Domaining.org.uk

Welcome to my final post of this year. So, before I start I want to wish each and every reader seasonal greetings for 2007.

Here are a number of interesting links that should help your domaining activites over the holiday season….

To start off, here is a valuable list of 12 domaining tips from DomainerPro.com. Similarly, Jeff from Domainbits.com  writes a clear and easy to understand Guide to Investing in Domains. 

Next, domaining news website DNJournal.com has a great article on one of the domaining industry’s best known professional, Frank Schilling. Highly recommended.

Now, I appreciate that many domainers are not developers. So I thought that this article from the Dosh Dosh blog,  Building an Online Empire: 16 Types of Websites You Can Create for Profit, will be really helpful for domainers who want to know a little about the sorts of websites developers are building and may require domain names for these websites, such as forum sites, directory sites etc. Obviously, it will also be useful for domainers who want to develop their own websites! And if you are thinking of developing, the Dot Sauce blog includes 10 Outstanding (and Affordable) Scripts for Developing Your Domains. As a general rule developent is more profitable than parking but there are a range of factors that need to be considered when deciding to develop.

There is still a lot of debate about whether domainers should park or develop their domain name portfolio. For domainers with larger domain name portfolios the decision is an important one. Many of the key issues are discussed in this great article on Rick Schwartz’s blog.

There is also an interesting interview with Rick on the website Domisfera.com. Finally, the BBC, the UKs national non-commercial broadcaster, looks at the impact of emerging and developing countries on future develpment of domain names and the net in this interesting article.

Domainer Jeffrey Behrendt, owner of DomainBits.com  (another interesting domaining blog that is definitely worth reading!) asked a very interesting question on this blog, a few days ago. It is such an important question that I wanted to devote a whole post to answering it. Jeff writes……………………….

What do you think is best for an end-user with a limited budget to buy: a spectacular term in .net or .org or a so-so term in .com?

Now the question Jeff raises is one that will become more common as the world wide demand for domain names grows.  The attraction of ‘good’ names in lesser (read cheaper) extensions is easy to understand. However, cheaper does not always mean better.

I will assume that the end-user is some sort of business start up - lets say a bricks and mortar business establishing their first website.

The short answer is that it depends on the names they are considering and it depends on the business.

In my opinion there are a number of factors which need to be taken into account when choosing between domain names with either .com or .net/.org.

Non .com extensions will leak traffic to the .com version of that domain name. Every business set up on a dot org and dot net domain will lose a proportion of their traffic to the  dot com version of that domain name, although the amount of that leak will be difficult to predict. 

The leak occurs because customers/ potential customers will frequently recall the name of the site and add ‘.com’ almost instinctively, unless they recall that it is on a relatively unusual extension .net, .org etc.

Inevitably, the more the .net or .org site is marketed, the more traffic is sent to the .com, however, the problem is that the .com domain may well resolve to a competing business’s website.  

Some businesses are willing to live with that loss (perhaps because the .net is a relevant, memorable generic, for example) - for them the .net or .org is a viable option.

However, without a compelling reason like the one mentioned above, I would argue that a business on a limited budget just cannot afford to develop a site using a .net or .org domain name.  It is as simple as that.

Additionally,  there are good .com domains still available at under $10,000 at the moment on the secondary market. If that sounds like a lot of cash, I suggest that $10K will not sound excessive when you look at the cost of placing one decent sized advert in any reasonably large circulation newspaper, journal or the like. 

Finally, there are still unregistered .com domains available and the fear of buying so-so domains needs to be put into perspective. The ’so-so’ domains of today may be the sought after domains of tomorrow. Contrary to what a lot of people think, all the best domains have NOT been registered. Three word domain names are becoming more common and we are going to see a lot more of these in future as one and two word generics become harder to find, or become relatively expensive.

End users will need to weigh up the pros and cons of developing sites on a spectacular .net against developing a so-so .com. Clearly, there are a number of factors that need to be considered when deciding the best course of action. The information in this article can help businesses in this situation to devloped an informed opinion on which course of action is best for them.  

So, in my opinion the .com will almost always be the better option for someone in this position - but what do you think?