Provided you’ve got a day job (and I’m sure many of you do, myself included) and you want a website, there’s no excuse not to register a domain name for your website these days. $10 a year is 2.74 cents a day. I remember back in the olden days of the web, back before the first internet bubble, where you would contemplate about buying that domain on Register.com for $35 and it sure felt like a big investment back then. (But wait a sec, Network Solutions still offers domains for $35- what gives?) Well, no more, I say. If you want your website to be taken seriously on the web, why not get a domain so that people can easily get to it?

Back in the late 90’s I ran across someone’s personal website, and he had this quote to share: “Internet domain names are like women; the ones I want are already taken.” This has never been truer before (if you’re single and like women, anyway). Now that it’s so easy to snatch up domains for $10, $9 or even less- I find myself running into established websites, or generic link pages whenever I check if a domain exists. Sometimes you’re lucky and get a .net or .org, but hey, we all know that in the end we want a .com. People subconsciously look for the .com first when they’re trying to look for a site.

If you have many ideas buzzing in your head but no time to implement them at the moment, buy the domain names anyway. Getting to them first is the key, and everyone knows that at a whim your name can get snatched up at a moment’s notice once it expires. Currently I have 6 domains which isn’t much to many of you people, but half of them are just sitting there in case I ever want to do something with them. I used to own the domain “2anime.com” because it was supposed to be for launching a website dedicated to anime. 2anime, get it? The project never came to fruition, so I let it sit for another year and then let it go. Now, over two years later, it’s occupied by a website with many anime videos. Not run by me, but by others that knew how to apply their ideas and dedicate their time.

Am I disappointed by this turn of events? No way. It is nice for me to know that someone out there made a good use of the name and succeeded where I have failed. My point here is, you cannot take domain names for granted. When you find catchy names that you might work around a product or service in the future, register them as soon as possible.