by: AskPat 364 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 364 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.
All right. Here's today's question from Ron.
Ron: Hi, Pat. This is Ron. I'm looking to launch not too long from now, and I'm wondering if it is a good idea to buy up all the variations of your domain name, dot-net, dot-com, so on, and so forth? Thank you, Pat. Love the show.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Ron. What's up? Thank you so much for this question. This is something that's very important to consider, because if you are building a business, you don't want somebody else to take your other domains. It's interesting, because I know a lot of other people, people who have very successful websites, that wish they had one of the other ones. If possible, and if the funds are available, I would get variations of your domain name. Those examples that I'm talking about are for example, ZenHabits.net. It's not a dot-com because the dot-com is owned by somebody else, but a lot of people go to ZenHabits.com because the dot-com is the most common. With that being said, has it been completely necessary for Leo over at ZenHabits.net to have a dot-com in order to become successful? No, not at all. There has been a lot of cases that are like that, where they don't have a dot-com, yet they are completely successful: Problogger.net, ZenHabits.net, Fizzle.co. It's whatever you brand it with, that's what it becomes.
Yes, there'll be some people who go to the other ones, if you cannot get those, but that's not the end of the world. If you can, just to save yourself the headache, and if you have the funds available, you could likely get the dot-com and the dot-net, and maybe the dot-org. Is it wise to buy all variations? Probably not, especially from the beginning. If you have a successful business, then by all means, you can get as many as you'd like, but there are hundreds of different variations now. In the last couple years, there's been even other ones like dot-guru and dot-movie, dot-web, all these other ones that most people don't even know about. Do you need those? Probably not. The dot-com and the dot-net are the most common, and dot-org are common as well, so you might want to get those if you have the opportunity to get those. A lot of people just start out with one, just to test out, and then if things start to take off, then they get the other ones at that point. Again, it's up to you, but there are … Leadpages. I'm an advisor for Leadpages, at leadpages.net. Leadpages.com is owned by somebody else, I believe. Actually, they're trying to capitalize on leadpages.net's success, which isn't good. That's an example of why you might want to capitalize on getting one of the dot-coms or the dot-nets, the ones that are different from the one that you actually own, and are used to publishing on primarily.
Again, short, quick answer for you today, Ron. Hopefully that helps you and gives you some direction. For everybody else out there, thank you so much for listening in. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for all the love and support for AskPat. If you had a second, please head on over to iTunes and leave a review for the show. All you have to do is go to iTunes and look up “AskPat.” You can leave a review and rating there. I appreciate it so much. I read each and every one of them. Thank you all so much for all the fantastic support, and obviously the questions that come in. This show wouldn't exist without your questions.
Ron, because your question was featured here on the show, we're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt. You'll hear from my assistant in the next couple weeks to collect your information for that. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page thanks to the widget from Speakpipe.com, which allows us to collect those mp3 file voicemails from you, and plop them right here into the show.
All right. To finish up, I'm going to end with a quote. This is from Brandon Sanderson. He said, “The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things, in order to accomplish the vital ones.” Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks.