I guess its time for everyone to expand their vocabulary with the newest term for domainers: “Domain Hacking”
Apparently the folks at smashingmagazine.com have some previously unknown advice in their story “Get Creative With Your Domain Name”
Here is some of their advice.
“Go domain hacking”.
“”No it’s not actually hacking someone’s domain name and stealing it. It’s the process of using real words but part of the word sits in the domain extension. One famous example is DesignM.ag. See the .ag? Their website is registered in Antigua and Barbuda.
Yes a non-domainer publication is telling people that domains are: “essentially priceless (tacky but true) in name, branding, ease of understanding, and catchiness”.
But since all the good ones are gone they advise people to think of using all of the 21 g’TLD as well as country codes in a creative manner:
“”Learning this will make you even more of an awesome designer or developer for clients. You need to think of a variety of domains and possibilities for new sites, as well as uniquely branding corporate websites with domain extensions””
I think its also worth noting some of the “fun facts” about domains that may have gone unnoticed:
Fun facts about domain names:
- All 3 letter possibilities are gone on .com
- All 4 letter words are depleted on .com
- The most popular registered domain name length is 11 characters
- There are 255,000+ domain names that are 32 characters or longer
- All of the top 10,000 family names are registered as a domain name (they mean .com)
- The most common letter to start a domain with is S
- More than 270,000 domains contain the sequence SEX
Nice going guys, keep informing the masses with what they need to know about domains.
Tell them to buy all the .ag domains they can get a hold of.
You should immediately write to the people that own airbag.com and tell them to change their domain to airb.ag
Yup that looks good.
In the meantime I’m going to buy some more nice .com’s.
Note to Smashing, maybe next time you give out pointers on domains, you might want to at least mention that people can still pay a few bucks and buy a good domain.
I noticed last week some popular blog and podcast personalities mentioing using . Ly for their sites…example soft.ly or loud.ly
Good luck with that…the names only work for them because they mention them on their already listened to podcasts
As usual, I’m sure the .com owners thank them
So these supposed naming “experts” misleadingly name the endeavor as “hacking”? Maybe they are just hacky sackers….
From a solicitation letter I got from Brand-And-Jingles.com promoting Thai.me auction (orig sent to you by email):
“Iknow we were in touch just two weeks ago and I would normally not bother
an important and busy person so often. However, I have some good news to
share, which might be of your domaining interest too if you are into Thai
food, massage etc. So.do.not.hate.me, please.forgive.me,
you.can.always.unsubscribe.to.get.rid.of.me.”
Sincere.ly,
Lara
Just tweeted about something similar, but it seems to me that domainers really need to find a way to change the prevailing perception of domain availability. When folks at smashingmag, et al, say a domain isn’t available, they really mean it can’t be registered for $10. It may still be available, for purchase.
what a horrible idea……
To be fair, they do list the cons of domain hacking:
– Must be well branded…
– Needs to be promoted…
– Has SEO disadvantages…
I think it’s unwise to use any form of domain hack personally, but I suppose if one was set on doing it then .ME or .IN domains would be the only advisable options. Splitting up a word with a period is just stupid.
The other domain related articles that Smashing Mag has done have been great resources and the bit about ccTLDs, etc. in this one is good info for general public.
Agree with Mark about weird extensions in general, but I did find myself bidding on recycle.it on bido.com a few months ago, and was very sad to not have the funds to win it.
Lumpen
I think a domain like recycle.it is a good name and worth buying, definitely not the same as taking a word, breaking it in the middle and complete it with the extension like this guy is suggesting.
also.. it might sound funky for a company to buy a domain name with a diff. TLD, but it is not going to drive more traffic, and imho i think people would just get confused with the extension.. i think you would find them typing.. designm.ag.com i have a .biz email extension and the amount of times a person tries to enter .biz.com is phenomonal!!. most people have absolutely no idea that you can even enter a domain name without .com in it!.. especially countries like mine, that choose to have .com.au in the extension.. it just propagates the belief that “.com” should be in every domain extension!!.
I recommend squidproxies.com to keep your browsing safe from hackers. Or you can use VPNs too, but those are more expensive. Shared proxies are very affordable but effective. I got mine from https://squidproxies.com/shared-proxies/, a friend of mine told me about it and so far so good!