Ask HN: Why don't people register personal domains? (eg YourName.com)

Mike, I totally agree with you and it drives me crazy and has become a bit of a personal mission. My field is career development and so I work a lot with people during their job search, and one of the first things I ask is "what happens when someone googles you?" Then I'll explain the value of having your own domain. I understood when older workers would say they didn't understand how to set it up, or were confused, etc so I often walk them through it.

Then I went back and spoke at my college (I'm 42). I figured, well, these 21 year old internet whiz kids will certainly have this figured out. Nope. The number of people I met that owned their domain was about the same... consistently about 1-2 out of every 10 people I ask.

So in tech geek/lean startup mode, I got frustrated with explaining it to people over and over, so I purchased a domain, bought a theme for $8, used my friend Jayme as a guinea pig, and in 1 weekend recorded a how-to video and built a site so I didn't have to explain it over and over. It's called GetYourNameToday.com.

Look, I realize there's no way for me to not make this comment look spammy, and yes, in full disclosure there is a GoDaddy affiliate link on there (which I note in both the video and on each page), but I figured if it doesn't cost the person anything more, I am genuinely helping them out, and I can get a little something for my effort, why not.

I'm very transparent with who I am on the site, link to my career development/new media blog to show that it is in sync with what I do for a living, and even tackle questions such as WHY to register your name and what to do if you have a basic name that isn't available. I'm with you... seems like there are very few reasons why someone wouldn't see the benefits of securing their name for the "investment" of $10.

Would love to hear your feedback on the site and if you would have positioned it any differently or what I could do to improve it. Thanks! Jim

Jim, thanks for the link and insights. I used to interview boatloads of interns for a couple companies here in Toronto, and the personal domain always left me with an improved first impression of an applicant.

But yes, the ratio was quite low, especially considering I was interviewing CS students.

I'll take a look at the link and send you some notes later.

Thanks Mike. Wow, just went to your site and found Namevine -- what an awesome site. That's the logical next step for a lot of job-seekers... once they have their URL, they want a Twitter account and maybe a YouTube video. And obviously we're both in sync with the helping people/affiliate link dynamic. I'll be recommending this to people I work with. Thanks again.

Thanks Jim, Namevine is a fun side project of mine, and like you I'm hoping to monetize via affiliate links.

Really the big win (for individuals) would be a one click unified domain registration, social media signup, @yourname.com email hosting and About.me setup.

The video you've made shows the current path of least resistance to setup your online identity (at YourName.com), but I can't help but feel it requires more effort than it needs to. Eg. navigating GoDaddy's aggressive upselling, DNS management, etc.

Have you seen IWantMyName.com? They're trying to simplify some of this.

On the other hand, Flavors.me is like About.me but also offer domain registration as a part of the signup.

Finally, when it comes to using a personal domain, my instinct (and most others I'm sure) is to find free solutions for every aspect of the domain where possible.

On my personal domains I use:

- Google Apps for email and private wikis (free, I'm well within the free usage limitations)

- Tumblr for my blog (free, including pointing my domain to their service, I love that about Tumblr)

- Montastic for monitoring (free, my needs are quite simple and they'll happily monitor a couple URLs at somewhat infrequent intervals)

I think the point I'm trying to make here is that I'm onboard with you in terms of personal domain advocacy. However in terms of a business its probably tough to simultaneously offer a very low effort solution that provides a good overview/perspective on the individual using the service (eg. a nice default personal profile page) and make money given people's propensity to use free solutions for their own domain.

Check out the recently launched BrandYourself.com, they're doing something cool that is really in line with your thinking, I wonder what their traction is like (I use the free tier - surprise, surprise).

- People may feel there is no content they wish to broadcast about themselves to the world. I don't have a desire to promote myself constantly, I'll just continue being quiet. Not everyone feels the need to tell the world their thoughts constantly.

- A single gmail/similar address can work fine.

- Not everyone has enough friends to warrant using "social media".

Good points, I suppose one assumption I'm making is that people do have something they'd like to share with the world at large.

What are your thoughts about the notion of registering YourName.com now basically as an insurance policy to ensure it's available in the future if you'd like to use it?

Personally I think the annual reg fee is worth it, actually my domain went unused for a couple years.

"I'll just continue being quiet."

It's the first lesson in not being seen: not to stand up.

The Pythons are strong in this one.

My surname is Benedetto and unfortunately "benedetto.com" is owned by a funeral services company. However I managed to register "benedet.to", which makes a great personal domain!

My only fear in owning an extremely personalized domain is that if for any reason I fail to renew the domain, some squatter could get it and do whatever he wants (it happened with my previous blog: someone picked up the domain and used it for a porn website. It took months to take down every link that still referred it as my personal blog).

I like the domain hack, good grab. Do you host your email on this domain? Are you launching the blog anytime soon?

I view a personal domain as an asset for life. On one hand some of my web projects may die and I'll subsequently let the domain drop, I view my personal domain in the opposite light.

I'm ready and willing to keep renewing year after year, the yearly cost is worth it, much like I need to renew my drivers license or pay property taxes, its just an annual expense that's a part of being me.

Thanks :) I use the free version of Google Apps with this domain for my email.

The best thing is that I'm de facto using the gmail web app, but if in the future I would like to change provider it will be a smooth transition, since my email address will remain the same.

i think it's because i internalised the "domain names should be cute/clever/creative/individual" mindset; registering yourname.tld comes way too low on the imaginativeness scale. i wouldn't name a star/planet/city/village/company/building/house after myself either. the internet at large does seem to be shifting more towards seeing domains as equivalent to email addresses, though, so i'll probably go ahead and register myname.net at some point.

I hadn't thought of the creativity perspective here & I agree that YourName.tld is an uninspiring, obvious choice.

I've made the analogy to a few people that a cooldude69@hotmail.com email address that you may have setup in high school isn't necessarily what you want to be posting on your resume / linkedin account.

Thanks for the comment!

i wasn't thinking about the domain equivalent of cooldude69, i was thinking more of sites like "daringfireball.net", "intertwingly.net", "defmacro.org" - something that is creative without being gauche. (personally, i really wanted hitchhiker.net but i was too late to get it)

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that tackiness was along the lines of what you were thinking, the analogy was off the mark.

I like hitchhiker.net, but looks that company has grabbed all the TLD variations unfortunately.

I'm curious, what would you do with hitchhiker.net if you had it today? I ask because a friend of mine was excited to grab InsomniaLabs.com on the drop, but has yet to make much of it as his personal site.

i'd probably move over my rudimentary website [http://zem.novylen.net/ - some 10 years ago a friend who was more proactive about these things set up novylen.net and then offered a bunch of friends free domains on it, so i figured why not] and consolidate a few scattered ideas for blogs i started on wordpress.org. "zem" and "hitchhiker" are names i frequently go by online and in fandom, so it would definitely be something i thought of as a personal site to coalesce my online identity around.

My name is too common. I think it was already registered before I started coding back in '85.

Though I agree that for programmers who want to create a brand around themselves, having their name as their domain is a fair move.

Because I can't find any domain variation of my name that isn't taken.

I can't argue with that.

Are the current registrants doing much with the domains? Do you check back every so often to see if the names are expiring?

my name is already taken :(

Mine was too - an unflattering picture of some other guy with the same name. As soon as it dropped, I claimed it and will be holding on to it.

If you're interested, there's a bunch of backordering / drop-catching services out there that you only pay upon successful delivery of the domain. I'd register and backorder your name if you're interested. Look for snapnames, pool, namejet.

In my case, [lastname].com is owned by some domain squatter looking to make a quick buck (or 12k of them last I checked). I own [firstname][lastname].com and that seems to be good, but it'd be cool to have my email me [first]@[last].com and my blog at [first].[last].com.

First world problems!