What would you recommend is a "good" name? Are there any "do's" and "don'ts"?

The first thing is to make sure (or at least try) and get one that ends in a .com. This is the most general and most often typed URL suffix. .ORG is more for organizations and if all else fails, you can default by using .NET.

Always remember that most browsers and people will always default to the .com version. For example, if you were to type in "yahoo" into your browser, yahoo.com will come up before yahoo.net. So, if you got a .net, chances are that your competition's .com URL will come up first (not good)!

Next, try to pick a marketing type of name. This is a marketing business and you should try to pick a name that will give off the idea of "marketing" to your customers.

For example, our site's URL is CashFlowMarketing.com. If I was to sell software only, I might get CashFlowSoftware.com. Or if I was an advertising company or sold products having to do mainly with advertising, I might get CashFlowAdvertising.com (by the way, I own the above names precisely for reasons stated above!)

See, the beauty about CashFlowMarketing is that it's general enough that I can have all sorts of products and services having to do with marketing. But if I chose a name that was very specific, I would limit myself.

Of course, the best thing you should do is get ALL the names that would remotely work for your business. The probably of waiting on getting a name is that someone will probably (and most definitely) buy the name in the very near future and you're going to hate yourself for it! (this has already happened to me twice - the name was available, I waited and a week later, someone bought it!)

DON'T Do This...

One thing you don't want to do is get a URL named after yourself (i.e. samrobbins.com)... unless the site is going to be about you, then forget that idea. It might be fine if you wanted your friends and family to come to your johndoe.com site (for family pictures, directions, or whatever), but NOT for business.

DO This...

The next thing you want to do is also buy out names that are similar to your site. For example, if I have CashFlowMarketing.com, I should have bought CashFlowMarketing.NET as well (which I didn't and someone else bought it!).

You may also want to get hyphenated words as well. Something like Cash-Flow-Marketing.com. Be creative and have some fun - it'll pay off later (I own over 210 names now).

Great advise! Okay, how much is all this going to cost me? How much does it cost to buy or "register" a domain name?

This cost is about $15-$30 a year. If you think about it, that's a REAL bargain! Because it's so cheap is why I recommend you register/buy a few domain names for future use (before someone else snatches them up!)

Go ahead and do a domain search with GoDaddy ... it only costs about $10 a year (real cheap)!

Where and how do I register my domain name?... and should I do this BEFORE I get my hosting?

As stated above, just do a domain search with GoDaddy and get your names.

And if you are ready to start your hosting, they are also a great company ... so you can get your domain and start hosting all at once.

Either way, you first have to decide on a name, so sit down and start brainstorming and then check for the availability.