Why You Should Buy Extra Domain Names

I used to think that one good domain name was enough, but no more. Since desirable domain names are disappearing at a rapid pace, you don't have the luxury of expecting to grab the same domain name later. There are good reasons to purchase extra domain names.

1. To avoid confusion with your business or site name. Buy up the obvious alternatives so others won't get them and confuse your potential customers. I obtained wilsonweb.com in 1995 and joyfulheart.com in 1996, but by the time I saw the need to avoid confusion, the dot-net and dot-org versions had already been purchased. When I purchased doctorebiz.com and began the trademark registration process, I also purchased the various versions of doctorebiz.com, as well as doctor-ebiz, dr-ebiz, drebiz, docebiz, and doc-ebiz. A couple of these point to my main site. While the others don't take you anywhere, at least they won't take you to a competitor.
2. To prevent competitors from taking advantage of misspellings. Buy the obvious misspellings of your main domain name. Courts lean toward protecting trademark owners, but legal costs are more than domain name prices.
3. To protect your company's brand or trademark names from being acquired from others, even if you never advertise the URL. A small investment early can save big court costs later.
4. To have a domain name your customers can guess. With longer domain name options, why don't you get a domain name that is the your company name. That way your customers can find you even if they don't remember your shorter name.



5. To secure possible future company product and spin-off names. When the Web's premier sports ball store, JustBalls.com began, they advertised JustBalls.com, but also acquired JustBaseball.com, JustBasketball.com, JustLacrosse.com, JustTennis.com, and many others in case they wanted to expand in those directions for the future. Currently these URLs point to their main site.
6. To expand with related services on a similar URL. I didn't want to offer free e-mail, for example, on my main wilsonweb.com domain, though I thought about setting up free e-mail on wilsonweb.net until I found that someone had beat me to it. (However, I do not currently recommend setting up free e-mail with a company's domain name.)
7. To host gateway pages to your domain. Since some search engines slightly favor links with the keyword in its domain name, some (including me) have purchased domain names on which to host gateway pages. I purchased e-commerce-sales.com in order to promote the word "e-commerce." I don't think this is a big advantage, but it's a valid reason for a domain name.

With the low prices of domain names, and the ability to buy just a year at a time if you like, buying immediately domain names you discover and like is good insurance. You can argue that this makes less domain names available for others, and that's true. But new commercial domain name extensions are in the pipeline which will open up more names in the near future for others.

I do not, however, encourage domain name purchasing for speculation. If you don't have a good business reason to buy a name, don't just buy it for some imagined future value to sell to someone else. There is a huge inventory of domain names for sale on auction sites. While a few publicized names have gone for millions, most aren't worth much at all. Speculation may be your approach to business, but it isn't mine. Just give me a unique idea, a great domain name under which to market it, and the ability to provide customers value -- I'll be happy.