Why Dot Com Domains Are The Gold Standard

In the past two weeks we’ve devoted a little time to studying domaining and what is all involved with being a domainer.  It can be very time consuming, requires a lot of research, and does require a little risk, but the payout can be and usually is huge. 

One thing people often ask is why dot com is such a big deal?  Why can’t someone succeed with a country code domain (.us, .in, .cn, etc.) or maybe a dot net?  The truth is, of course, that any business can succeed with just about any domain name.  If you are getting inbound links and your content is relevant, search engines will find you.  If your business is country based, it may even be appropriate to have one, but dot com will always be the gold standard. 

Brian Krassenstein has written a post on a message board explaining why he feels dot com domains will always be the gold standard.   If you have pronouncable or keyword-rich domains, investing in dot coms is about the safest investment you can make.  Here is what Brian had to say:

Every month or two it seems as though new domain extensions are released by ICANN. They have one for almost every country now, and are now doing continents, such as .eu and .asia. We have .us, .biz, .org, .net, .mobi, etc, etc, etc. You would think that as new extentions are released it would deflate the values of the already existing domains out there. This is not the case though. .com domain names will always actually gain value as ICANN releases new top level domain extensions. Why?

When most people think about the internet and a website, they think .com. Even if they hear a domain name on the radio, see it on tv, or in a magazine, or are told about it by a friend, they will always think it ends in .com, even if it doesn’t. The large corporations and the most popular sites out there all end in .com. Only approximately 1/6th of the worlds population has access to the internet today. Even then, only about half of them are able to get online at their convenience. Having said this, things are changing, and changing fast. China and India who account for over 1/3rd of the worlds population are growing rapidly. More and more people in these countries will gain internet access very soon. It is predicted that the internet population of China and India will be 5 times what it is today by the year 2011. Now imagine if only a small fraction of these people decide to create their own websites. The demand for good keyword rich domains will explode. Most of them will not be able to hand register the .com versions so they will go for the cheaper versions such as .in, and .cn. When they do this, they are actually making money for whoever owns the .com verion of their domain since a good portion of their type in traffic will type “.com” instead of “.in” or “.cn”.

Some other tlds that I recommend buying and holding onto in addition to “.com” are:

.es - These are being used for spanish language domains. Should grow significantly
.cn - China is large, very large, and .cn domains seem to be what most chinese recognize as the authoritive tld extension
.de - This is the German extension. For some reason Germans, unlike many people elsewhere in the world tend to love their country code top level domains

All in all, if you are thinking about investing in good generic or abbreviation domain names, go after the .coms. Over the long haul the risks to .coms are significantly less then that of other extensions.

Now, keep in mind, that you aren’t necessarily going to get rich by investing in just any dot com domain, but they are appreciating at a rate much faster than the cost of renewing the domain every year.   There are currently 14.5 billion dot coms taken and they are continuing to disappear at a rate of roughly 30,000 a day.   If you are looking for a safe investment, buy a few dot com domains that you like and just sit on them for a couple years.  If you decide not to develop them, you can always resell them!

On a quick side note, I got an e-mail from another Kyle Eslick yesterday who found me via my personal domain name.   Have you registered your families personal domain names yet?   Even if you aren’t using them now, you’re going to want them some day and you can use them as an e-mail address in the meantime!