Do You Own YourName.com?

Look at your business card (you do have one with you, right?). Except for your logo, what's the largest item on the card. Your name, right?

Your name is an important part of your business. Hopefully, folks remember it. Scott Ginsberg practically wears his name on his sleeve. I've never talked with Scott in person, but I'll always remember his name.

I don't have Scott's blog address memorized, but I simply typed in www.scottginsberg.com and got there. You can find Tom Peters or Steve Farber the same way.

Now, type this in your web browser:

www.<Insert Your Name>.com

Find anything?  Do you own your domain name?  You should.

Let's try a few others:

• Drew McLellan at www.drewmclellan.com. Check.
• Art Dinkin at www.artdinkin.com? Now you're talking.
• Adam Steen at www.adamsteen.com. It's a GoDaddy parking page, but at least Adam owns it.  And hopefully - it's our Adam.

The last example is important. Even if you don't publish anything right away, you should secure yourname.com (and your kid's names, and your those of your grandkids).

Simply scoot on over to GoDaddy.com, secure your name for $10 and park it.  Don't think too many people have your name?  That's what I thought, too.  Thankfully - I'm the owner for the domain of my name.

Who owns your (domain) name?

Comments

[The Real Drew McLellan]

What's more likely is that someone will type your name into a search engine, so the advice to register a domain name even if you don't use it is poor.

Sure, register the domain if you can - that's great. More importantly, publish a bit about yourself that will get indexed and will enable people to quickly find you.

Owning yourname.com isn't so important, and clearly just doesn't scale. Publishing content is the way to make sure you're easily found. Google for Drew McLellan and you'll find me publishing geeky web stuff and Drew publishing geeky marketing stuff, and we can both co-exist quite happily, both equally findable doing our own thing.

The web is big and the world is bigger. You have to think big, too.

[Brett Trout]

Registering your name is a no-brainer. I bought mine back in 1999. Even if you do not use it for business, it is a pocket domain you will have with you always. What if you sell you business and your domain, will people be able to find you, or Google put them through to websites that no longer contain your contact info.

If you wait, and someone grabs your name first, you will likely never get it back, at least not for under $1,000. From someone who has owned their name domain before most people ever heard of eBay, I would strongly suggest buying your name before it is too late.

[Mike Sansone]

Good point, Drew. My own blog trumps my name.com

And if you search Jack Schultz, you find his Boomtown blog, but not his name.

I'll disagree that the advice is poor. This morning I spoke with three business people who don't own their own name dot.com - and don't know how to publish anything to it if they had it.

Without knowing all the geeky stuff (and until they either know it aor hire it), they should still get the domain - yes?

[Art Dinkin]

I have to vote in favor of www.insertname.com. My static website, www.artdinkin.com, has allowed clients to find me when I moved locations and even firms. My phone number and email address may change, but my name never will. Or, as I have told many clients, "As long as you remember my name you will always know how to find me."

Now that I have a blog I still keep the static site, but there are no less than three places on my site that link to my blog (and vice versa).

[Rush Nigut]

Good advice, Mike. The cost is so minimal why not register ? I truly have an unusual name that I have not run across with anyone else. However, I still thought it was important enough to protect my rights for future use. It is sure a lot better than getting into a domain dispute with someone down the road.

Rush

[Drew McLellan]

Mike,

I think this is a case of why wouldn't you? Is the end all and be all? No, but nothing is. Is, as the UK Drew suggests, there other ways to be found? (I prefer the UK Drew to the real Drew since of course, that makes me a bit like an imaginary friend.) Sure.

But for $10 a year -- why would anyone not jump on the chance? I'm sure, if I said to UK Drew...hey, do you want www.DrewMcLellan.com he would gladly take it.

Just like if he said (I assume it's him) hey, want drewmclellan@gmail.com I would say yes.

It's just common sense.

Drew

[Susan F. Heywood]

Great reminder of the benefits of securing domain names matching our names.

Another benefit of owning our names as domains is that we can use sub-domains to guide Web visitors to specific types of content.

For instance, http://resume.susanheywood.com leads searchers directly to my resume. A Google search for Susan F. Heywood returns the resume site in the top spot. (Omitting the F, it shows up in the third spot, below DirectMarketingMBA.com.)

Resumes are not the only content that can be highlighted using sub-domains. You could set up sub-domains for samples, blogs or other content, as well.