Companies Upgrading From a ccTLD or Non Dot Com to a Dot Com

Businesses play around and then decide to upgrade

[Webwork]

Interesting articles and discussion of companies that launched using a non-dot-com address and subsequently decided to upgrade.

Hat tip to Mike Berkens of TheDomains.com.

[thedomains.com ]

[networkworld.com ]

[networkworld.com ]

I guess it comes down to seeing a return on the investment. That may include not having to invest money and time in explaining away "we're not the .Com and that really doesn't matter".

Does it matter? No doubt the purveyors of the 100s of new gTLDs would like to convince the world that it doesn't.

FWIW, I'm none too impressed when I encounter a business on a .biz domain . . but, in the case of small local or regional players I can be forgiving.

[Leosghost]

Finally, you don’t have to have the resources of Overstock or Visa to get the .com you really want. In a twist on the Daily Mail domain name story I just mentioned, when the Charleston Daily Mail sold its original domain name, dailymail.com, to the U.K’s Daily Mail, the Charleston, West Virginia-based newspaper redirected its site to its new longer and desirable domain name, charlestondailymail.com. If registered at retail price, about $10, this demonstrates you don’t have to pay through the nose to get an arguably better, more descriptive .com domain name.

IMO, launching a product or a service site without owning the "product dot com"* or "service dot com"*, is just making life so much harder for yourself ( unless you can "brand" with a made up name, which usually takes huge amounts of spend in establishing "brand ID" )..I can never understand those who decide upon the product or service name without checking to see if the relevant dot com ( or country TLD(s) ) are available..

It is usually easier ( and a whole lot cheaper ) to tweak the product or service name to fit the available dot com or dot country TLD(s) than to have to negotiate for them later..

Plus there are so many really good short descriptive ( or snappy easy to remember) dot coms or country dot TLDs still available ( the low hanging fruit ) that only require a little thinking and imagination to get for under $10.oo..

Of course, having the time to develop them is another matter..