Ever go to a function where they're going to be drawing for prizes later? When you come in, they give you a ticket stub and keep the other half for themselves. Your stub has a unique number on it. The part they kept has that same number on it.

When it's time for the prizes, they stir up all the tickets and pull one out. And did you win? How can they know for sure? Simple.

They read that unique number out and you jump! That's how they know who you are.

In fact, they can find you in the middle of the entire crowd, and they don't need to know your name, or your face, or anything about you. As long as you jump up when they call out that unique number, they can find you. That's one efficient system.

That's what a domain name is like.

A domain name such as mywebsite.com is a unique identifier. Once you own a domain name, nobody else can. Sure, they can buy mywebsites.com or miwebsite.com, but not mywebsite.com.

And if anybody anywhere wants to find your site, all they need to know is that your unique identifier is mywebsite.com. They type mywebsite.com into their browser and your website jumps up. The domain name connects people with where your website is located, even in the middle of all the other websites, and all because every domain name is unique.

But what if you want to buy the domain name coolstuff.com and someone else already owns it? Well, you have some options:

•Buy a similar domain name, such as reallycoolstuff.com (if it's available)

•Buy the coolstuff domain name but with a different extension, such as coolstuff.org or coolstuff.ca (if they're available)

•Contact the owners of coolstuff.com and see if they'll sell it to you. To find out who owns a domain name and how you can contact them, simply type in the domain name at the following page:

https://secure.registerapi.com/services/whois.php

At the end of the day, a domain name makes it easy to find a single website amongst all the other websites out there.

And that's why a domain name is like a ticket stub.

Copyright (c) Grant Pasay 2005. All rights reserved. You may forward this article in its entirety to anyone you wish.

About the author:

Grant Pasay is a writer, musician, moviemaker, and author of the new eBook, "The Internet Is Like A Refrigerator: And Other Weird Comparisons That Make it Easy to Understand Everything From AOL to Zip Files."

Check out Grant's free/brandable ebook at: http://grantpasay.com/refrigerator/

Check out Grant at: http://grantpasay.com/