I have worked thousands of hours and put together a volunteer staff of reviewers. We're now ranked #1 and #3 at Google for the most important key phrases and I'm extremely pleased with this. Over the 2 years, the company that owns the .com (same domain name, just .com extension instead of .net) has been trying to sell it to me. After explaining to them that I do not make money from my site (just $50 per month on Amazon referral fees) and that nobody ever would make money with it, they came down to $500.
I could afford this if I need to (it's a bit of a stretch right now) but will it help me to have the .com? I'm not a commercial site, but I do want to have the best book reviewing site in this niche and I want to, I guess, have the esteem and authority of a .com name. We have a lot of correspondence with publishers and authors and are becoming well-known among them so perhaps we don't need the .com, or perhaps it would actually help our site's reputation.
Another issue is will transferring the site (about 900 pages) to a .com cause the ranking to fall? I know I can just forward the .com to the .net, but it'd be nice to be at the .com address.
Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Of course my site was already making decent money so the price wasn't a real issue unless it fell into the hands of a domain park or domain reseller, then it would've been MUCH more.
It all depends on your finances... if you can swing $500, do it... if that is rent and you are not going to make rent if you buy it... don't do it.
The issue now is strictly one of SEO. Getting the newly acquired .com that she bought from a squatter to rank as high as the .net did. :)
If you can afford it, I would buy it
Welcome to 15 days ago ;)
Never rely on your host for redirects, learned it the had way :(
Do you know: if I submit a sitemap to Google but I haven't put all the pages on yet (can't find a free one that can manage so many pages), will it ignore pages that aren't on the sitemap? Does anyone know of a good free generator that can handle 1000 pages?
Again, I appreciate the help and encouragement I've found here!
will it ignore pages that aren't on the sitemap? Does anyone know of a good free generator that can handle 1000 pages?
take a few sample addresses from the old .net site and drop them in - check a good number of subdirectories.
You should see
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently etc etc
as the result if the redirect has been done properly.
If the redirect has been done properly then your rankings will return (when is the question)
It would be wise to use the tool in Google Webmaster Tools for site moves too, anyway.
You can get an idea of the traffic by looking at it in Alexa or Cubestat. This is very inexact, but better than nothing. To correlate the information,use the comparison box at the bottom of the graphs to put both on the same graph. That will give you a better feel for the relationship between the two sites. You should be aware that Alexa is subject to manipulation and the seller may have anticipated you going there. Look at the longest view charts as the most difficult to manipulate.
The .com could be viewed as an investment in the future value of the site should you ever decide to sell it.
There will almost always be some leakage to the .com due to the fact that people don't know it is a .net.
If you do buy it, I would 301 redirect all traffic from the .com to .net. There is nothing wrong with the .net, you just want to capture the leakage from the.com.
You can also retire the .com by not having any dns records at all. Or, you can simply put up 1 default page + default error handler that simply contains a link to the .net with an explanation and let the user click on it. No redirect at all.
The error handler can be smart enough to construct a full url out of the incoming request if it is not for the homepage. That way, if the user clicks, he goes to the exact .net page he requested in error as a .com page.
One word of advice. Next time before you make a serious move of any kind, check with this board for help. There is much wisdom at WW.
If most of your traffic comes from Google then I would wager that most of your users don't even notice they are at a .net address.
I don't see the value in buying the .com at all.
Yes they could become your competitor, but, they could do that with any domain name, to compete with you they would actually have to do some work, and based on your story it doesn't sound like they want to do work, they just want to "quick flip" a domain for profit without having to add any real value to the domain name itself.
In fact if there are ads parked on the .com site now then who knows what quality score has been assigned to it from search engines. It could be they have degrading that .com domain and you could be hooking your site to an anchor that could bring you down, if the site was an MFA or something bad previously.
I would offer them $20 when it expires to re-register it and that is it. I think you would be re-enforcing a poor business model if you offered them more money than that for it.
It leaves a lot of doors open for you in the long run, and closes a big door for any competitor looking to swipe some of your success.
I respectfully disagree. Just because someone has the same name but in a .com doesn't mean they will be able to compete with you...
Alternatively just because someone doesn't have the same name as you in a .com doesn't mean they can't compete with you.
It takes work to create a competing site, but the work can be done on any domain name.
I guess I am a little bias because I freaken hate the domain name market. I hate people who buy a domain and only wish to resell it. I hate it even more when they do nothing to increase the value of the domain, and in most cases they degrade the domain's value by putting ads all over it until it sells.
Here you have a guy who has, through hard work and dedication, built up what sounds to be a great site...
Then you have someone else, who through no work wishes to profit from the hard working guy because he bought a domain name that is similar to a successful one someone else built.
Why should he profit from the hard work of another?
What value added are you getting buy buying the domain? In my view little to none.
It has been a hobby site until now, but having control of the .com would make it easier to take things to the next level if katch2 decides to develop some business goals.
As for personal goals, the issue of pride in ownership is a big one. Sometimes we want things just because we want them, for reasons that are more emotional than logical. As long as we're paying our own bills, who's to criticize? ;)
Sometimes we want things just because we want them, for reasons that are more emotional than logical. As long as we're paying our own bills, who's to criticize?
Oh oh someone has seen my man-cave ;)
Good point buck, like I said I am bias.
The registrant had it since 2003 and sold it to me for $500 (after 2 years of negotiating down from $2800). This one didn't get what they wanted for it, if that makes us feel better, Demaestro. :)
[edited by: Webwork at 2:21 pm (utc) on Aug. 16, 2009]
[edit reason] Please read the Domain Forum Charter regarding comments about the domain business [/edit]
congrats to the purchase, a good move.
Never change a winning team is the first rule with rankings.
Best to reverse all changes, get you .net back into the old shape and send some prayers tp give you back what you had before.
After that, you could develop the .com into a new site with different content to have a second horse on the track.
