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Ask HN: A corollary to 'Change Your Name', what besides the .com?

3 points by ajeet_dhaliwal ↗ HN
I just came across Paul Graham's essay titled 'Change Your Name' from last month where he makes the case for getting the .com domain.

I'm actually in the opposite situation, I already got the .com and .net a few months ago when it was only an idea and forgot about getting anything else with the knowledge that we have more important things to be getting on with. Now we are beta testing and I've had more time to think and I could get the 10 next most popular say .org , .info, .biz etc, but where would it end? There's countries too like .co.uk, .de that are popular in their respective markets. Getting a few more is no problem of course, but there are something like a 1000 tlds, $10,000 / year is probably a bit much for most of us.

4 comments

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WorldMaker
Clearly you need the .horse and .pizza. /s
ajeet_dhaliwal
As silly as these seem it raises an important point, I can't see the point in almost any of them, .horse isn't much worse than more well known ones such as .info. No company would use .info if they have the .com. They're going to put the info at example.com/info.
WorldMaker
.pizza, .beer, and even .horse all serve specific business sectors, at least. I've already seen Beer and Pizza places using the TLD for their primary (and sometimes only) URL. I haven't seen a .horse business URL yet, but I will be disappointed if I don't see one by the first Saturday in May (the Kentucky Derby).
Mz
I used to have dozens of domain names, back when there were fewer tlds. I had the .net, .com, .org etc for several domains I owned. I never made enough money off of them to justify it. I eventually figured out I was copying the strategy of a couple of sites that were "successful" in their niche in terms of traffic, visibility, reputation, etc. Neither of them was a successful business. I then looked around at websites making enough money to actually support the individual running them. Some had just the .net or just the .uk or whatever. None of them spent scads of money on multiple domains.

I currently own I think two domain names, one only because I paid 10 years in advance about 9 or so years ago. The rest of my sites are BlogSpot sites.

If you think you actually have a shot being the next Twitter or Facebook and can afford the expense, sure, scoop up the most important ones. But if you hope to just eke out a living online and support a one man shop, just get one or two domain names and save your money and time and effort for developing your thing.

QuestionableContent.net is supposedly the most lucrative webcomic online. One interview some years back put the authors income at six figures. He does not have the .com name. No one has trouble finding it.