I'm planning to start an online business with different domain names...?

As a sole proprietor of this business, should I register a business name for each domain name, come up with one general business name to encompass each online venture, or just use my legal name as the business name. Thanks.

It will make paperwork much simpler to have it all under your name, unless you need to be able to open a bank account and have checks in the business name.

It is best to register a domain for each business, because each will have it's own web presence. This also allows you to have domain names which are keyword specific to your business. You can even get several domains and forward them to your main site to help build traffic.

I have been buying and selling domains for a while now and I specialize in photography and wedding domains. You can see some of my domains at http://www.photodomainnames.com and see if there are any that you are interested in.

With some domains selling for millions of dollars the time to buy is now before the prices climb too high!

1and1 is the cheapest and best registrar and host in my opinion

The following is a brief scenario on how to have multiple domain names which are linked to a single webpage/homepage.

If you are currently a paid Internet subscriber, you are entitled to a "homepage" which often contains simple navigation and editing tools. And if you use the Netscape browser, the built-in Composer feature is a superior HTML authoring tool. You can easily generate a full-blown website as a Homepage. Nevertheless, the "homepage" URL is likely to be "http://homepage.earthlink.com/subscribe... name" and that URL can easily be overwritten via a redirection service, i.e., "mydomain.com" which allows you to link any registered domain name to "mask" another website. For example, should you type in "domainname.com", you will be immediately transported to the homepage and the hompage URL of http://homepage.earthlink.com/subscriber... name will be masked by the domainname.com. And the charge for the redirection service [even at godaddy.com] is normally FREE. Here's a demonstration: Type in the URL window: "www.pizzanextdoor.com" which will bring up their pizza website. Take note of the domain name. Then type in the URL window: "http://home.pacbell.net/vten/1a/pizzame... and you will see that this is the original homepage which is unmasked without the domain name!

Good luck!