Maybe you’ve heard that country song “Buy Dirt.” I’m talking about “Buy Dot,” as in dot-com.
Here’s why it makes perfect sense to buy your own website domain. Having your own name as a domain protects your identity. If someone searches for you online, they’ll get you and not someone else’s reputation and history. You get your own email address, a “yourname@yourname.com.” That’s just pretty cool and it’s private.
If you have a business, a hobby, a side hustle, a podcast, or just an idea for one, picking up a great domain should be one of the first steps you take. It’s not a huge investment. $10 a year in some cases. So, it’ll be cheaper to pick up your own domain than buy business cards.
It doesn’t have to be a dot-com. New domains may make more sense. Realtors might want .home, attorneys might prefer .law. There are domains ending in .church, .business, .party, fans, vote, ninja, golf, pizza, dental, XYZ, or how about “yourname.rocks.”
You can build your own website or have your dot-whatever forwarded to your Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, or YouTube channel. You could flip it. Lots of money to be made buying and selling domains with cool names. 20 years ago someone bought Whisky.com for nothing and sold it years later for $3 million.
A domain makes a great gift for high school or college graduates starting their career or business and I’d argue it makes a good baby gift in the child’s name. The parents might say “oh, that’s so cool,” or “oh, what a weirdo.”
