Worth noting it’s probably more like $70 a year if it matters. A domain will cost $15 and up, and you’ll need to pay an email provider on top of that, and most run around $50 a year.
Basically, you buy a domain name through some registrar. I use hover.com and Cloudflare.com. Hover is more user-friendly, but really registrars are pretty much commoditized, so kind of whatever. The registrar will provide some function like “manage DNS" or “manage your domain” that lets you add and remove DNS records. You’ll use that to tell other people on the internet how to send you email.
But at this point you don’t actually have an email account anywhere. You need to buy one from a company like Proton Mail, Fastmail, Google, etc. that allow you to bring your own domain. Let’s say you pick Fastmail. They tell you what to type into those “manage DNS” boxes at your registrar.
Once you follow those instructions, you’re done. The only time you ever have to mess with it again is if you decide to change email providers. If you decide to move from Fastmail to Proton, you sign up for a Proton account, delete those MX and TXT records that Fastmail told you to create, and add the new ones Proton tells you to create.
DharmaCurious