Steve Jones is the COO of Domainate.com a domain industry company which recently launched a new service on Doma.in that provides a host of domain investment training resources and access to a wholesale buyers club.
Steve wrote a great column that was published today by the Business Insider about the importance of domain names. The article is generally directed at businesses and entrepreneurs who may be needing a domain in the near future. The article titled 14 Mistakes You May Be Making When Buying Domain Names illustrates how important domain names are to start up businesses or businesses looking to make more revenue online. While many of the points may seem obvious to me, I believe that the less domain name savvy Business Insider audience will really benefit from this information.
Thank you Steve for continuing to educate the general public about the importance of domain names to business. This is the second article by Steve that has been published at Business Insider this year.
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Thanks for the post Mike – really appreciated. There’s currently a disconnect between our industry and the mainstream business world, and part of it is two-fold – entrepreneurs and businesses don’t understand that domains are still vitally important and/or they don’t understand that they’re doing anything wrong when they register the first “decent” available name they find at GoDaddy.
That’s not to say there aren’t cases when an available domain fits best, but a lot of businesses do themselves a disservice simply by taking the domain decision lightly and rushing through it when it’s not just a domain but an important part of their identity and something that positively or negatively affects them for the life of their company.
Our hope is to get these messages out there and change the mainstream business mindset and approach towards domains.
Steve, you’re welcome! I agree there is a great disconnect. Many business owners assume that if the domain they first wanted was not available that they have no chance at acquiring it. I feel most entrepreneurs and small business owners have this preconceived notion that if someone registered the domain they wanted and there’s not a site on it then it was some ‘cybersquatter’ who registered it and probably wants a million bucks for it and that’s their last thought about it as they proceed to register the next available name they are ‘happy’ with.
Articles like yours help clear up this misconception and give hope to business owners that think they are wasting their time going after the domain they really want. I also like the points you make about using additional ‘catchy’ domains for promotions and also the need for some keyword research before deciding on a domain name.
Agreed, great article and it’s nice to see domaining receiving some high quality main stream coverage like this. Clears up a lot of the myths about the industry.
@Charles – Thanks for your comment!
Thanks Mike!
Hi Sharon! You’re Welcome!
Thanks Mike for the additional comments.
I myself had realized about a year or two into domaining regarding the catchy promotional domains. When you keep your eyes open for them, you see them all the time in commercials, mail, ads and other marketing efforts, and it’s oftentimes huge companies doing it. Many companies generally focus on getting domains for their brands focusing on their business name and products/services, but promotions themselves can be branded too, and having the domain for it can help reel in the traffic and further catch people’s attention.
Even Google, who had traditionally been getting domains only to redirect to itself and even had been redirecting acquired services like Feedburner and Recaptcha to a Google URL, has started spinning off sites onto other domains recently such as Prizes.org and WDYL.com.