I am a big believer in using catchy and reputable sounding names for websites. For example. I own MoneyForum.com. I get comments all the time about that domain name. Before I bought it I was brainstorming other ideas for domain names that might have been a lot cheaper. Then it dawned on me that I was planning to start a forum about money; a money forum. Sure I might have to fork over some cash, but, even so it made a lot of sense to me. The domain name was arguably one of the best options for what I wanted to do, so why mess with perfection? So in the end I went ahead and made the purchase. I’ve paid aftermarket prices on many of my domain names not because I like wasting money, but, because I feel that there is no better way to start your website off right than by giving your visitors a good first impressions. This is why I am a firm believer in buying .com domains only. Anything less than the .com is going to be mistaken for .com, and send traffic to the .com anyway. Why not be the person collecting that extra typo traffic? Pay the extra money upfront. It will pay off later.

Just yesterday I was setting up a new website only to realize that the person who owned the domain we were planning on using had let it drop. This instantly put a damper on the whole operation, but, after failing to think of a name that was comparable to the one that had dropped, there were few options left. Option A was to buy back the domain at an inflated price. Option B was to register a new domain and hope it would be as easy to market. After weighing the pros and cons of each, I’m glad to say that Option A ended up prevailing.

It’s easy to use a domain like forum-about-money.ext, but would your site attract the same visitors with a cheesy domain like that? I doubt it. You can still run a successful website on a bad domain name, but you’ll have to more than make up for your shortcut by making your site ten times better than the other sites in your same market.