30 Years Of .Com Domain – What Next?

On 15^th March, 2015, the .com domain celebrated its thirty years of existence. Coming from a relatively slow start with a handful of companies initially registering domain names, more than 115 million domains have now been registered worldwide. After thirty years of dominating the web space undisputedly and in the face of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), will this reign continue or end very soon?

The first domain name on earth, symbolics.com, was registered by a technology company, Symbolics, on 15^th March, 1985. Even though the site was purchased in 2009 by XF.com, it unarguably remains the oldest website in the world. The .com domain was originally launched by the U.S Department of Defense and technology companies were the first to largely come on board, including Siemens and Intel. It was in 1997 that the millionth domain was registered which led to the domain boom of the 21^st century.

The .com domain name has come a long way and it is popular to the point that suitors pay heavily to acquire it. However, this dominance may soon be a thing of the past because of the new gTLDs introduced into the market. Before now, the few challengers of .com domain were .net, .biz, .org, .info, .edu, .gov, just to mention a few, yet they were not capable of reducing its overgrown popularity. In fact, if you mention a domain name without putting the .com extension, almost everybody believes that you are definitely referring to a .com domain. But with the roll-out of more gTLDs such as .music, .club, .photography, .actor, .agency, .academy, .church, .boutique and so on, the game may seriously be over for dot-com.

Research shows that many people now prefer these new gTLDs to dot-com because of their uniqueness and more so, it is difficult to get a choice .com domain in today’s world. For example, it may difficult to register a domain like ‘bestphotography.com’, which might have been taken by a user or an investor who bought it with the hope of reselling for a big profit.  One of the alternatives available now is to register a name like ‘best.photography’ which is smarter to pronounce and looks good to the eyes.

The World Wide Web is evolving every now and then but only those with vision can benefit from these developments. It is very obvious that the .com domain may lose its dominance of the internet very soon and when it happens, will you be one of the losers or winners. Your knowledge of the internet will largely determine the side that you will belong to, hence, you need to equip yourself with adequate information in order to be on the winning side.

New .XYZ Domains now available from GoDaddy! 

What You Can Do If Your Domain Name Is Taken

When the domain name of your choice is already registered by another person, there are many ways of realizing your domain dream. The following steps will assist you to get it right when it comes to registering your choice name.

You can consider registering other extensions when the name of your choice is taken. It is not easy to get hot .com names these days because the extension is the most popular, hence, you should consider other extensions for your choice name. Other extensions like .net, .biz, .info, .org, etc, are also ideal for you. In fact, with the introduction of new generic top-level domain by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), it is now possible to register extensions like .shoes, .app, .photography, .music, etc. This will enable you to choose an extension that is related to your business and boost your online marketing.

In addition, you can slightly modify the taken name so that there will be no conflict. For instance, if the taken domain is ‘shoestore.com’, you can use ‘shoestores.com’, ‘shoe-store.com’, ‘shoe-stores.com’, just to mention a few. You can also add a keyword or keywords to it if it does not have. For example, if the taken domain is ‘parker.com’, you can add keywords to it to make it unique and have something like ‘parkershoes.com’ or ‘parkershoesales.com’. Abbreviations can also be used to break domain barriers, for instance, ‘threerings.com’ can be renamed ‘3rings.com’ while ‘readforlife.com’ can be modified as ‘read4life.com’ and so on. If you are doing a local business, your location can be added for uniqueness. If ‘shoestore.com’ is taken, you can present ‘shoestoreatlanta.com’ for registration.

Furthermore, you can get in touch with the owner of a domain name through who.is to find out if it can be sold to you. Online domain merchants as well as auction sites may also have your choice name with them. Popular ones are Flippa, Sedo and eBay. Also, if you have the trademark of a name, you can assert your right. You can use the ICANN’s Uniform Dispute Resolution Process (UDRP) or ask your attorney to file a lawsuit. It can either be a trademark infringement suit or a cybersquatting suit and filing a suit is faster but more expensive than the UDRP, which requires no attorney.

GOT - Put your big idea online! Starting at $1/ mo! Website builder, domain and email! 

5 Reasons For Multiple Domain Name Registration

Multiple domain name registration is the registration of two or more domain names. A lot of people are involved in this for many reasons but five of them will be discussed in this piece.

1. Domain Flipping: This is a term that refers to buying and selling of domain names online. If you want to be involved in this trade, you will have to register many hot domain names for the purpose of selling. The sale takes place on online domain marketplaces and auction sites like eBay, Flippa, Sedo and so on. The higher the number of hot domains you are able to register, the higher the profit you are going to make.

2.  Internet Marketing: If you sell products or services online, either for yourself or as an agent, you need more than one website so that you income status will be boosted. It is ideal to register a domain for each of the product or service you are marketing because this is one of the vital ways of achieving improved sales. If you use a website for many products, you will not make enough money compared to when you dedicate a website to a product.

3. Website Protection: If you don’t protect your domain name these days, it may be negatively exploited by cyber thieves. That is why it is important to register many variations of your domain in order to protect it. For example, if your major domain is ‘sticker.com’, you should also register variations like ‘stickers.com’, ‘stick-er.com’, ‘sticker.net’ and other variations that are suggested to you at the point of registration. If you don’t register these variations, cyber thieves may do so and tap from your profit. They may even offer to sell the variations to you at exorbitant rates and you may have no other choice than to buy from them.

4. Blogging: A blogger needs to have at least five blogs in order to make serious money online. Blogging is a serious business and only those that see it like that will profit from it. Consequently, majority of bloggers resister multiple domain names and smile to the banks every month. You may be wondering how it will be easy for a blogger to get contents for five or even ten blogs on a regular basis. What experienced bloggers do is to outsource content creation and focus on domain management.

5. Beating Competition: In today’s highly competitive world, you need more than one domain name to succeed online. Your online presence is not well footed with just one domain and if you carry out your research properly, you will discover that your competitors are involved in multiple domain name registration. Hence, if you want to catch up with them or beat them, you have to do what they are doing or even surpass it.



Bulk Domain Registrations