Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com.
All of the good dot com domain names are already taken. Domain squatters have gone through and registered every dictionary word, almost every combination of dictionary words and almost every combination of three, four and five letters and numbers under the .com domain extension. If you want to get a dotcom domain name, you will have to either purchase a good domain name off of a marketplace like SEDO.com or be incredibly creative about the domain name that you choose. I don’t recommend doing either of these things, because domains that sell on the secondary market tend to be expensive and any domain that you are able to find that’s open will probably include creative spellings, hyphens, numbers or other elements that will be hard for your customers to remember.
Instead of futilely searching for a dot com domain name that probably doesn’t exist, I suggest building a brand using a domain that’s listed under one of the hundreds of new top level domains (TLDs). There are now more than 1,300 .com alternatives that you can use for your domain name. Individuals have been able to register domains under alternative TLDs like .net, .org, .us, .info, .biz and .co for quite a while. Now, there are a whole host of new extensions to choose from. While there are far too many to list here, some of the popular new extensions include .xyz, .top, .win, .club, .site, .bid, .link, .red, .online, .vip, .loan, .science, .party, .click, .website, .space, .tech, .lol, .review, .work, .trade and .news. For a complete list of available TLDs, visit www.namestat.org.
The .com domain extension still tends to be the standard extension that most businesses use, but many new companies are using .co, .io and other TLDs. Over time, it will be increasingly common for blogs and websites to use any number of different TLDs. There are already more than 6 million .xyz domains and that number is growing by thousands of new domains every day. Since finding a .com domain name that’s actually available to register can be a daunting task, I recommend that new entrepreneurs pick the domain name that they want and register it under an alternative TLD in lieu of trying to register a less than ideal .com domain name. You can always go back and pay five figures for the .com domain name you actually want down the line as your business becomes successful, but paying a lot of money for a domain name typically isn’t a good investment early on in your business.