You can finds a lot of advice about buying domain names … especially for one to host a blog. But I am still frequently amazed that an important point has not sunk in (seeing the flurry of activity on the new .me top level domain brought this to mind). Bottom line take away … if you don’t read the rest of the post?
The .com of any domain name is easily worth 10 times any other TLD (Top Level Domain). Period. Nope, no exceptions.
My colleague Daniel, of www.DailyBogTips.com (a recommended read, by the way) recently posted a question from a reader along with Daniel’s response…
7. A reader Asks
Why didnt you buy dailyblogtips.net?
I don’t think my blog is THAT popular, and I don’t think DailyBlogTips is a great domain either
. It gets the job done, but it is too long, and it has three words. I had no clue back in the day.
Also, I am not worried about someone creating a website on DailyBlogTips.net and trying to emulate me. If he copies my content, design or anything else, I am going to sue him. If he creates original content, I will also benefit, cause some of his readers will very likely end up typing DailyBlogTips.com sooner or later. (my emphasis)
This is the major reason you absolutely want the .com for any venture you are thinking of. People very often remember the name of your URL, but they never give a thought to the TLD. All you have to do with either FireFox or Internet Explorer is to type a word in the address bar and hit Control + return and the .COM suffix is automatically applied. The reader doesn’t even notice after a time what TLD s/he is surfing, .COM is just a given.
Now this is not to say that you can’t build a successful blog on one of the lesser domains … a prime example is www.problogger.net (also highly recommended, by the way) the brainchild of my friend Darren Rowse, the original "Six Figure Blogger." For years www.problogger.com was owned by another individual who was not making much use of it, while Darren built the .NET version up to one of the most successful blogs online.
One day I came across the fact the www.problogger.com was expiring. I contacted the owner of record and asked if he was interested in selling. My wife and I had done a quick analysis of the plain old type-in traffic that would be generated and figured the URL was easily worth as much as $5,000. The owner at the time answered back, "Oh I won’t sell it privately, I’m going to auction it,". Well, he did, on eBay (perhaps the most horrible place on line to sell a domain) and got no bids. He then tried another auction site and I participated in the auction until it got up to abut $4500 USD … then the auction ended because it turned out there was a reserve (I don’t know what it was) and Darren himself had bid it and taken over the domain.
Frankly, I’m happy he won it, although again the original owner was kinda silly in not holding a more open auction because the bidding was still $500 below my limit and I don’t know how many others were in the hunt.
Now that Darren owns www.problogger.com he simply uses it to divert .COM traffic to his established blog. I do not know how much he’s making from this strategy, but based on the traffic that comes from millions of surfers just typing in "problogger" and hitting return, I am sure he’s already made back the $5,000 or so dollars, and then some. Plus, he has protected his ‘brand’, a very important thing. Think how confusing it would be, even under the best of circumstances, if some ‘smalltime’ problogger like me owned www.problogger.com and Darren still only had the .NET version.
You can buy .COMs regular price at www.name.comfor as little as $5.99. No matter how smart you think some other TLD combination might be … BUY the .COM! and point it to you budding blog empire.
