I recently had a conversation with a sports executive (whose name is easily recognizable), and was surprised to learn he hadn’t registered his own name as a domain name. In its simplest form, a domain name is a web address like sportsologist.com, or espn.com. Whether you are an executive in a sports organization, entry level worker trying to make a name for yourself, professor at a university, or a student, registering a domain name is an easy way to control your identity online.
Here are a couple of reasons to own your personal domain name in addition to any business name you may own:
- Use For A Consulting Business
- You have a full time job but have developed a following due to your name and want to start consulting.
- Develop A Resume or Portfolio Site For Career Advancement
- Whether you’re a student looking for a job, or entry level worker looking to move up in the world owning your personal name is a start.
- Forward To A Social Media Site
- If you’re active on Twitter or Facebook, simply register yourname.com and have it forward to your Twitter or Facebook account, until you are ready to develop a personal site
- Protect For Future Use
- Even if you don’t see a need now, it’s possible that down the road you’ll want a personal blog, personal website, and it will be too late.
A few more tips:
- Buy the .com. Other domain extensions such as .org, .net, .info don’t garner the same respect as a .com domain name.
- If your name is really popular (like mine) consider variations such as first initial/last name, or first/middle/last name.
- I recommend GoDaddy (especially for beginners) to register your domain because of reasonable prices and great customer service.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in comments! I do quite a bit of work with domain names and website particularly in sports so I’m happy to help. I anticipate having more posts in the future regarding domain names as well so stay tuned.