Friendly advice regarding domain names - or don't do/not do what I didn't do/not do.

W9GFO

Back in the last millennium I registered ModelStation.com. I had a very specific reason for that name but never used it for it's original purpose. I like the name, I expected that someday I would use it for a real business.

Over the past couple years I have been ever so slowly working towards a new business. The time has come to solidify my internet presence. It seems like a good idea to get a FaceBook account (ugh), YouTube, eBay etc.

Well surprise! Go ahead and look up ModelStation on FaceBook and YouTube if you dare. Yeah, that's not me. It is taken on eBay as well and some financial firm in NY has even trademarked it. All since I have registered the domain. I did not expect that having the domain registered offered protection against others using it however I think I was of the mindset that why would anyone want to use it when it was a registered domain already?

So I have spent not a small amount of time brainstorming and testing the availability of various domain names. As you can guess it is not as easy as it used to be to find a good name that is short, easy to say, easy to spell and make some sort of sense. It's quite disappointing to see the large number of domains that are being squatted. You can type in just about any sequence of five characters to find that the domain is not available. I did find a couple six character ones that were available that weren't too bad - regular words with a "U" in front or behind, but I finally decided on an eight character name and it's plural. I was very surprised to find that it was available since so many that were much more obscure were taken. It is a secret for now what that name is.

And here's the advice;

Do not wait to claim ownership of your domain name. I am sure that every day the availability decreases of something that you would like.

Do not wait to register accounts using that name on Twitter, FaceBook, eBay and whatever other sites make sense.

Rich H

Jen J.

Excellent advice.

tonyp12

If you plan to drop ModelStation as your business venture
you should ask for offers from these business that could use it.
Could fetch thousands $.

xanatos

tonyp12 wrote: »

If you plan to drop ModelStation as your business venture
you should ask for offers from these business that could use it.
Could fetch thousands $.

I design web sites for a living, and I concur with tonyp12's advice... it may yet prove to have been a valuable investment! Good luck,

Dave

piguy101

I think a friend once told me this fact (And I think it's true) every domain name of www.a.com www.aa.com www.aaa.com...... is taken up until about a hundred A's (I know it is not correct to put an apostrophe there...) I have never tested this fact, any of you want to give it a whirl?

Edit: Ok I just tried www.a.com and it was not a site, but I bet a lot of 'A' sites are.

Peter KG6LSE

I have 4 domains and one site
Peterthethinker.com org net

and my soon to be biz megavoltproductions .com


peter got them in 2001 or so ...

WBA Consulting

Good points made! I have wanted to change my business name for three years, but I am waiting for the domain name to be freed up. It's registered but no site or any other activity is on it. I have tried numerous times to pursue purchasing the domain, to no avail. It's a regular .com, but registered by a hosting company in Australia.
I have also thought about facebook, but doubt I will ever put business on it. The only reason I ever would put something there would be for publicity. I am pretty stubborn and think facebook is too overburdened with junk to be considered useful. I know there are a lot of people that think social networking is vital, but I don't think facebook is the only way to network. I still get funny looks when people tell me to look them up on facebook and I say I don't do facebook. Call me old-school I guess.....

I am down to just three domains now, aestheticacoustics.com, powertwig.com, and spinmyprop.com. I peaked at 13 a couple years ago, but spend my free time on the prop now instead of doing websites for small businesses now. With only three, I am behind..... powertwig.com is in need of updates and I planned on releasing spinmyprop.com right after UPEW. (spinmyprop.com will offer subdomain wordpress sites for $20 every two years)

W9GFO

I think there is value in creating the accounts even if you don't intend to fully utilize them - just so that someone else does not.

http://www.youtube.com/modelstation

See what I mean?

schill

You may also want to consider grabbing the .net version as well as .com (and any others that might be appropriate). If you are using the domain for a business, the different versions can confuse customers. And, if you are the .com and somebody else owns the .net, it's possible that the .net version might not be something you want your customers to accidentally find.

There's a physics-based game/simulation that has the same name as an extremely non-family-friendly web site. If you try to find the game by looking for its-name.com, you do not end up where you are expecting to.

Tor

Even several years ago everything was taken in the .com .org .net domains. I came to the conclusion that every word in the dictionary was already taken, and any combination of words that at least my poor brain could think of. And 99% of those were occupied by domain squatters of course. Seems like the only options now are made-up non-existing words. Annoying. Domain squatting should simply have been made illegal by those managing top level domains. At least those that just says '<domain name> For Sale'.

-Tor

prof_braino

W9GFO wrote: »

Do not wait to claim ownership of your domain name.
Do not wait to register accounts using that name on Twitter, FaceBook, eBay and whatever other sites make sense.

Actually, not bothering until you have an actual need is probably the best way to go. The name is not much use withot the article the name is to identify. I save tons of money NOT getting domains, websites, etc. Thing I started doing ten years ago changed several times into better and better directions, is still not finished, and the original name would not have been a "clever fit".

Of course, maybe I'm just a "it's the journey, not the destination" guy.

RossH

I'm talking mainly from an Australian perspective, but I believe Cybersquatting is illegal in the USA as well. The important thing is that if you have a domain name, you should also trademark the name. If someone else trademarks the name, they can legally force you to hand over the domain name.