How much traffic would a .com steal from .org

[immediate]

I was recently looking for the perfect .com for a planned website and became disappointed to find the daunting price from the owner. At the same while, I found that the same name .org is available.

The planned website isn't for profit anyway, so a .org would also very well suit this situation if not as perfect as a .com.

My question is how much traffic would a .com steal from .org from your experience? 1%? I figure, if the .com stays parked, there won't be such a big problem. But once the .com owner sees the potential of this niche by the success / takeoff of my .org and develop it into the same niche, I will be in some serious trouble.

Do you think if I should acquire this .com?

 

[MicroGuy]

I think the .ORG is strong enough to stand on its own. If the site isn't for profit, then I see no reason to pay for the .COM. IMO.

 

[DaSerpent]

Well , if your website really does make it big then you should consider buying the .COM otherwise it might just be nothing more than wasting your money for no good . And .COM can steal alot of traffic initially when people don't pay real attention to the extension but once they end up on a parked page every time they use .COM .. they would stop going there . So , wait and see how your website does .

 

[Jaco]

I think the .ORG is strong enough to stand on its own. If the site isn't for profit, then I see no reason to pay for the .COM. IMO.

This is the truth.
If your use of a .org is "orgy" in nature, people (in the US, anyway) are very, very accepting of it and honestly, almost expect .org, for certain undertakings. In the early days, .org was an oddball and the "dot-com reflex" was largely contingent on billions of .com branding defining the early commercial internet. A decade later, people are perfectly receptive to .org and it registers in their minds as being what it is.

The "dot-com-or-die" myth of traffic bleed is just that. In the old days, it was true. Today? If you're using an org for an orgy purpose, you're OK. Ideally, you'd like to use both, but if not, oh well.

In 2003, I registered .com Americorps NCCC because I was an alum (and quite shocked to see it sitting there :o ). In hindsight, I wish I had grabbed the .org too and honestly, if I had to choose between one or the other, I'd probably trade the .com for the .org.
So, that's just a little testimony to my own thoughts on .org use/TLD synergy. There are times when it's actually better.

 

[immediate]

I think the .ORG is strong enough to stand on its own. If the site isn't for profit, then I see no reason to pay for the .COM. IMO.

I like .org a lot, especially for non-profit niches which sort of have the righteous tone / is authoritative in a 3rd-party kind of way. But still, .com is much more desirable and if I'm going to spend much in making a .org site work, I won't feel comfortable if I'm not the owner of the .com.

Well , if your website really does make it big then you should consider buying the .COM otherwise it might just be nothing more than wasting your money for no good . And .COM can steal alot of traffic initially when people don't pay real attention to the extension but once they end up on a parked page every time they use .COM .. they would stop going there .

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. Though my planned site doesn't make a living on its own products / services, the expected traffic will be quite valuable with a potentially high CPM.

So , wait and see how your website does .

I believe, strategically, that's not a good move. The owner of .com will get far more aggressive in the pricing if he sees the takeoff of the .org site.

The name is absolutely the best for this niche: generic simple words yet brandable.

Alas, I think I'm gonna grab this name as well as the .org.

 

[coltter]

don't know how much the traffic .com catch from .org,
BUT you should always avoid to register any other extensions while he site of .com is live. Good Luck!

 

[dropsdomains.com]

I think the .ORG is strong enough to stand on its own. If the site isn't for profit, then I see no reason to pay for the .COM. IMO.

Only bad traffic is o traffic. And yeah, plenty of US hamburgeaters don't even know .US

Don't overestimate average surfing idiot anywhere round the world Even smart people makes mistakes

.COM takes decent part of .ORGs returning traffic, so you need to know if .ORG got high and stable returning traffic or it's just huge amount of fresh brought traffic that barely comes back.

 

[dtagr]

But once the .com owner sees the potential of this niche by the success / takeoff of my .org and develop it into the same niche, I will be in some serious trouble.

Do you think if I should acquire this .com?

You're assuming that the owner doesn't have a portfolio of xxx - xxxxx domain names. It may be difficult for him/her to monitor the niche depending on how many names they own.

I have developed .org's as blogs and not worried about the .com at all. In fact in most of these cases the .org is superior in relevancy, search ranking, and traffic.

 

[Smith]

well ... there was a .org prominently mentioned in a comedy spot on the Leno show the other day, the .com has received 989 uniques since the show aired.

 

[winterwind.com]

Buy the .com if you feel the ROI will be there in the long run.

And why are you going to spend all that money for a .com if the plan is not to make money?

Sounds like throwing money away...

 

[Jaco]

well ... there was a .org prominently mentioned in a comedy spot on the Leno show the other day, the .com has received 989 uniques since the show aired.

Right, but the .org probably received hundreds of thousands.
The point is, if that had happened in 2001, the .com would've gotten deluged. In 2009, it got a trickle of people who had a brainfart and typed in .com instead of .org.

989 .com uniques over 7 days- subsequent to a .org mention on the Jay Leno- show really goes to show that .org stands on its own. That minimal amount of bleed isn't worth fretting over.

 

[enlytend]

But once the .com owner sees the potential of this niche by the success / takeoff of my .org and develop it into the same niche, I will be in some serious trouble.

I wouldn't worry about that.

1) Don't ignore the benefits to being "first". IF the .com owner develops it (and the keyword here is "IF"), you were there first and have the opportunity to build a strong position for yourself in the SERPS now.

Also, there MAY (depends on a lot of things) be some common-law tm protection if you have first use in commerce and they develop the domain intentionally to siphon off your traffic.

2) If you're not using a .com, focus on branding with the tld you're using (.org) and on encouraging people to bookmark your site.

If the .org's appropriate to your planned content, go for it!

 

[immediate]

Thank you all for the valuable insights. I have given this some serious thoughts and decided that I'd neither use the perfectname.com nor perfectname.org.

My reason is that though prefectname is a short, sweet, generic phrase that is hardly touched on (no developed sites), there are quite some domainers that have seized all the variations of this phrase (abbre., not abbre., -ing, not -ing, singular, plural, etc.). The current search volume of this phrase / niche according to google keyword tool is almost zero. If I'm to use perfectname.com or perfectname.org and develop it into a full grown blonde, there will be more and more people searching this phrase, namely "perfect name", fostering this niche to its full-scale. I, of course can enjoy the top destination of this niche, but this has also enabled all the other domains to easily profit off the same phrase and steal the traffic / users that have been discovered / created by me.

According to my experience and knowledge, being the first isn't enough to succeed in the IT era. There have been many first-and-failures.

So my decision is to go with a more brandable name, e.g. if the perfect name of this niche is perfectname.com, I'd register perfectlynamed.com and use only "perfectly named" as my only marketing tone. Everytime anyone searches for "perfectly named", he's got to visit my site and he won't be confused / diverted to other sites because "perfectly named" is not a generic phrase.

Therefore, I will be able to successfully name this niche "Perfectly Named" instead of "perfect name" that is more generic, consequently, I'm not just the first, I'm the niche itself.

 

[funpage]

If the .org is spread through word of mouth, there'll be people who will say .com instead, like with Dick Cheney and FactCheck.org, during the 2004 presidential debates.

 

[Jaco]

If the .org is spread through word of mouth, there'll be people who will say .com instead, like with Dick Cheney and FactCheck.org, during the 2004 presidential debates.

IMO, that one, isolated example of Dick Cheney flubbing factcheck.org is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay overused as an example of "dot com or die" syndrome.
I think everyone agrees it will happen to an insignificant degree, but unless your target demographic is 240 year old men who need an hour to check three emails, it's probably much less than people think. The web savvy generation is TOTALLY accepting of .org for what it is and has no problem comprehending or registering it without any association to .com.

 

[Smith]

Right, but the .org probably received hundreds of thousands.
The point is, if that had happened in 2001, the .com would've gotten deluged. In 2009, it got a trickle of people who had a brainfart and typed in .com instead of .org.

989 .com uniques over 7 days- subsequent to a .org mention on the Jay Leno- show really goes to show that .org stands on its own. That minimal amount of bleed isn't worth fretting over.

Agreed.

And I know it's not the discussion, but I believe this would only apply to .org .net, or a ccTLD. Any of the generic TLD's like .biz .me . info etc don't have the mind share to hold their own. I developed a .me for a side project . . . you should hear people trying to tell others the site name Never again.

 

[oldman35]

I like Org a lot ...but the sad thing is Com always more value than org....

 

[fm1234]

I hate to threadjack, but ...

posted by dongsman:

"orgy" in nature

:tu:


Frank

 

[pwr1019]

Right, but the .org probably received hundreds of thousands.

989 .com uniques over 7 days- subsequent to a .org mention on the Jay Leno- show really goes to show that .org stands on its own. That minimal amount of bleed isn't worth fretting over.

"hundreds of thousands" really? I thought there was only about 500 people who watched Jay Leno - they must have all typed in the dot com twice

 

[GreenGambler]

I'm sure many of the .org visitor would end up typeing .com. But they then would probably realize they are on the wrong site and find their way to the correct one. I myself do it a lot when visiting archive.org or wikipedia.org.. My fingers sometimes go faster than my brain, lol, and they can't help but type .com sometimes. LOL