Introduction
Keep it short and simple
Investing in domain names.
Summarising
Ok, so you have found your name and decided that you wish to build a world wide empire. You have chosen www.zack-saysevry1has2visitm... ....what's wrong with this? Sure, it's descriptive, it challenges and it's generic. But it's also a mixture of numbers, letters, abbreviations, hyphens and horribly long. A domain name should be easy to remember, easy to relay to someone over the telephone and where possible, the first letter should be as close to the letter "a" as possible. A number of search engines and indices categorise alphabetically. Domain names should also be as brief as possible. As far as I am aware, all 3 and 4 letter names for .com and .net are taken at this time. Unfortunately, when I began "Taming the Beast" in the mid-90's I didn't consider some of these issues.
Many countries now lease out the rights to use their extensions globally. The best example of this is the .tv domain which actually belongs to Tuvalu. There are now over 250 TLD's globally, to review a comprehensive listing of these, view:
http://www.tamingthebeast.ne...
A number of new Top Level Domain (TLD) extensions including .biz and .info were also recently released amid a great deal of fanfare. These are usually more expensive to register.
There is the temptation that if your first choice of names isn't available as a .com, to register the name as a .net, .biz or .tv etc. Think carefully before making this decision. Not only might it cost you more, but these extensions do not have the recognition of .com - which is the "Beverly Hills" of domain extensions. One of my biggest mistakes in selecting my domain name was to wait for too long - the .com version was already taken by the time I had gotten around to domain name registration and I had to settle for Taming the Beast.net. Many people now go to the wrong address!
Nationalistic pride is great, but remember that the Internet has broken down international barriers. Think of your target audience. If it is only the people within your own country, a country specific domain is fine; but remember that we are still in the growing stages of the real global economy and it's best to go for .com - why limit yourself? Also, some countries such as Australia have very complex requirements for registering a local domain name.
Michael Bloch
www.tamingthebeast.netMichael Bloch
Taming the Beast.net
http://www.tamingthebeast.ne...
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