You’ve seen them before and wondered what the bejesus these were thinking: small businesses with website names like eallylonganduniquebusinessname. biz. Half-out-loud you say: what, was reallylonganduniquebusinessname. com taken? A new advertising strategy of “illegal” casino websites helps prove that your snickering is perfectly justified.

Cheapskates and Johnny-dot-Com-Lately’s

If you’ve contacted for small business websites as long as I have, you have probably encountered many whoever owners decided to save three dollars at Godaddy by buying a dot-biz url of your website. Or a dot-net, dot-info, or dot-whatever was available for sale that week.
Whatever it is, forget trying to tell them that they may have lost out in thousands of dollars of business from type-ins. That is, from all the people who will type the dot-com version and get an error message–or a parked domain advertising naughty-naughty pictures. Nor should you tell them that everyone who knows a dot-biz from a dot-com knows that the former is usually offered available for sale and is the beast-mark of the very most extreme kind of penny-wise-pound-foolish cheapskate. The obviousness of the truth of the remark will only make them hate you more.

Then there are the netrepreneurs who wanted slot that keyword-perfect url of your website so badly that they took a dot-biz, dot-org, dot-cc, or dot-what-the-heck-does-that-stand-for? when the dot-com version was already taken. Guess what happens I’m talking about: a one-man-band bookstore that buys the “book” domain with the Vatican’s top-level domain off shoot because Barnes & Respectable has book. com, and every other possible variant was also already
taken.

Again, don’t bother telling these people they’re just sending type-in traffic to Barnes & Respectable. You are reasoning against a bachelor’s pad industry. Pitcairn Island, population under 100, has its top-level url of your website off shoot. No doubt they can cut back on their rare coin and postage stamps production thanks to the hundred bucks (US, not Pitcairnian) per domain paid by wishful Johnny-come-lately’s. And GoDaddy is no doubt raking in the credit card digits from. us website names that are worth their weight in gold pixels. This is the web version of small enterprises paying thousands to put their kids in their TV tv ads. If you’re a business consultant, you correct their error at your peril.

Why Casino Sites Know Web Businesses Need Dot-Coms

In case you have some approval for a dot-whatever lurking in some self-destructive corner of your brain, let me write this as clearly as possible. For a US or international business, the only suitable url of your website off shoot is dot-com. Nonprofits can get by with dot-org, schools with dot-edu. Non-US country-specific businesses can use their own national url of your website extensions. No, my fellow Americans, there is no approval for dot-us, even if your shipping area does exclude The us and Puerto Rico and military addresses to start.

Why? Here’s solid evidence the dot-whatevers are so bad.

1) Type-in traffic.

Yes, many people really will type the dot-com version of a non-dot-com business website. I discovered powerful evidence of this once after i saw a television commercial for a website with educational information about playing. Curious how they were making money on this deal, I keyed in the domain–and found a website with actual playing directly on the homepage, which will be flagrantly (though perhaps technically) illegal for me to use. Only later did I realize that it commercial had advertised the dot-net version of the domain, and I had keyed in the dot-com version. The dot-net
version has the educational material.

How would a no-membership-fee content website–with little to no advertising–recoup the expense of television advertising? As long as a massive number of the visitors to go to the money-generating dot-com version.

2) Respect

You may think I’m completely off-base and a business’s url of your website choice is none of my dot-biz-ness But the fact is those opinions are my opinions, they’re not going anywhere, and if you want to impress me, a dot-whatever url of your website won’t do it. And I’m certainly not the only person who feels that
way. You may can just commit your dot-whatever online site’s homepage to refuting the snickerers like myself?