In my case, I have about 80 – besides personal ones I’m holding onto for family, and the ones for my four word domain name project (4wdn.com), there’s a quite a few for my different products and projects. So then, what makes a worthwhile domain name purchase? I think the reasons fall into several groups:
- To lock in names. Reasonable domains names are in short supply (especially .com ones). So if you come across a good one, buy it just to make sure it’s there when you need it. For example, several months ago ActiveBits.com came available. I bought it right away, and liked it so much I eventually renamed my company to match.
- To help with your brand. I cannot stress this enough – before you name something, make sure that the domain name is available. If not, you lose a huge opportunity to tie a product to its domain name. And don’t worry about putting up a site for each item – you can easily point them to another page until you need them (GoDaddy.com lets you do this easily, a technique I used for GoogEdit.com and ScreenSaverLiberator.com, among others).
- To prevent competition. With my 4WDN idea, I mention that getting all variations (with and without dashes, and plural versus non-plural words) means you can grab all combinations – and lock out competition. For any domain name, if you buy a .com you like, buy at least the .org and .net at the same time. It’s a small price now to prevent someone someday trying to benefit from your brand. Likewise, look into variations – plurals, dashes between the words, etc, and make sure as many as reasonable are locked up.
- Because they’re going. In 1996 I bought Pankhurst.com. Not long afterwards, the .net and .org versions were gone. I don’t expect they’ll ever be available again (although it’s not really an issue since I moved my business over to ActiveBits). There’s plenty of time for regrets, but if a name interests you, get it now – or risk seeing someone else use it in the future.
And finally, although not a business reason, domains make great gifts – not only do they give family a chance to brag about owning a domain, it finally gives you a fixed email address to reach them!
