Another mistake many people make is by purchasing the domain one year at a time. If someone likes your domain name and they want it, they can sign up for alerts as to when the name may be available. This can be an issue for you as, despite claims of email providers, email disappears in cyberspace and if you do not receive a renewal notice and forget it is due, you just lost it to somebody who slid in the backdoor and grabbed it. You need to lock in your domain for as long as possible.