How can I avoid losing traffic to the .com?

[Kuffy]

Traditionally any domain that wasn't a .com could expect to lose traffic to the .com. So how can I minimise this loss? I'm thinking of using a longer title and emphasising the extension. For example - if I was creating a site about cider mills, I would have given it a title such as "The cider mill" or " Cider Mills". However cidermill.com was taken, and so was cidermills.com, so I reg'd CiderMill.xyz. I'm thinking of calling the site "The xyz cider mill site", do you think it is a good idea to incorporate the tld into the title like this?

 

[Kuffy]

You could look for more .com alternatives. Eg. I checked CiderShoppe/com. It's available.

Difference between 'shop and shoppe', according to one site, and how it could play into marketing a high end product: "‘shoppe’ is used to refer to high-end stores that offer high-end products and prices"

http://www.differencebetween.info/difference-between-shop-and-shoppe

It also a word with an Old English history, according to the article. Another possible marketing advantage when living in England(?)

I and others in my family get our meds from The Medicine Shoppe - a pharmacy franchise chain in Canada, that seems/'feels' less corporate than other pharmacy chains here. More personal. Its name helps establish and support that image.

Thanks for the suggestion, but shop or shoppe wouldn't fit. The site is to promote a the last of a long series of vintage meets, and thus will have a limited life for its primary function. Of course, if the site is getting traffic in a year's time, then I'll renew it. The meet is run to raise money for a charity, and any time or expense spent by me is donated..

Background - The vintage meet is held on a farm which has become a bit of a museum. The cider mill in question is a vintage machine to press apples - it is unusual in that it has stone grinding wheels rather than steel, and therefore it crushes the apple pips, Steel wheels are not able to do this, the pips just slide past them. Apple pips contain traces of cyanide, and this is essential for a healthy body ( it really is, but don't take too much! ). It is also know to help destroy cancerous cells. There is no shop on the farm, and the proposed website is simply to promote specific items of interest in an attempt to boost the number of visitors to the show. I'm picking up a collection of xyz names for other items - a Diamond T tank transporter, and a cheese press are two of them. It is my feeling that the new TLDs can be used to create feeder sites for the main project, which will need to be a .com to retain the traffic.

 

[N-A]

The meet is run to raise money for a charity

Why not cidermill.org.uk?

 

[Ategy]

Meet (like meeting people) or meat (like food from animals)?

Maybe CiderMillMeet.com ? It's available (so is meat, meats and meets)!

Or if it's just a small project of people you know and money is an issue then just go with the .xyz ... IMO .xyz is junk .. but if it's still just 1 cent then based on your intended use/audience then honestly I don't think it really matters since it's more just an info site from people you're already in contact with anyways .. sounds like you could use any name in any extension and likely end up with the same results. Heck .. maybe just use a Facebook page if it's going to mainly be friends and friends of friends. Sometimes a website isn't the best solution.

Good luck either way!

EDIT: lol .. I just reread your post .. I just quickly saw farm and assumed you were talking about meat. But now I see it's a meeting ... so grab cidermillmeet.com or cidermillmeetup.com .. otherwise although I said .xyz is junk .. that's only relative to .com and other more serious TLD's .. even after the crush of drops one year after the one cent sales, there are still going to be a ton of .xyz around if renewals are reasonable .. and it will be for small non-corporate/serious sites like the one you're talking about. If it's a small fundraising project then just go with whatever is cheap .. the only real ways to limit bleed to .com is pretty much your marketing .. the more your target-audience sees the .xyz .. the more they're likely to get it right.

 

[Kuffy]

I believe that the mad flood of TLDs will expand the market for domain sales. People will own and develop multiple names/sites.

Once website owners become aware of the advantages of aliasing and other method of harvesting traffic, then that will give us a chance to sell a load of low to mid-price names. I believe that xyz makes a lot more sense than most of the keyword TLDs. How many surfers are going to miss the dot in some of these strange Key(?)phrase URLs?

 

[Ategy]

I understand what you're saying .. but unfortunately I think the one cent sales have essentially dropped .xyz to junk status as in a year's time 99% of them will be dropped .. and of the 1% remaining, 90% of those will be used by spammers (and also likely eventually dropped).

My personal generic of choice (after .com) is .co .. I'm seeing it use by small/medium sized company end-users. On the other side of the spectrum I think they're a little pricey, but that keeps the end usage "quality" relative to penny TLD's.

Heck .. I'd even go with .biz before .xyz at this point ... but again .. if it's just an info page .. then .xyz is fine .. particularly if it's 1/100th of the price. I'n just saying I wouldn't start a real business on an .xyz

 

[Hypersot]

How many surfers are going to miss the dot in some of these strange Key(?)phrase URLs?

...unless using the dot becomes a habit.
If one is expecting something to be right and left of the dot they might just type it in to see what comes up (like shoes.shop for example).

I already have a few ngtlds that get low traffic and the occasional click but I still don't know where that traffic comes from (have them parked, not much info there).
Could be searches but it could also be the type-in I mentioned above.

 

[dordomai]

if the market is local use a .co.uk. If not use .com if possible. You need to be creative if you want to hand-reg one. sometimes the .net or .org(great for non-profits and charity) can be used but it will leak to the .com

Personally i would stay away from longer descriptive extensions like .business etc.

Most people don't recognize these as URLs.

1. I appreciate that natural type-ins will be negligible, but I'm thinking of the radio test, and hoping to pick up some visitors from discussions amongst friends.

don't bother getting a .xyz if you are thinking about the radio test. You will just get .WTF??!!! reactions.

 

[Kuffy]

Surely the key phrase is "shoe shops" if you want a list.

I don't like the "biz" suffix - I guess that's a personal thing, but they never recovered from their initial marketing.

I take what you are saying about marketing TLDs - It's moved into the realm of selling groceries imho. For example .global is being pushed in the same way as dog biscuits are sold, and I think that is where they will stay. I don't know if I am being sensible in adopting xyz as the only TLD alongside .com - it's not much of a gamble though, and I suspect that by buying "sensible" names I am aquiring assets that could provide a bit of revenue in the future. This may not be as much as some other investments, but I see little prospect of making a loss if I am not buying names for resale.

I suspect that my opinion may be coloured by the fact that I own xyz1.com, so my readers should take this into account before deciding on any investment strategy of their own.

 

[Kuffy]

don't bother getting a .xyz if you are thinking about the radio test. You will just get .WTF??!!! reactions.

How do you say xyz anyway - I suggest "xizz", or just simply "zizz"

 

[internext]

the blunt truth is you can not avoid losing traffic to the .com. I dont think there is a way to minimize this loss

 

[Cal2]

Thanks for the suggestion, but shop or shoppe wouldn't fit. The site is to promote a the last of a long series of vintage meets, and thus will have a limited life for its primary function. Of course, if the site is getting traffic in a year's time, then I'll renew it. The meet is run to raise money for a charity, and any time or expense spent by me is donated..

Background - The vintage meet is held on a farm which has become a bit of a museum. The cider mill in question is a vintage machine to press apples - it is unusual in that it has stone grinding wheels rather than steel, and therefore it crushes the apple pips, Steel wheels are not able to do this, the pips just slide past them. Apple pips contain traces of cyanide, and this is essential for a healthy body ( it really is, but don't take too much! ). It is also know to help destroy cancerous cells. There is no shop on the farm, and the proposed website is simply to promote specific items of interest in an attempt to boost the number of visitors to the show. I'm picking up a collection of xyz names for other items - a Diamond T tank transporter, and a cheese press are two of them. It is my feeling that the new TLDs can be used to create feeder sites for the main project, which will need to be a .com to retain the traffic.

If it might be an acceptable enough fit, CiderFaire.com is available.

"Faire and fayre are older spellings, used in specific names but not widely used as generic terms today. So a fair might call itself The Cottesloe Village Faire to evoke historical associations"

CiderMillFair.com is also available.

Fair: "an event or gathering held for the selling of goods or for public entertainment"

 

[Cal2]

The meet is run to raise money for a charity, and any time or expense spent by me is donated.

Btw, if the event is for charity, maybe could look at focusing on the charity for the domain name? Eg. Charity Water, spelled charity: water, is a popular charity - charitywater.com forwards to charitywater.org

Charity: ......?

CiderMill.org is registered. That could've served to promote the cider mill and the charity, and their link.

But CiderMills.org is available.

Charity: CiderMill/s? .com? .org?

Just a line of thought.

 

[Cdomains]

my/cider/mill/.com is available.

 

[EmotiveDomains]

If I couldn't afford the first, second, or even third choice .com, I would still go for an alternative, more creative .com over an extension like xyz.

 

[gpmgroup]

Have you thought about going with a .info for what you are doing?

.info has been around for quite a bit longer than the new gTLDs so a lot more people are used to having seen it before/aware of it and there are some really good sites out there that only exist in .info

With respect to not losing traffic what you can do is 'brand' on the full name so cidermill.info cidermill.xyz etc. Things such as using the "cidermill.info" in the logo, copy, emails, print, discussions when you refer to yourself etc. This has a big impact because people then remember the TLD as well.

We tested this a few years ago and most of the bleed(visitors to other domains) occurs WITHIN a TLD so for example greenwidgets.info would loose the most traffic to widgets.info

The losses in order (descending) for greenwidgets.info IRC were to:

widgets.info
greenwidgets.com
greenwidgets.co.uk

none to
greenwidgets.org,
greenwidgets.net
greenwidgets.biz

By using branding to include the extension in logos etc you can get this bleed down to virtually zero and if your info is good enough I would guess people will use a search engine to find you if they land in the wrong domain.

One caveat if you are going to become the next Microsoft and you do it on a .xyz or a .info then the owner of the corresponding.com is probably going to ask for a higher price once you're making $million's

 

[EmotiveDomains]

How do you say xyz anyway - I suggest "xizz", or just simply "zizz"

I had never even considered trying to pronounce xyz as a word and I'd be surprised if many people have. You have no choice but to say each letter individually. Another downside to it IMO.

 

[Chris Hydrick]

3. Why? imho xyz is one of the better TLD arrivals. Also, I own xyz1.com, so I have a certain fondness for them.

Why not go for XYZ.One

 

[lock]

Your turning a $Xxx dot com that you want into a $X,xxx and it isn't yours by building extensions around another brand. As mentioned buy something else generic.

 

[Kuffy]

Thanks for that post gpm - it was really interesting and useful.

As I mentioned before, CiderMill.xyz it just a throw away name to promote the upcoming vintage meet (and, yes, I own VintageMeet.com, but it's undeveloped). It cost me less than a dollar, and I also reg'd 3 xyz names to feature items of interest - DiamondT.xyz CiderMill.xyz CheesePress.xyz

Now I need to get moving and get some sites online ready for next year.

 

[TopShelf Domains]

I must argue that O.CO at the time may have been a higher traffic leak for O.COM because people could have assumed the M was left off in the ad, auto complete browsers assuming .COM when typing in O.CO(M), as well as peoples' finger habits of completing .COM as a natural habit after typing in .CO-

I do not believe this O.CO example to be a predictor, or an end all be all result of an end-user developing a nTLD as their landing site.

For example, if the general population sees a .RENTALS extension, the whole finger habit of adding the "M" after the .CO would be eliminated.

 

[Kate]

.co indeed looks like a typo of .com.
In the UK people would likely assume .co.uk (and add the bit they think is missing).
A personal account on .co from a NPer: Why .CO will will not do well