subject: Get Typos Of Your Business Domain Name [print this page] Get Typos Of Your Business Domain Name Get Typos Of Your Business Domain Name
As you've probably noticed when you buy a domain name, the registrar usually tries to convince you to buy several other extensions with the same name. For instance, if you buy "mydomain.Com," they dangle "mydomain.Net" and "mydomain.Org" in front of you and attempt to convince you that's the best way to protect your new domain address. It's not a bad idea, but there are literally hundreds of domain extensions ranging from the ubiquitous.Com to the new extensions formed from Arab, Cyrillic, and Chinese scripts; carried to its logical conclusion, protecting your new name could cost you a not-so-small fortune. While it's not a half-bad idea to at least control all of the Big Three (.Com,.Net and.Org), there's also an argument for capturing possible typos inspired by your domain name. After all, the more paths to your door the better.
But Typos? Typographical errors? Yes, that's right. Think about it: making it easy for your customer to find you on the web is the whole point in picking a domain name for your business; typos are just another means of achieving that and one more way to pave the road to your website door. Consider this: your customer types in "mydomain.com," transposing the "i" and the "a" in the word "domain;" you don't want to lose him just because he's dyslexic or has fat fingers. If you've already registered this typo and had it forwarded and masked to your site (which many registrars will do for free; so be sure yours will do so before you register), the potential customer will go directly to your website, never the wiser for his mistake. On the other hand, if you don't own the typo, your potential customer ends up at another website or in an error message; in either case he is likely to think you no longer exist and go elsewhere for his new widget.
Something else you might want to consider: if you have a successful, highly sought after website, people will buy up the possible typos in hopes of sharing your success. Sex.Com, for example, gets over eleven million hits a month. Sax.Com gets 175,000 hits a month, a very respectable number for a plain-vanilla site with nothing to recommend it but page after page of text ads. Do you really think all those hits are from saxophone players? No, the "a" and the "e" are on the same side of the board; and how many people really learn to type nowadays?
The more domain names bringing business to your website door, the better. By all means consider other extensions when you register your domain name. But give some thought to typos also; on the web a little imagination can go a long way.
