news Brands.International at Medium.com - No.1 Advice to Social Media Influencers.

@JB Lions yeh good point 30k is not your everyday purchase, I would probably go with the com alternative as a small business owner.. And you pointed that out in your original post but I was blinded by semantics, which the average joe might not be too concerned about.

Having said though, the new gTLD would be something to strive for at some point. I certainly would if I had the coin. But at the same time, as investors we have to be careful to not drive away customers with ridiculous pricing especially without a foothold in the market in the new G's. In this case we are doing a disservice to ourselves.

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At the same price, it's a no-brainer to me. Again, why waste a business address with added characters when the url itself can be the actual brand? Would much rather have word.word on my sign/social media/website/phone number than wordword-dot-com.

I agree with the underlying message of the OP's article on Medium: have your own space outside of the usual popular social media destinations, just in case you violate the terms of service or otherwise get booted from those platforms.

I do believe it's less likely that someone would spend ~$30K as opposed to ~$3K on their domain (particularly in the Bring.Love vs BringLove.com scenario), unless we're talking about the influencers who make 6- and 7-figures or more annually, who can afford to pay that kind of money without having it adversely affect their lifestyle.

I agree with the article that a domain name is a good plan to have. You are not at the mercy of a social media platform.

I disagree that the solution is some overpriced nGTLD.

Buy a decent .COM. Everyone recognizes it.

Once you own it, you won't ever need another extension.

Brad

While one can debate whether it is a sound strategy to rely on brand protection for sales, we have seen examples such as Lending.Club and Work.place where the buyer paid five figures for a domain which does not even resolve. Over the years I have had domain sales which ended up being mere redirects to some company's existing website.

It is, in my opinion, unfortunate that this thread has got somewhat sidetracked by discussion of one of the examples (or at least its asking price) since it seems to have caused people to lose focus on the central theme of the piece. As the article notes, by not having your own domain name and depending on social media, you could have hard work largely rendered worthless in an instant by one bad move on your part, changes in ToS or content rules that no one could see coming, business changes like a platform going out of business, or political moves such as the recent threat regarding TikTok. By having your own domain name and hosting and archiving your own content you are in a much more secure position. I think this message needs to be said more often. I don't see that the argument is particularly sensitive to the t TLD chosen. Social media influencers might be more open to new extensions, or generalized country codes, than business owners, I would think, but for me the central message of the article is be master of your own domain name.

Bob

A quality article, Marek @Brands.International !

The majority of influencers also face another issue: they become popular and someone eventually registers their brand or full name as a domain, all while they are busy on Instagram etc. Then what?

Allow me to point out the irony of sharing it on Medium.

KingZee said:

If Bring.Love sells.. I think we all agree we should start investing in medium blog posts

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I think not only if Bring.Love sells ... it is always good to make some posts, as writing also helps to kind of organize one's thinking. And apart from that, if you write articles on social media, you drive traffic to your website or domain market, which is never a bad thing!

bmugford said:

I agree with the article that a domain name is a good plan to have. You are not at the mercy of a social media platform.

I disagree that the solution is some overpriced nGTLD.

Buy a decent .COM. Everyone recognizes it.

Once you own it, you won't ever need another extension.

Brad

Click to expand...

Brad, I am glad you agree with the article! In my articles, I am using some good new gTLDs (from my own portfolio) as examples. I assume no one here is really expecting me to use .com names from other's investors' portfolios as examples in my own articles or posts on social media.

IMO, content like this, which is aiming outside the domaining bubble to real users (in this case social influencers), is rising tide for all domain names, be it .com or new gTLDs

So there is no need to make it to another .com VS new gTLDs war zone.

Bob Hawkes said:

It is, in my opinion, unfortunate that this thread has got somewhat sidetracked by discussion of one of the examples (or at least its asking price) since it seems to have caused people to lose focus on the central theme of the piece. As the article notes, by not having your own domain name and depending on social media, you could have hard work largely rendered worthless in an instant by one bad move on your part, changes in ToS or content rules that no one could see coming, business changes like a platform going out of business, or political moves such as the recent threat regarding TikTok. By having your own domain name and hosting and archiving your own content you are in a much more secure position. I think this message needs to be said more often. I don't see that the argument is particularly sensitive to the t TLD chosen. Social media influencers might be more open to new extensions, or generalized country codes, than business owners, I would think, but for me the central message of the article is be master of your own domain name.

Bob

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Thank you Bob, I much appreciate that!

Acroplex said:

A quality article, Marek @Brands.International !

The majority of influencers also face another issue: they become popular and someone eventually registers their brand or full name as a domain, all while they are busy on Instagram etc. Then what?

Allow me to point out the irony of sharing it on Medium.

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Thank you Theo, very glad you like it!

The point about Medium is spot on, lol. This is what I am writing about: I am creating content, and sharing it on Medium, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Namepros, etc. But the article is also stored on my own website Brands.International in the Knowledge Centre section, and when you see how it is written, it is bringing traffic to my website, from social media.

So I am all for using social media and posting the content there (because those are the places where people are), but what I insist is that we need to store our content on our own websites, and eventually one should try also redirect as much traffic from the social media(s) to one's own website

Good article but I notice you use www.brands.international.

Is this because people don't get that brands.international is a web address?

jamesall said:

Good article but I notice you use www.brands.international.

Is this because people don't get that brands.international is a web address?

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Thank you James!

I use either brands.international or www.brands.international - personally the platform I am in effects that choice for me.

There are platforms or social media where automatic links are instantly created when using new gTLDs - those are for example LinkedIn, or Youtube. On such platforms, I just type Brands.International, and the automatic link is instantly created on my website.

There are platforms (like Namepros, or Medium.com for example) where this automatic link creation is not yet implemented - in such platforms, I still use www.Brands.International, as putting "www" in front of my domain name simply creates that automatic link.

As I follow the trends, more and more platforms are now implementing automatic link creation for new gTLDs, so I guess in a few years I will be using mostly Brands.International on every platform

Its really true, invest in good domain is better (especially when we want to develope a website ) than build a followers in social media, but we need a strong team to prepare everything , minimum SEO team ,technical team and sales team.