How important is it to negotiate to buy the .com domain name to match the established .net website of the same name....
My Experience
In 1997 I purchased a four letter .com domain name. It had a lot of potential. It had a snazzy sounding name. I created a corporation around the name.
But, it had so much potential that I couldn't settle on what to do with it (for eight years!). When the dot com bubble burst in 2000 or so, I just let it sit. The four letter .net, .org, .info was available for quite some time, but I had the .com.
Over the years, I had offers to buy my domain name. I asked for anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000. Nobody ever took me up on it. One day, I was annoyed at the request to buy, so, I decided to ask for $80,000. The guy countered with $30,000.
I was shocked, it was twice as much as what I had hoped for previously. But, I took the offer.
The point is this. The ".com" tld (Top Level Domain) has the reputation of being the "real thing". A .net tld is like an "also ran". .biz and .info have even less percieved value.
That's not to say .biz and .info domains can't be valuable. The parody site, Cregslist.biz is both a mis-spelling and a different tld than the original Craigslist.org. Still, that domain gets a great deal of "accidental" traffic.
Bottom line is this, it depends on how strongly you want to brand your site. If you expect to be perceived as "best of breed" you want:
- A .com TLD
- No dashes or numbers
- An easy to remember word of seven letters or fewer.
The further away from those three conidtions your domain name is the lower its percieved value will be.
