discuss To buy or to pass on matching extensions, that is the question.

They reg'd the .net cuz they're cheap. Then they probably realized traffic / email is bleeding to the .com and got smart and bought it.

My fastest sale was this scenario, except I contacted the .net owner and told them the .com was bleeding over and they even had their email as .com on accident

I would just register the .COM.

I think in that situation registering other extensions doesn't really help your upside, it just adds to the expenses.

Brad

bmugford said:

I would just register the .COM.

I think in that situation registering other extensions doesn't really help your upside, it just adds to the expenses.

Brad

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I agree, just stick with the .com

bmugford said:

I would just register the .COM.

I think in that situation registering other extensions doesn't really help your upside, it just adds to the expenses.

Brad

Click to expand...

On a startup you wouldn’t register the net and org?

bynps said:

On a startup you wouldn’t register the net and org?

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If I was actually using the brand probably. If it was for resale then no.

If it was for resale I would only register the .NET/ORG when they had obvious stand alone resale value.

Brad

as long as you have the .com and maybe the country code you are golden

id rather hunt down the social handles that go with the .com you have

This topic was discussed a few times in depth on Domain Sherpa when @Michael Cyger was doing them. (One discussion with @Ali and I think Drew I seem to recall getting pretty detailed with no real clear answer)

Lots of pros and cons ..

For me I'd rather get two other .com domains than tie up my capital in altTLD's.

There's also that fact that the person hand-reg'ing the alternative becomes a future customer.

For some reason everyone seems to think it's extremely important for a domain to be registered in multiple extensions to be worth anything. But I actually never check for altTLD's ... in the age of brandables most start-ups are looking for a unique brand .. which means they probably won't want it if the .com is already in use (by an end user).


At the end of the day I think the real question is what is the value of the specific domain .. the true answer to your question probably should depend on that more than anything else.

It depends on the name.

When you consider the use case, some names do better on some TLDs than on others. I find that sometimes I register the .com and the .org (if I think an organization can use the name). Some other times, I have it registered only in .com or only in .org. I even have a name I registered only in .org because it's a human rights kind of name. I didn't bother with the .com.

What I usually don't bother with most times is the .net because the way I see it, a .com can easily cover for a .net. Same can't be said for a .org. The only time I register .net together with its .com and .org counterparts is when it's purely a tech name

It entirely depends on the .COM name you buy.
If you plan to build a brand & business on the domain name , then its safer to acquire all the extensions for that domain name , else others might acquire & sell it to you when you grow
On the other hand , just for selling it in the future to a prospective buyer , accumulating all the extensions is not advisable , as you may have to spend a lot of money to renew all the extensions every year until you sell it.
But if the domain name seems to be premium / has future value , then you can acquire all the extensions .
Hope this helps

Thanks for outlining an interesting scenario @MapleDots that has already elicited some great responses. I think that in general if one extension is clearly best, that is the only one you need, and as your example indicates there can be a downside to owning them all.

If however there are cases where which is clearly best may be less clear, then it may be wise to get others. For example I am not overall a fan of .net but if the associated activity is a network of some sort then .net goes up in importance. If the use involved some type of organization, whether nonprofit or business, I would look at that as well. Examples would be areas like crowd funding, distributed currencies, co-working spaces, peer to peer sharing models, etc.

Bob

MapleDots said:

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So, here is a scenario...

You find yourself with an insanely good misspell that nobody has thought of and you just registered the .com. You are ecstatic, you make a logo and the name looks absolutely phenomenal.

Now to maximize your profit potential you go and register the .net and .org and possibly the matching ccTLD.

So here is the million dollar question.....

What maximizes your profit potential, owning the matching extensions or not?

THE FOLLOWING IS BASED ON MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND YOUR RESULTS MAY VARY.

I own a number of misspell domains and I usually buy up the matching extensions but for one domain I did not do that. It ended up selling because I did NOT own the matching extensions. So basically I did not bother to register them when I made up the word.

To my surprise someone had registered the .net and actually launched a business on it.
Over two years later they contacted me to buy the .com.

So had I registered all the extensions this business would not have registered the other extension and I probably would not have had a sale.

Interesting scenario, don't you think?

Click to expand...

yes always thought that way
to leave room for somebody else

I would if you feel you need to protect any potential brand value.

bmugford said:

I would just register the .COM.

I think in that situation registering other extensions doesn't really help your upside, it just adds to the expenses.

Brad

Click to expand...

I agree as well best bet will be .Com, I guess the only time you would try to get the other extensions is if you are building your own brand etc and just forward the rest of them to your main site - .com.

- Will

Own them all, sell them all with the peripheral domains as redirects to the .com or whatever they want.

Why would a unique startup want to risk getting domain squatters living off their marketing and potentially losing customers when they can just have redirected traffic. It's customer acquisition 101. Same principle as email catchall addresses.

I never do. It is a waste of money and you are just feeding the monsters in Verisign et al.

Besides, where do you stop? Get all 2000 alternatives?

.com main competition is not another extension, it is a substitute in another .com

.com is the only gtld where the math works: buy 100 quality names and you will probably sell 1-3 every year. So you are better off spending that money buying few more .coms

Used to be we’d reg all three com net org on every new internet business we thought was going somewhere but nowadays not so important. Com is enough. People don’t miss your com site by mistake as readily anymore and really the com is all that matters unless you started with the net or org and the com is just sitting there blank in which case the net or org are what matter until/unless you come up with the bread to get the com (if you even care - for some the org is more appropriate).

As far as domain sales I’ll admit it I’ve occasionally purchased a net after selling the corresponding com for a good sum but this practice hasn’t yet paid off.

I would be concerned about auto correct on spelling mistakes in 2019 they just don't perform like they used to.