Great question from a mentee this morning - She is leaping into private enterprise providing niche marketing services for a section of the Real Estate industry. Earlier this week we discussed getting started on the Impact Meter (Finding her one customer) and the concept of tapping into flow by diverting a little piece of existing flow rather than digging a well in the desert.
By yesterday she had her first customer and is ready to start creating her first service around their needs.
The question though, relates to Domain Names. After choosing a country specific domain name over a global one she discovered that the name she wanted had been taken. It wasn't in use, just sitting on the web with a placeholder page and showed no sign of life.
First question she had was "Can I find out who owns the domain." to which I replied "Of course." and provided the relevant instructions on how to do this. The better question though was "Is there another way to do this?" which lead to a discussion about domain extensions, and how the early concepts of Internet 'land grab' in Domain Names were much less relevant in the current TLD landscape.
It was a great discussion that leaped from tactical execution to branding to capability to planning and back to execution. Thoroughly enjoyable bouncing ideas around with a fellow 'inspired work in progress'.
Over the past 9 months I've been letting go of many of the 'similar name' internet domain names I was holding, there seems less and less point. What thoughts do you have on this topic?
Conversely would you pay a premium to buy a second-hand domain name from someone, (if so what premium over standard registration) or would you find a suitable similar name or alternative TLD and move on?
Love to hear.
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