I'm not far from launching a new venture. It's about 75% complete. Problem is I only have the .net for the domain. Dot Com for it, is obviously taken. I liked the name I thought up so much though I just had to use it. Now everything is fitted and styled and designed to that name in every sense I'm thinking more logically and... is having the .com THAT important? If it were someone else making this post I would say yes immedietely. It's the primary domain on the web, if launching a new venture under a name that is not it and another related site already exists with the .com - that's pretty stupid. Which is what I'm thinking now. But I'm still in two minds about it. Because on the other hand I'm just thinking well... as long as I market it well, people should have no trouble getting used to it being .net As it's not as if the .com version is the same idea anyway. If I picked a different name now I'd need to re-design everything and it all looks so good and I love the name! I'm torn... Love to hear some opinion on this! Thanks, Nick.
In my opinion dot com is the best extension to stick with. Although .net and the other extensions are also well known, dot com is usually what you think when you type out a website's url and you can potentially loose returning visitors or give traffic to the dot com url that you don't own. People that visit your website will eventually get used to .net instead of .com but I would say buy a new domain thats available as a .com. Ive been in the same boat as you before, a lot of the .com domains I liked were taken but in the end I had to choose a name I wasn't too attached to. Overtime that changed and it makes no difference to me that I didn't get the name I wanted anymore. Hope that helps.
No, it is not that important. If you are going to be doing a lot of advertising when they click on the ads, it especially doesn't matter. I thought of a great name for my e-books: The List. It's actually 3 sites in one: Dating book for women. Dating book for men. Marketing and advertising. But the dot com was taken. Shit! So I went with .FM. It's perfect. I was fucking lucky to get that one. Don't worrry about it. Extensions do not matter. It's how you pitch your site that matters.
I always prefer the .com name because it is the most common and many average people type that automatically. However, there are many sites that are as successful or more so on a .net site. If there is already an established .com on that domain, it may benefit you by people accidentally typing .net. I would go with your plan and develop it. If you have a good site in mind and do the right promoting, you should have no problem making a .net popular. Good Luck!
Of course .com is best... But it really depends on how you're getting traffic... If all of your traffic is coming from search engines, PPC and other direct links, then it may not be too big of a deal having the .net. However, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages in most cases. Why not find a cleaver and creative dot com that isn't taken. Keep in mind, the biggest sites around, ebay, google, yahoo, etc. They could have bought auction.net, search.net, etc. But instead they came up with something different and creative and branded themselves.
The name I have come up with is creative. It's not generic, it's got a metaphorical meaning and it's short and relative and has character. That's why I'm so tied to it. All design already done for it and it already looks like a brand in itself, it's far from generic. I've literally thought of like... 4 other domains I would use, all taken. Anything else would just mean complete re-design, re-branding, re-charactization... so much hassle and cost. Yeh. I will be having a nice big launch and be spending a lot on advertising.
Depends on your marketing. If it involves a lot of word-of-mouth and social networking marketing, then people may have to remember the domain from memory and they could forget the .net extension. It isn't a major concern though, I wouldn't stress too much over it. However if it's all click based (PPC, web ads) then it shouldnt be an issue.