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Comment by evan_ | Hacker News Reader

I happen to own mylastname.org and it has kind of been a problem if I’m being honest. I finally had to start start carrying around cards with my email address printed on them. People can’t handle it, they expect personal names to come before the @ and if you say anything after the @ besides gmail or hotmail or a business name they absolutely shut down.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that my last name seems like it’s misspelled...

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A lot of people really don't have a clue about email. It is really not uncommon for a telemarketer to respond with "You work here too?", when I give them a theircompanyname@mydomain.nl address.

To confuse people further, I customize the email per website. So when I tell the person at home depot my order is under homedepot@johndoe.com,they often ask if I work for home depot then look confused when I say no.

I keep a gmail account that forwards and deletes any received email to my hosted email. I use it for these types of businesses/people.

I have a mylastname.name domain I use for email, and that confuses people and systems even more. Pretty much the only reason I also have a gmail account is for things that don't accept first@last.name as a valid email address. It does cut down on spam, though; I went literally years without any unwanted email.

This is precisely why I still give people my gmail, I realized if I wanna use a totally custom email I have to carry around a business card. I just might start carrying business cards soon either way, it's a subtle way for me to get myself out there when trying to network and meet new people.

I got the little half-size business cards from moo.com and just put my name and email on them.

Been ditching my business cards for http://clinck.me/ (no affiliation) over these last few years with great success, maybe worth a shot?

I tell people my personal email address at least once a week and I’ve never had anyone ‘shut down’. Sometimes after I finish saying it they ask, ’Is that it?’ That’s all though. I’m rik@hemsley.cc and when I registered it I was half expecting trouble but it hasn’t materialised.

Just to note I was also expecting the occasional web form to decide my address wasn’t valid, but it hasn’t happened.

I’m not sure why it’s been plain sailing but perhaps I’ve just been lucky to pick a TLD that happens to work okay for both these scenarios.

Similar with my business email. Had to end up buying a way shorter version because people just can’t spell.

I owned mylastname.co for a year before I let it drop. Everyone expected either .com or .co.uk.

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