeps you in control, and you can get your own hosting costs covered if you play it wisely.