- I notice there's .coms
and then there's also like .wtf,
so WTF, what's the difference?
- You can think of a domain name
like having an online piece of real estate.
- Why does it cost, no.
(beeping)
Why does this cost so much?
Have you ever thought about buying a domain
and then notice, some of them cost a dollar
and some of them cost a lot more?
And you wondered, why is that?
Well, you're in luck.
We're gonna talk about that today and more.
And today, I'm super excited to be joined
with my co-host, Justin Nealey.
What's up? - What up?
- How you doing?
Good to see you again.
- Phenomenal, glad to be here.
So I know you got a lot of questions for me
and I'll let you just lay 'em on me.
- So first and foremost, I think about cost
and why is it there's such a range?
I noticed that recently.
You know something, maybe a dollar to thousands,
like why is there this range
when it comes to costs for a domain?
- There are a lot of potential reasons why.
So, if nobody owns the domain name yet,
you can get a domain, like a .com
anywhere from like a dollar
to about 20 dollars, just depending,
and then if somebody owns the domain name,
which that's those thousand dollars that you see,
they're essentially reselling it.
You can think of a domain name like having
an online piece of real estate, right?
- That's a good way
to look at it. - So they're selling that off
and they're selling off that name
that's been around for a while that's super unique
and that could potentially give you business
just by having that domain.
- Okay, and then another thing I noticed,
I was so excited to talk with you,
so I started just researching all this,
I notice there's .coms
and then there's also like .coffee or .wtf,
so WTF, what's the difference?
(laughing)
Like, why are there these differences?
- There, so when the internet first began,
we had just a couple different variations,
like the .com, net, info, things like that.
Those are just TLDs or Top Level Domains,
and then we have what's called CCTLDs,
which are Country Code Top Level Domains.
That's like a .co.uk or .au for Australia,
which really have a localized presence.
And then those new ones that just released
not too long ago
and there's a lot more releasing as we speak,
those are GTLDs, Generic Top Level Domains,
that's the .coffee, .wiki, .ninja, .guru, .wtf, .singles,
there's a plethora of names,
and it was really established
because all the good .coms are being taken, right?
Which is where that online real estate comes in,
'cause if you have a great .com domain name,
you could sell it for thousands of dollars.
- So you want it to be short
and sweet though, right?
- Absolutely.
It goes back to radio test.
If you got that 10 second ad spot on the radio,
and that's all you could really convey
is that domain name,
is it catchy and would someone remember it?
Is it easy to spell?
If you have crazy cool spellings
with a K for the krazy, it may not work,
and same thing goes with word of mouth.
If you can't tell me what your domain name is really quick
and I can't go back and find you super quick,
it's not gonna work out.
- But I imagine that's hard at this point in the game,
there's so many domain names.
- Right.
- Like how, I imagine it's pushing us
to the longer domain names
and lengths because there's so many out there.
- Yeah, in a way, I mean,
some things to avoid with your domain name,
you wanna make sure that you don't have hyphens,
'cause that's just annoying. - Why?
- Like, cool, go to my website,
it's this dash awesome dash website dash com.
- Oh, okay. - Dash, all the dashes right?
- Yeah.
- Or it having numbers in it,
like if I tell you to go to, go to 1coffeeshop.com,
you might type in o-n-e or the number one.
- Oh, versus the numeral.
- Or w-o-n potentially, it gets confusing.
- Yeah. - Right.
- And attention spans, they're just getting shorter.
- Right, millennials can attest.
(laughing)
So, with your domain name,
those ones that are super short and sweet,
they're brandable, they're, for the most part,
worth what the cost is.
So those couple thousand dollars,
it's really an investment in your business,
and especially if it's your business name
that .com was taken,
it might be a good idea to spend a little bit of cash
and make sure you get that.
- As we're taking about domain names,
I started to think, well where do I,
where do I go to get this?
Where do I go purchase a domain name?
- Well, glad you asked.
No. So, you can go to any domain registrar,
like GoDaddy is a domain registrar,
which means you can go and purchase your domain name.
So, but with domain names,
you don't just purchase it once and done.
You actually have to essentially lease the domain.
It's still yours but you have to renew it every year.
Now, most domains you buy anywhere
from one year to 10 years,
but there are some domains with some restrictions.
So you really wanna check out those options.
- Wait, why would that be?
How come it's not just consistent across the board?
- So to kinda go a little bit deeper,
there are registrants, registrars, and registries.
Us purchasing a domain name, we're registrants.
Then registrars, like GoDaddy,
they basically are a vendor supplying domains
and we have registries which control a .com.
So Verisign controls .com.
Then you have other registries
that control different domains.
There's that Donuts registry
that controls a lot of the new, unique ones,
and they set their own rules,
so we're pretty much at their mercy, if you will.
- Right.
Okay, so I have another question for you
and that is, how do you protect your domain name?
I mean, do you need to go and put yourself
on the .net, the .com, in order to protect it?
- Right, it's really protecting your brand.
If you just blow up
and become this big success like I hope you will,
you wanna get the alternate endings the next best.
That way people aren't trying to just steal your traffic
or potentially your competitors getting that domain name.
I've seen it happen, they'll get the .net
and steal your traffic, steal your attention
and potentially slander you.
- Cruel.
- It's a dog-eat-dog world out there.
It's pretty rough, no pun intended.
And what you can do, most registrars,
like GoDaddy, has an extra value added service
to protect your registrations,
so it'll protect it from hijacking,
protect it if you forget to renew your domain.
That happens all the time,
especially if you buy it for five years out.
Are you gonna remember in five years?
Sometimes not, credit cards expire,
so there's that added protection that you can get
just to make sure that your domain is always yours.
- Alright, that's a wrap.
First I wanna give a huge shout-out
and a thank you to Justin.
- Thanks for having me.
- The king of domains.
If you want more info like that
and you have questions, definitely comment below
and be sure to subscribe to our channel.
Thanks, see you soon.