Looking to buy top level domain + Suggestions

[wist]

I think it's finally time to try buying my own top level domain. [I want to put ads on my website to cover the costs of the domain registration].

Does anyone know a good place to purchase domain names?

Most of the sites I've looked at offer domain names as part of a hosting package. I'm also leery of being scammed out of the domain when it comes time to renew it, or to transfer it. Any tips to avoid being scammed, or to avoid getting in tricky situations?
I'm in Canada by the way, and wonder if I should look for some place that sells in Canadian dollars, so I'm not dinged an extra fee in currency conversion every month? Would that be a problem if I bought my domain through a USA company?

What's a good general ball park price for a .com domain? I've seen the one(s) I want going from anywhere between 13$ to 39$ per year (I think).

I've heard I should be looking for ICANN certification on websites (not that a little graphic is even valid proof these days) but is there anything else I should look for?

https://web.easydns.com/10_things_to_know_before_you_register.php This looks likes a handy read, but I'm not sure if it has everything I should know, is dated, or if I even understand everything -- granted, I've only skimmed it so far.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Horror stories to share?

[wist]

Actually, should this be in the knowledge trading forum?

[Xepher]

Don't worry too much about it being on the wrong forum. It's close enough.


As for advice, well.. Yeah, basically, don't pay more than about $15/year (american) for a domain alone. With a "raw" domain, you have to have DNS servers to host it, and then those DNS servers need to point at a webserver and email server that will handle web (and email) traffic for it. Most "packages" often come with at least DNS service, but they up the price on you too. If you're planning to use it for a site here on xepher.net, I provide all the services for free though, so you JUST need the raw domain.

As for where to go... personally, I use godaddy. Why? Because they're big enough that they have to know what they're doing, and they can't just disappear/scam you. I'm not saying their service is great... it's actually kind of potluck. A couple of times I dealt with them and got amazingly good service for a complex issue. Other times, it was typical brain-dead customer service fail. For a raw domain though, you should basically NEVER need service... You have to login once a year to renew and confirm your contact details and that's it. The downside to godaddy is navigating/avoiding their pushy sales stuff. I actually spend more time deleting their "renewal reminder" emails (they start sending them like three months in advance, and when you have a lot of domains...) than I do actually interacting with their site each year. And if you don't know what you're doing during checkout, they try like a hundred times to sell you on those extra services like "whois privacy" and crap like that. It's basically like dealing with wal-mart. It's kind of a crummy place to shop, but you generally know you'll get a good price and that they aren't stealing your credit card info. That said, EasyDNS has had a pretty decent reputation too, though they focus on providing the actual DNS services, and I don't know if they even offer a bare domain registration.

[WriterOfAlicrow]

First of all, I assume you do NOT mean "top level domain" (e.g. ".com", ".net", ".your-top-level-domain"), though hear you CAN actually buy those now...

I'm using GoDaddy for alicrow.com right now, for basically the same reason as Xepher said. Seems pretty nice so far, though I agree they've got a whole bunch of crap they'd like you to buy. For example, $12.49 a MONTH for a Microsoft Office 365 package. Perhaps they make their money from that crap so they can offer good prices on the important stuff (domains).
I'm actually thinking of purchasing some related domains (probably alicrow.net and alicrow.org) now. I saw in an earlier (like, 7 years ago) post that Xepher was regretting not getting xepher.com (by the way, it's available for $1895 (one-time fee), if you still want it). It probably won't be an issue, but considering a domain is about $10-15 a year, there's not much harm in buying some extras. And then fool around with them. Use them for testing or something. I recently built a desktop that I've been ssh-ing into, and remembering the ip address is kind of a pain, so I'll probably use the .net for that.
Anyway, guess I'd recommend GoDaddy and maybe a few variations on your domain just to be safe. You can buy the domain for multiple years at once, so I'd recommend buying it for the next year or two, but not any further. That way you're not stuck with it if it turns out there's a problem with your beautiful PenIsland.com domain name (though I can't fathom what would be wrong with penisland.com, the #1 source for tropical pens!)