For just about everyone in the domain industry .com is king. It is the undisputed leader when it comes to reported sales and development worldwide.
Over the years both domain investors and businesses have asked what is the best alternative ? When the desired .com is taken and the logical alternatives in .com are taken (buy,get,i, prefixes), what is the next best extension to go with ?
Remember for the purposes of this question there is no sensible .com choice, so what do you think is the best choice for someone looking to launch their business on the web ?
.net is the obvious choice for me.
Ray, there is always a sensible .com choice, because using an alternate extension is not sensible. The company will always have domain issues if they use an NTLD or alternate such as .net or .io. Trying to fix it later is far more painful than doing it earlier.
So the business will have all sorts of choices,
-Brainstorm more on other prefixes, suffixes
-Use a completely different term
-Try harder to acquire the most obvious .com
This is what 99% of companies do when their first choice, second choice……100th choice is taken.
I know what you are saying Paul, I think I was looking at it from the standpoint where I have had corporate clients want a one word .com like for example, Grab.com as a hypothetical, and get grab, igrab, buy grab, grabapp were all taken, they don’t want to rename to voyozo.com some made up brandable, they want Grab. That’s how I was framing this. I one time had a client who couldn’t get a geokeyword name, I suggested another .com but they went with .net because that geokeyword was the only thing they would accept.
In that situation they really need some “good advice”, i.e. to be told what they are proposing might seem like a good alternative now but is going to cause them major headaches down the road.
Or is the question “What is the best of a bad bunch?”. I guess some people who provide advice would tell whatever extension rather than giving advice they may not want to hear.
On the GeoKeyword, I told the guy it was a bad mistake to go with the .net because the .com was developed. I told him let’s think of a creative brand, invented or a two word.com. He was in love with the geokeyword.net. Two years later shut the site down and went into another field.
You tried Ray! š that’s all you can do right š
I would use .net if the .com is taken but not developed.
For me .com is king if I can’t get the .com then my second choice will be .net but it has to depend on the name before I get it. If not then I would search for an alternative domain name like “I”, “e”…
.Web is my second choice. It will hurt .net and the new Gtld’s. Can you imagine if your a new extension and your launching after .Web aka verisign. They don’t drop 135 million for nothing.
They will spend more than that on advertising the first few years. I will look back in 3 years and see if I was correct:) My $$ is on .web all the way. š
Donny
DomainPad.com
What extension has Verisign ever advertised?
Everytime you see .com advertised you can be guaranteed Verisign have put a dollar behind it.
lol yeah, that is true. Verisign loves .com. But I will choose .com as well if I want to start a business and try some alternative ones depending on what business I will do.
Everytime you see .com advertised you can be guaranteed Verisign have put a dollar behind it.
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Verisign must have spent trillions in that case.
Any option is a good option if your market clearly understands its use.
If the market doesn’t understand its use, then even a .com fails.
if i am going to spend money on promoting my website, then dot com is a must…
plenty of 4, 5, 6 letter dot com domains for sale under $5,000…
or buy 2 word dot com domains under $5k.
if you are not willing to spend atleast $5,000 on a dot com domain name, then you really aren’t that serious about your business…it’s probably a hobby, not a business.
go with dot com.
Most businesses spend $10 Anunt, 99% of them.
most businesses fail.
Also about 99% of them. Maybe a correlation there?
Any alternative works if it sounds good like many new g’s and also works well left and right of the dot. Many generic one’s too like .xyz, ,gdn etc..
Sure .com is king but people/customers are like horses they will go wherever you lead them. Advertising, promotion is the key for someone wanting a short keyword domain for their business without paying high .com pricing.
It’s 2017, people understand there is more than just .com and all over the world.
1. A different name using .COM
2. Their country code .?? if the are launching a country specific Business
3. Go back to #1 and come up with a different name
Google uses ABC.xyz for Alphabet website and launched .google. If you are so rich, you can use every tlds, or even use your own gtld. Might be BMW would use Newyork.bmw and USA.bmw later. Or Donald Trump would use Donald .Trump later. Who knows because Google could be the new trend setter.
Thanks for exploring this topic Ray, and I’m happy to see you dropping a note above that sticking with .com is still the best and exploring other geokeyword options in the .com However, to comment on what I’ve heard from my 30 something year old cousin who works at ebay, that demographic seems to like the .io at this point. Personally, I’ve been grabbing some .us extensions as from a concept of “reputable source” at least geographically, I think it could be the next one that the greater market accepts in a few years.
1. People need to break free from and think outside “the box.”
2. What is the “box” then? The box is the self-serving brainwashing and falsehood perpetuated about long vs. short. There is usually a good or even great two or three word .com alternative, sometimes even a truly great four word or more alternative. Often they are better than most shorter alternatives as well. I was approached by a stock exchange listed company for one such super long four word alternative, and when I named the business for a friend of mine to a three word .com, in no time at all she was being profiled by a major news celebrity in one of the biggest regional markets in the country on TV.
3. And yes, one can also consider the country code, including .US.
4. Finally, while most of the new g’s are just part of the “herd,” some keyword in some of the new g’s are the “gold, silver, diamonds, gems and rubies” of the bunch and could be considered.
P.S. The other answer is that I think I made a huge mistake letting certain ones of my .US domains go, and I suspect I’m going to regret it later big time. š
#1 is .com #2 .net, #3 tie between .tv and .org (Video sites .tv, non profit .org)
.net is DEAD and its never coming back. i wouldnt buy porn.net for 20K its a dead extension.
1) .com
2) .net
3) .org
4) .tv
5) .me
6) .ai
7) .it
8) .io
9) .info
11) .co
12) .in
(not including country specific domains which have value, but only for their country-targeted markets (..de, uk, .dk, etc)
.me, .co, .tv. ,it, in, .to – country codes that have gained value outside their specific countries due to branding
prediction:
.ai names will rise in value. I’m aware of several 6 figure private sales. My regret is I did not get more when the extension became available.
Many companies with .com have rebranded as .ai — if they have .ai technology
“Iām aware of several 6 figure private sales. My regret is I did not get more when the extension became available.”
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Bullshit. The only certain thing here is that you’ve bought a lot of .ai yourself.
For most businesses outside the US, this is a no-brainer. They will go for the ccTLD.
Twitter users retweeting PizzaHut ads to their followers might consider upping their game with a .Shop, .Club or .Blog domain.
I’d rather have Drone.Codes than Drone.Web, and good luck getting Drone.Web
Individuals saying get in line behind .Net are in debt. Your neighbors might not yet know what the new extensions are, but tell them .Net is their only alternative, they’ll stop listening to you. And if you tell your neighbors to obey .com for 2 million dollars, they flip you the bird.
Right now .com or the suitable ccTLD are almost in any country the best way to go. New TLDs haven’t had the breakthrough so far to make them appealing to create a solid online brand. Someday, there’ll appear a strong brand using an nTLD as their main top domain. Until that moment, .com is most of the time the best option.