Starting a blog with a non-dotcom extension.

[Infoproliferati]

I've been researching domains for a blog. One which I like a lot isn't available in .com (as I expected). But .org and .me are available. Out of curiosity, I did a whois look-up to learn that the domain is registered by a MAJOR company and is parked by Mark Monitor.

Is it smart for me to start the blog with the .org or .me? And which extension is preferable? Or should I consider getting another .com instead (although to be honest I'd rather not).

The domain is an agent noun e.g teacher, swimmer etc

 

[thisjeff]

It depends on the nature of your blog. Are you going to be receiving mostly direct traffic (URL in emails to a list, for instance)? Or will you rely on other forms of marketing? .Com might hold higher SEO value (maybe? I'm not sure anymore), but it also gives users a sense of authority (although this is diminishing). The other issue is that if you market the name as your brand, people will type it in and it will either resolve to a .com first or they'll just assume it's AGENTNOUN.com. So now you'd have to be marketing as AGENTNOUN at AGENTNOUN.org. Of course if you get a top position search result, this issues goes away as well.

Short answer: it depends. .Com is better, but is becoming less important.

 

[Infoproliferati]

You are right; I'll have to market the blog really well. No doubt I'll be losing some traffic to the .com. Like you said .com is just better for the sort of thing.

 

[Theo]

A blog on a TLD other than .com is fair use. I use Acro.net and yet the .com and .org are developed businesses. But my blog drives more traffic

 

[cbk]

For me blogs have been one of those things where the keywords in the domain is more important than the tld if the .com is unavailable.

.org best bet.

 

[Biggie]

FYI:

MM is major tm defender and c&d letter sender

 

[Infoproliferati]

Thanks for your input Acro and cbk. You confirmed what I'd been thinking.

FYI:

MM is major tm defender and c&d letter sender

Even for a generic word? I just did a trademark search and couldn't find any.

 

[Jeffreyw]

I have two blogs with .org extensions.

 

[Biggie]

Even for a generic word? I just did a trademark search and couldn't find any.

was not implying that your name has a tm


was alerting you about the "ties" between that .com which you said was parked with Mark Monitor