Buying Domain Names in Groups

This is a short but sweet article reminding businesses and individuals that the best idea in buying domain names, both available names and buying pre-owned :) names, is to get a matching set.

What do you mean by matching set?
To me, a set consists of the name you wanted in as many TLDs (top level domains) as make sense both for your business to use, or for you to hold so that nobody else competes with you using a very similar name. How many names you get in your set or group depends mostly on how much you want to invest. Somebody wanting to keep costs low might consider just getting the matching .net. Somebody wanting to spend a bit more might take the .org too just to play it safe, creating a group with the same second level domain and then .com, .net, and .org. For example:

ReignYourDomain.com
ReignYourDomain.org
ReignYourDomain.net

Other names you may want to add to your set are close variations and/or misspellings. These include and please note I'm making up these names as examples):

• Removing a repeated letter between two words (ie: registering newhouseexperience.com as well as newhousexperience.com). This keeps people who remember/spell it wrong on your site and keeps competitors from using a way-too-similar name.
• Using hyphens (ie: aswas.com and as-was.com). Domains with hyphens are not as popular, but again, if your budget allows and you find having these names rather than someone else having them makes sense, you might as well own them.
• Close and logical misspellings (ie: for ReignYourDomain this could be ReinYourDomain or even RainYourDomain if people really didn't know the word "reign"). Again, these names would probably only be registered if you had the spare money to pay for the yearly registration, but it sure can keep competitors from capitalising on a hard to spell name, or mistakes anybody could make.
• Close and logical typing mistakes (ie: somebody owns yhaoo.com and not because that's the new exciting name of their product). Some people are trying to capitalise on the intention people have of going to one site, but just typing it wrong. If you have the spare money for these domains, consider registering logical typos so that other companies aren't ending up with visitors trying to get to your site.

What about international and new TLDs?
If you can get them and they make sense, why not add them to your set. However, unlike some folks in the domain name universe, I don't recommend getting every TLD because not every TLD will make sense. For example, why register yourname.co.uk if you're not specifically trying to capture a British market or audience? Do I need aswas.md? I don't think so - it doesn't make sense since I'm not a doctor nor do I target my services specifically to the medical industry. But if you're involved say in radio, registering a .fm or .am name could make sense because of the identity your company or product/service has. Same for .md, .tv, and a few of the others. .cc and .ws currently make no sense to me in any scenario, but if they work for you or you just want to have them just in case, then go get them!

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