Building a Brand on .Net

As Domain Investors we tend to be very focused on .com – and with good reason. If you are going to invest in a domain name a .com will definitely have the most value when you are looking to re-sell the domain. There are a million different price tables comparing the .com re-sale value to that of a .net, .org etc. and oftentimes these second-tier TLD’s don’t even command 1/3rd the price of their corresponding .com.

But what if you don’t want to re-sell your domain? You might be thinking – okay, he’s finally lost it – what does he mean don’t want to re-sell – that’s what domain investing is all about…right? Wrong. Yes – buying and selling domain names is an essential part of the domain investing process, but you can have a domain investment that you never plan to sell. You can have a domain name that generates a consistent monthly income which for many people might be more important than one lump sum.

If you don’t plan to sell a domain then you can focus on the keywords in the name rather than the TLD! This is because Google is TLD agnostic and will not rank a .com above a .net or a .org just because it’s a .com! Instead Google ranks sites based on how relevant they think the site is to the given search query. For example – when I bought Domainvestors.tv I never once thought about re-selling this name – instead I wanted to build a brand with the word “Domainvestors” and a TLD that represents my interest and focus on video. Search for my brand on Google – “Domainvestors” and you’ll see the entire first page is all me! Sure I could get the same results with a .com but I’m not trying to re-sell the name and the .tv TLD is actually more relevant!

Now for the title of this post – building a brand on .net. Perhaps the most famous person to build a brand on the .net TLD is ProBlogger. Darren built his blog on ProBlogger.net and later acquired the .com version of this name. He has been in the #1 slot on Google when you search for “Pro Blogger” for a long time now and he runs one of the most successful blogs out there.

This week Darren announced the launch of ProBlogger.com and guess what – it’s a different site! As a Domainer our first instinct would be to buy the .com to forward this traffic or better structure the brand on a .com – the king of TLD’s. Darren instead is thinking outside of the box here and is actually using Com to mean “Community”. He has put a brand-new forum focused on Blogging on ProBlogger.com.

Let’s be clear here – I’m not saying you should stop buying .com domains or that other TLD’s will eclipse .com in pricing. What I am saying is that you can build a brand without a .com. At the end of the day ranking well in search engines should be your primary goal and you don’t need a .com to do this!

Share your thoughts! Comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton