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MenuHow important is it to have a .com domain when starting up a business?
Facebook.com, pinterest.com, instagram.com, linkedin.com... All the giants have .com domains in the social media sphere, so is it important to have one as well if the business will be in the social media sphere?
Answers
It's far less important than it used to be, because so many social media businesses are much more reliant on their apps than their desktop websites these days.
Instagram launched (and grew fast) with the domain instagr.am, for instance.
It is very important for branding and authority. But it is more important for you to have it than your competitors.
If you can get it, then get it. If you can't, then your app or service or offering will need to be amazing to overcome branding, authority and trust issues.
The reason the giants have the .com is because it is necessary to demonstrate authority, longevity and trust.
Good dot com names are also indicative of good business sense. Planning, creative inclination and or the ability to buy a good domain $2000 to $10000 or more say a lot about your business.
This topic arises for me daily, and I've written numerous articles dealing with it in whole or in part. You'll get a lot of "I reckon" answers from people whose main professional focus is elsewhere, but I doubt they've been immersed in the question as I have been for years – researching actual domain market trends, analyzing brands' behavior online, and advising clients on domain selection.
Every week, I observe companies who've already achieved some measure of success with a website built on a different TLD nevertheless pay a substantial amount of money to obtain the matching .COM. In fact, I'm publishing an article about some of last week's upgrades tomorrow at DomainNameWire.com, just as I did the previous Thursday.
These companies buy the .COM belatedly, for pressing reasons of their own, without any cajoling from me. They pay a lot to do it. So it MUST matter. If it didn't, they wouldn't.
Where is Del.icio.us today? Delicious.com. And Join.me (which I'd consider a great non-.com name) still bought JoinMe.com even after paying $45,000 for their .ME.
I'm not a .COM purist. Half of my own domain portfolio is composed of other TLDs, ranging from .ORG and .NET to .FM, .TV, and .CLUB – to say nothing of country codes.
.COM isn't always the only answer. But for global or U.S.-based projects, a business must seriously evaluate any decision to neglect .COM.
Some of the issues include brand protection, search-engine competition, ambiguity for customers in SERPs, perceived amateurishness versus professionalism, traffic leakage, email misdirection, susceptibility to phishing, familiarity, memorability, and permanence.
Constantly having to differentiate your domain from a similar domain that you don't own gets old very quickly. And sending
customers to Google to run the gauntlet of ads from your competitors is never a prudent alternative to direct navigation.
Consumers (especially in the USA) expect .COM. It's the default. We can talk about Facebook and Google and Instagram purely in terms of their brand name primarily because the suffix is assumed. When the TLD isn't obvious, it must be spoken. That can sometimes be quite cumbersome and tends to lead to confusion or misremembrance.
As a namer, I generally like .COM because it is a blank canvas. It gives a startup the widest range of branding options. Building on, say, .CLOTHING or even .CLUB imposes those keywords as limits on brand identity.
There have been trends in .LY and .IO. But I don't see much staying power in the former (which has resulted in many expensive .COM rebrands). And .IO has little mass consumer appeal. It's mainly fashionable within the bubble of tech startups.
I plan to launch projects in a range of TLDs myself – not just .COM. Personally, I'm TLD-agnostic. I can cite examples of brands that did just fine without .COM. And I usually recommend some outlandish non-.COM name ideas to clients alongside .COMs.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer. I hate giving general advice. If you have a particular project and a particular set of brand name / domain options, then let's look at the particular case.
I upvoted Caroline's answer because it's the most direct answer to your question. Joseph's perspective is that of a domain-owner and although thoughtful and nuanced for a very general question, I vehemently disagree with the assertion that "consumers expect .COM in America." I think that might be true for eCommerce, but there's plenty of other ways to build trust than just the domain itself.
Oscar's passionate assertion of the value of the .COM is just not something I would give credence to. It's absolutely a nice to have and if your business scales, not owning it early will only drive up the price later. That said, I'd rather validate the core offering first, and then invest in buying the .COM before massive traction but ahead of a lot of traffic and publicity.
I generally start with .co as the preferred domain when the .COM isn't available.
I'd say it even depends on your target audience. For example, .io domains are quite popular in tech. Other domains never really took off like .mobi for example. If you can spell a word or the name of your company with the domain extension that also becomes a clever trick that can work.
Clarity.fm is an interesting one in itself. Of course it's fine right? We're all here and found it. Though fm would be for radio, right? It's actually for the Federated States of Micronesia. Though it's commonly considered "radio." Clarity is not a radio station so it's an interesting choice, but I don't think it was a problem for anyone.
So it's not as big a deal as it used to be. Though it's certainly still valuable and coveted. It can sometimes be used for authority as well. If you don't buy up all the TLDs sometimes people will buy the .net version etc. They do this in hopes to get people from search engines (or mistakes) over to see ads. The .com gives you authority in that regard. Well, aside from the blatant ads on the other site =)
Related Questions
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If someone misspells my company when Googling, how do I make sure they find my site? Anything besides buying domain names of the misspelled versions?
Google Search is already smart enough to capture those misspellings and shows recommendations for the correct words. Assuming that your website has been around for a while, Google will show users the branded site first in the results pages so the clicks will go there. Google figures out possible misspellings and their likely correct spellings by using words it finds while searching the web and processing searchers queries. So, unlike many spelling correctors, Google can suggest common spellings for proper nouns (names and places), and words that may not appear in a dictionary. I usually use misspellings in my clients Paid Search campaigns to capture all the possible traffic when I see that there's a high number of searches for those variations. I advise against buying domain names for the purpose of capturing that traffic. It will help, though, for people entering the exact domain name directly into the browser. And if you do so, make sure that they all redirect via a permanent 301 redirect to the original one, but do not use them for tricky SEO purposes.WA
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How much is LinkedIn really useful in terms of job search?
some information related to success rate or similar quantification will be appreciated!
I am not sure of the specifics you're asking, it seems like a lot of technical data. This might help in your search for these statistics though: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/networking/a/linkedin.htm http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2014/01/21/how-linkedin-is-thwarting-your-job-search/ http://mashable.com/2014/06/19/linkedin-job-search-app/ http://www.cio.com/article/2403150/linkedin/10-linkedin-tips-to-boost-your-job-search.htmlPM
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How can I go about using social media outlets to attract new clients?
Hello, great question here. First of all you should understand that there is no 1 way and depending on who your audience is and what you sell the answer will definitely vary. A short answer however would be - engagement. Forget about likes and follows and shares are engagement, if you want to be a successful marketer you need to see engagement as conversations. The more conversations you can build around products the more you can rely on them to follow links or follow up on a request when you do make one. With that said, social media updates should be about what your followers want to see - depending on the social media - try to avoid being too pitchy on each post. My name is Humberto Valle, I have been a strategist for about 10 years now and have helped countless of entrepreneurs and businesses thrive through creative competitive strategy and marketing and I'm the co-founder of Unthink.Me. I hope my answer helps you a bit.HV
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How can I take an idea for a new app and turn it into a real product?
Here are some options: ___Free Options___ 1) Make apps without needing to spend a lot of time learning to code. Look into "MIT App Inventor" (http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/). It's a very _easy_ way to make pretty complex apps using drag and drop coding. You can find youtube tutorials that will show you how to make your first app within 5 minutes. I've used MIT App Inventor to make prototype apps for many of my ideas, saving me tens of thousands of dollars if I paid a dev to do it instead. Learn to do "real" coding yourself. The main investment will be your time. There are plenty of free resources for learning coding on the web. I'd suggest learning "React Native", it's a relatively new way to code apps, which allows you to make one app that will run on both Android and iOS. 2) Find a software engineer cofounder. Go to Meetups, conferences, local hackerspaces / makerspaces. Hang out on relevant online forums (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/ make sure to read their rules for posting before posting though). It won't be easy to find a tech cofounder, your idea will need to be amazing, and you yourself will need to be very passionate and capable in order to convince someone to partner up with you for sweat equity. ___Paid options___ 1) Use developers with less established reputations / portfolios (lower cost, higher risk) Be very wary of freelancers on sites like Upwork, Fiverr, etc. Here are some basic hiring rules: In your hiring script, make sure to ask for all applicants to give their account name for github/bitbucket and Trello. Don't hire agencies, only hire individuals. To get hired, ask them to do a simple task via Trello and submit the code via github/bitbucket. This task should only take them maybe 1 hour. Check the quality of what the applicants and if they deliver it in a timely manner. Keep the 1 or 2 people that do a good job. If you don't do this vetting these "low cost" developers may end up costing a lot in the longer run. 2) Use developers with more established reputations / portfolios (higher cost, lower risk) With this option your app will probably cost > $20k to develop, but it can be worth it if you have a single idea that you know you want to move forward with. I can introduce you to a very high quality developer in NY if you're at this stage. Let me know if you'd like any additional help more tailored to your specific app ideas, best, LeeLV
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What's the best way to manage over 200 domain names? I want to get a landing page set up on each.
I have been managing multiple domains/sites for my clients since a few years now and I think the easiest and best way to do it in your case would be setting up simple WordPress sites on each one of them and managing them with something like ManageWP(https://managewp.com/) . If they're niche domains, you can monetize them through ads or use them as affiliate sites. Selling them can also be also an option. If you can get the sites to look fairly nice and if they are niche domains, you can sell them on sites like Flippa(https://flippa.com/) . Overall, you have many options. I'd be glad to help you in detail through a call if you want.AT
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