i have a friend who is starting a blog...i suppose it will be pinterest-type stuff ("housewife blogger"?), but it's not for the sake of making money but more for the ability to share what she's doing with friends and family...i'm sure that if it became zomgsuperpopular she'd be thrilled, but that's not the intent

the "problem" is that she can't get the .com she wants (though .org and .net are available)...she asked me what the difference was and i gave her the spiel describing the original intent of the big TLDs and the scope of the lesser-used TLDs like .info, .biz, .us, .name, etc

she asked if it mattered and i told her that technically it did not, but people's perceptions might...and then i thought to myself that perhaps i'm just old and that's not a big deal at all, anymore

so i thought i'd get y'all's input...how much does the domain matter? if it really IS just an informative site, .info is more appropriate, but will it be judged to be "cheap"? should she come up with a different name that's available as a .com or go with her favorite as a .info? i think the one that bugs me most is .biz, though i can't say why, exactly

5/14/2012 10:48:08 AM

why not just do housewifeblogger.blogspot.com then

[Edited on May 14, 2012 at 11:00 AM. Reason : to answer the question, i've still yet to buy a .name .info or .biz, but maybe i'm just old too]

5/14/2012 10:59:27 AM

Her target audience is housewives

Like housewives give a fuck about TLDs

5/14/2012 11:10:18 AM

^actually I think its the other way around,

housewifes and the elderly are confused and frightened by the unfamiliar not .com addresses.

That said anything on .info I've ever seen has been sketchy as hell

5/14/2012 11:18:44 AM

I, too, see mostly sketchy sites with these TLDs.

5/14/2012 11:37:21 AM

use an international TLD and a clever name

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_hack

5/14/2012 11:50:22 AM

Quote :

"housewifes and the elderly are confused and frightened by the unfamiliar not .com addresses."

In my experience, most older people dont even know what a domain name is. They don't even realize .com is and extension, versus just 4 letters in the website name.

So no, TLD's aren't really that important.

5/14/2012 11:54:53 AM

I'm a computer programmer and I'm confused and frightened by anything without a .com/.net/.org TLD.

5/14/2012 11:57:16 AM

noen's right

99% of these people are probably putting email addresses in google and calling their grandkids

5/14/2012 12:05:51 PM

I have lastname.ws so my family can be firstname@lastname.ws ... that works pretty well.


[Edited on May 14, 2012 at 3:13 PM. Reason : .]

5/14/2012 2:45:56 PM

housewiv.es is still available

5/14/2012 3:38:43 PM

Quote :

"so i thought i'd get y'all's input...how much does the domain matter? "

If she were an online business, it would matter.

She's not. It doesn't.

5/14/2012 3:58:34 PM

^^ if you give somebody in the target audience that url, they are still going to go to housewives.com unless they have a link in front of them to click

5/14/2012 4:22:14 PM

Sharing with friends and family? It doesn't matter... but you might want to check the .com site to make sure it's not a porn site before settling on a name.

5/14/2012 5:34:52 PM

yes, her only goal is to share with family and friends...but with the pinterest-blogging explosion, i suspect she would LIKE for it to be something that gets regular non-family/friend visitors, hence her question

seems i'm of the same mind as most of you...anything outside the top 3 TLDs still seems sketch, but most people (probably her entire audience) won't care

5/14/2012 8:14:34 PM

Anything that isn't .com/.net/org/edu/(random country) usually gets ignored

5/14/2012 9:00:32 PM

Even .name, the TLD specifically meant for sites about a person's name?
As an example, Martha Graham may have a site at martha.graham.name and the forwarding e-mail address martha@graham.name

oh another good one (if she's into cats) is my.cat
but she'll need to have someone translate the main parts of the site into Catalan and make that translation readily available if she wants a .cat domain

5/14/2012 10:19:48 PM

Quote :

""housewifes and the elderly are confused and frightened by the unfamiliar not .com addresses.""

whatever domain you choose just make sure your readers know to put http:// first

5/15/2012 8:50:27 AM

just curious about the domain hacks...what are the rules for purchasing a domain that's not available in the US? del.icio.us is easy because it's a .us domain, but any of the others that are handled through the country of origin might be more difficult...do you have to be a citizen of (or company in) that country to register the domain?

5/15/2012 9:08:44 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains

It depends on the country. A few require your to have a business in that country: Ireland and Japan for instance. I think a lot of the smaller countries (islands especially) just don't give a fuck. It's revenue generation for them.

There are a bunch you can easily register through godaddy. I have an Indian domain (I like .in and it's reasonably priced).

Quote :

"housewiv.es is still available"

Haha. No, of course it isn't availabe. It's such an obvious name for, if nothing else, a porn site or a pinterest clone.

5/15/2012 9:25:52 AM

Quote :

"oh another good one (if she's into cats) is my.cat but she'll need to have someone translate the main parts of the site into Catalan and make that translation readily available if she wants a .cat domain"

Super practical advice

As always

5/15/2012 9:35:20 AM

^^sorry, I just typed it in and as soon as Comodo Secure DNS redirected me to an "nxdomain" url, I didn't even wait for the rest of it to load before determining it must not have been registered; now I see that it has been parked

Anyway, one notable TLD that could be used for many cybersquatting campaigns if it only weren't tightly controlled is .om; Oman not only requires you to be in the country to get a .om domain, you also need to do it at the third level, so even an Omani couldn't register googlec.om or yahooc.om or bingc.om to get that sweet sweet typo traffic.
Even the SLD .co.om is tightly controlled (it must be a trading company registered with the sultanate), so even that is unusable for typosquatting (notably, however, yahoo.co.om is owned by a subdivision of Yahoo! and redirects to the Maktoob English version of the site, en-maktoob.yahoo.com).

5/16/2012 11:39:02 AM

Super relevant

As always

5/16/2012 12:01:54 PM

ernie's killing it

5/16/2012 12:40:31 PM