question What's with .Online?

The thing is it is not enough just to make sense to move .com from its solid position.

.net makes fantastic sense, is short, universal, rolls off the tongue. Yet look where it is and the decline.

To be totally honest. Both don't make sense. Virtual pretty much equals online so aim for something like wine.online, virtualwine.com or onlinewine.com. probably taken but you get the point.

We(domain investors/web developers) are so ahead of the times.. I mean people domain dont know what a domain is... all they see is very big corporations showcasing their .com websites off and then we start throwing .online .wtf .xyz like come on... shouldn't the world know about the internet more before we give them so many options...

ThatNameGuy said:

Lately I've started a new "online" business that involves " virtual tasting and cooking". I already have some decent .coms for my business/businesses and I really don't need to venture into the .online extension space, but I really think it works well.

Now I don't own either of these domains, but which one sounds better?

VirtualWineOnline.com

or

VirtualWine.online

I personally think the .online extension makes a lot more sense when compared to .com.It basically says that your business is an internet/online based business, whereas .com doesn't indicate that at all.

Just as an fyi, the .online extension has 1.6M registrations, and is the 5th most popular new TLD following .icu, .top, .xyz and .site. Anyone else own .online domains? Lets share our expeience. Thanks

Click to expand...

Why need to repeat? Also is there a business a like this? I mean a viable one?

Abdullah Abdullah said:

Why need to repeat? Also is there a business a like this? I mean a viable one?

Click to expand...

Yes...there's WineTasting.com and VirtualTasting.com They both have developed websites that appear to be doing fine. While my business involves hosting whisky tasting online, i thought something like WineTasting.online (taken), ScotchTasting.online(available) or WhiskyTasting.online(available) might work.

Recons.Com said:

The thing is it is not enough just to make sense to move .com from its solid position.

.net makes fantastic sense, is short, universal, rolls off the tongue. Yet look where it is and the decline.

Click to expand...

Lets take "virtual" out of the formula and say WineTasting.online. Both WineTasting.com and WineTasting.net are taken. My whole idea for tasting is "virtual" or "online" vs. in person. It's due to the corona virus that I was attracted to the .online extension. Does that make sense?

ThatNameGuy said:

While my business involves hosting whisky tasting online,

Click to expand...

The moment I read whiskey tasting I was like, I'm in

It's nice concept. Not sure how you're gonna do it but a friend of mine owns a beer shop and they do online beer tastings now. You sign up online to receive samples by mail once every other week. Then you meet online to enjoy them 'together' and discuss your experience. It's good fun.

ThatNameGuy said:

Lets take "virtual" out of the formula and say WineTasting.online. Both WineTasting.com and WineTasting.net are taken. My whole idea for tasting is "virtual" or "online" vs. in person. It's due to the corona virus that I was attracted to the .online extension. Does that make sense?

Click to expand...

If you want to start a business, you want the least to put your startup at a disadvantage from the get go.

.com is something everyone expects and instead of focusing on conditioning your clients to try your service you will be distracted at training them to use an obscure extension.

Either pay premium for a premium name, or go creative and find an ok .com for hand reg. All my companies have exact match .com that I purchased or won at mid xxx to mid xxxx.

Only 1 in 10 businesses survive, you don't need to make any harder.

Recons.Com said:

If you want to start a business, you want the least to put your startup at a disadvantage from the get go.

.com is something everyone expects and instead of focusing on conditioning your clients to try your service you will be distracted at training them to use an obscure extension.

Either pay premium for a premium name, or go creative and find an ok .com for hand reg. All my companies have exact match .com that I purchased or won at mid xxx to mid xxxx.

Only 1 in 10 businesses survive, you don't need to make any harder.

Click to expand...

I sort of get that El...the anchor domain for our business is actually DiscoverScotch.XXX which I know is better than DiscoverScotch.online. However, like Otisimo said, the domain name isn't all that important. It can help or hurt, but it won't make or break a good business plan. Thanks

NameDeck said:

The moment I read whiskey tasting I was like, I'm in

It's nice concept. Not sure how you're gonna do it but a friend of mine owns a beer shop and they do online beer tastings now. You sign up online to receive samples by mail once every other week. Then you meet online to enjoy them 'together' and discuss your experience. It's good fun.

Click to expand...

It's a good friend and neighbor of mine from Glasgow who is here in the states by way of NATO and the Royal Navy. He's a scotch whisky aficionado extraordinaire. I'll PM you with the idea/plan. Thanks

ThatNameGuy said:

I sort of get that El...the anchor domain for our business is actually DiscoverScotch.XXX which I know is better than DiscoverScotch.online. However, like Otisimo said, the domain name isn't all that important. It can help or hurt, but it won't make or break a good business plan. Thanks

Click to expand...

I agree. It might not break or make. But it can contribute to one or the other. Or if a company is at a tilting point, be the difference.

Let's say a company that does all the standard steps for every aspect of business is assigned index of 100.

Now imagine that there are 10 various factors. One business believes each of those needs focus and goes extra mile and raises the score for each of the factors from 1 to 1.1

The other business says, meh, not that important and does 0.9 effort on those.

Well, guess what, the first company will raise its competitive score to 259 and the second one will reduce to 60. And guess which company will be out of business quite soon.

It is not each of those factors that killed the company, it is the choice to treat each of those as expendable that did it.

You might argue that 0.9 in one can be compensated by 1.2 in some other factor. But all those factors are not completely uncorrelated. The decisions are made by the same people and some correlations will exist and overall score gap might not be as big as 259 to 60, but in business if your competitor is 150 and you are just 120, you probably still out of business.

casino dot online was a huge 200k sale.

lock said:

casino dot online was a huge 200k sale.

Click to expand...

Yeah...according to Namebio Casino.online sold for 201,250 03/2017. Since there have been more sales like Design.online for 50K and Chef.online for 10K. Total there have been 114 .online sales made since it started in 2015 with an "average" price of $4,028

Unfortunately the renewal for some of the .online domains is off the charts, however I've found a few worth registering where it's just $25.

Thanks for mentioning the sale.

NameDeck said:

The moment I read whiskey tasting I was like, I'm in

It's nice concept. Not sure how you're gonna do it but a friend of mine owns a beer shop and they do online beer tastings now. You sign up online to receive samples by mail once every other week. Then you meet online to enjoy them 'together' and discuss your experience. It's good fun.

Click to expand...

What's funny, you used the word "online" twice in the above paragraph; "they do online beer tastings" and "You sign up online"

Maybe it's me, but I really like the .online extension because it really says something, whereas names like .com, .xyz, .icu, .top etc. really don't say anything.

While most of the good one word .online domains are taken, there are plenty of very good two word domains available like, WineTime.online, DiscountLiquor.online, CheapNames.online and ShipStuff.online. If someone came up to you and said, "how can i ship this stuff?"....wouldn't it sound natural to say, just go to ShipStuff.online and they'll ship it for you. None of these names are available in .com so doesn't it makes sense to at least consider them in .online?

For development purposes I'd stick with .com, or at least your ccTLD or a .net name (if your ideal .com isn't available). As @Recons.Com mentioned above, best not to make life even harder for yourself by using an extension your customers won't recognize.

For investment in .online names, I'd stick to only strong single words.

Joe Nichols said:

For development purposes I'd stick with .com, or at least your ccTLD or a .net name (if your ideal .com isn't available). As @Recons.Com mentioned above, best not to make life even harder for yourself by using an extension your customers won't recognize.

For investment in .online names, I'd stick to only strong single words.

Click to expand...

You've nailed it. If you have something like book.online, buy.online, shop.online etc., sure, it might be ok to start business. Part of lost business due to people not getting that it is a domain, or confusion if your brand is called "Book" or "Book Online" etc. could be recouped by the novelty factor.

Ideally, if you like that kind of stuff, you have taken defensive move and own also the full length version in .com, i.e. use Buy.Online, but own also BuyOnline.com or vice versa.

Recons.Com said:

You've nailed it. If you have something like book.online, buy.online, shop.online etc., sure, it might be ok to start business. Part of lost business due to people not getting that it is a domain, or confusion if your brand is called "Book" or "Book Online" etc. could be recouped by the novelty factor.

Ideally, if you like that kind of stuff, you have taken defensive move and own also the full length version in .com, i.e. use Buy.Online, but own also BuyOnline.com or vice versa.

Click to expand...

I know we're comparing apples and oranges, but if your new business is selling books online, names like books.com and even buybooks.com are long gone....books.com is owned by Barnes and Noble. A start up isn't in their ball park....not even close. This is why I'd own BuyBooks.online if that were the startup i was getting into, and that's what I'd name my business such we'd have a perfect match. I know it doesn't make sense to you guys, but it makes sense to a common sense business guy like me.

ThatNameGuy said:

I know we're comparing apples and oranges, but if your new business is selling books online, names like books.com and even buybooks.com are long gone....books.com is owned by Barnes and Noble. A start up isn't in their ball park....not even close. This is why I'd own BuyBooks.online if that were the startup i was getting into, and that's what I'd name my business such we'd have a perfect match. I know it doesn't make sense to you guys, but it makes sense to a common sense business guy like me.

Click to expand...

That definitely makes sense, Rich. It wouldn't be a crazy move, and I think that's where the new extensions can really appeal to startups on a budget.

Ideally, I think you'd still want to keep searching for a .com name that is available to buy in your price range (because if and when your business grows, you're going to be champing at the bit for that .com name anyway). Barring that, I think .online makes for a reasonable alternate choice.

ThatNameGuy said:

Maybe it's me, but I really like the .online extension because it really says something, whereas names like .com, .xyz, .icu, .top etc. really don't say anything.

Click to expand...

Every website you can visit is online by definition. So it really doesn't say much besides being a little redundant. I am sure shoponline.com owner would have happily swapped with shop.com but he could not so he just inserts the filler

This is very interesting and related to Bob Hawkes's most recent topic:

https://www.namepros.com/blog/how-many-tlds-in-that-domain-name.1217866/

A few days ago I discovered (thanks NamePros!) that some registrars were giving 1-year free ownership over a few non .com extensions so I spent (invested) a whole day finding the best combinations possible available.

I really think that some of my names might be a better choice than their full dot.com counterparts.

Some of the nicest I could grab (for free ) are:

Acute(.)fun
Productivity(.)fun
Quick//Credit(.)online
Mega//Deals(.)online
Wealthier(.)online
High//Yield(.)online/store/site
Impeccable(.)space/store/site
Cheap//Homes(.)online

Would you rather use Mega//Deals//Online(.)com or Mega//Deals(.)online for your own business?

I am probably biased now () but I think I would rather develop under the latter.

What do you think?

A simple question, who do you think wins the potential buyer?

Mega//Deals//Online(.)com at $3.295 (current listing price) or Mega//Deals(.)online at $2000?

Recons.Com said:

Every website you can visit is online by definition. So it really doesn't say much besides being a little redundant. I am sure shoponline.com owner would have happily swapped with shop.com but he could not so he just inserts the filler

Click to expand...

To me, this was a paradox for a long time. While I agree that the word online is redundant in the online world (to which all domains belong) there are still 5,552 NameBio reported sales with the word online in the name. Online is just a very powerful keyword even though it's very redundant I agree.

TLDR:

a bunch of posts explaining that normal people are just too stupid to visit a non .com website.

NameDeck said:

The moment I read whiskey tasting I was like, I'm in

It's nice concept. Not sure how you're gonna do it but a friend of mine owns a beer shop and they do online beer tastings now. You sign up online to receive samples by mail once every other week. Then you meet online to enjoy them 'together' and discuss your experience. It's good fun.

Click to expand...

Hello my friend from the Netherlands....not sure if you realized this but you used the word "online" in two different contexts here; "they do "online" beer tastings" and then "you meet online" and discuss your experience. Most everything we do today is "online" especially with Covid. We visit the doctor "online", we play games "online", we socialize "online" and we even earn doctorate degrees "online"

We can even take EuropeanToursonline