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Every time you purchase a domain you’re prompted with that all important $2.99 question. Would you like to purchase private registration? “$2.99 seems a little steep. I think I’ll pass.” Those are the words of most domain buyers as they proceed to checkout. I’m guilty of it, and I’m sure most of you are too. In this post I wanted to briefly chat about why or why not you should choose private domain registration.

When you shell out the $2.99 (or whatever the registrar is charging that day) to privately register your domain, you are essential blocking your contact information from being displayed in the whois information. The whois information for a domain can be found at most registrars or at WhoIs.sc. So what are some of the advantages of having a private whois?

• No spam – By blocking your email address and home/business address, you are eliminatig a ton of potential spam. I get stupid letters in the mail from companies asking me to buy their SEO services and what not. I know for a fact where they got my info… whois.
• Competition – With private whois, you won’t have your competitors checking what sites you own. You don’t want your biggest rival checking the whois info for the top 5 results in Google for his keyword only to find out you own all 5 of the sites.
• Privacy – Maybe you just don’t want your name and address all over the internet.

The other option when buying a domain is to skip over private registration and make your domain information public. There are really two reasons I can think of to keep your domain informaiton public.

• Cheap - You’re too cheap or can’t afford to pay the private registration fee.
• Contact - You actually want people to be able to look you up and contact you. A lot of advertisers and website buyers look up whois information to contact owners of websites. If you own a website with no contact button and an advertiser comes along wanting to pay you $300/mo for an ad spot … they will have no way to get ahold of you if your whois info is private.

I’ve sold a domain before simply by someone searching that domains whois and sending me an email. I never would have sold it for as much as I did if I simply listed it on DP. The buyer found the domain he wanted and was set to buy it. If my email address wasn’t public, I never would have made the sale.

In my opinion, everyone should have domain whois set to public. That is unless you’re running an illegal operation or something you don’t want your family to know about. If you’re worried about spam, just set up a PO Box to have mail sent to instead of your home address. Also, set up a special email address you only use for registering domains. You never know what you might miss out on if buyers can’t contact you.