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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

AppointmentReminder.com wanted $30k. AppointmentReminder.org was available for $8.95. You'll note that I'm still #1 on Google due to the exact match bonus, so mission accomplished plus $29,991.05 in my pocket. This is still an attractive option if you're doing something where brandability isn't all that important.

If you're going for something a bit more brandable, there are plenty of domains in the sub-$2k range which are at least as good as, say, Dropbox, Kabbage, Snapchat, etc etc, and probably many more which are not obviously attractive names but won't hurt your company at all (Twilio, Airbnb, etc).

There's also a virtually infinite number of NAMEapp, getNAME, NAMEnow, etc etc available on any TLD you care to name available for the registration fee. Many startups start that way.

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Concerning .org tld, here's a relevant wiki paste: "It was one of the original domains established in 1985 and operated by the Public Interest Registry since 1988. The domain extension was originally created for non-profits, but this designation no longer exists and today it is commonly used by schools, open-source projects, and communities as well as by for-profit entities, some of which may use the suffix in an attempt to misleadingly suggest their non-profit status"

I bring this up because indeed .org tld is used generally for non-profits, or the non-profit/philanthropic arms of for-profit companies (google.org, etc.), so branding .org tld for your little startup would seem like a misguided decision, and may possibly impair the professional look one is going for. I know you've just said that this is an attractive option where brandability isn't important, but I'm hoping you can discuss this just a little bit more. Is using .org for one's startup a total no-no or is there some conceivable scenario in which it would actually work out?

You could of said a tl;dr version that .org is for organization and .com is for commercial.

If wiki articles start purchasing SaaS I will begin to care what they say, but office managers purchase SaaS quite routinely, and empirically they don't care. If you doubt this, you're welcome to chat up the office manager at e.g. your dentist. Ask them to a) name a TLD, b) name three common TLDs, and c) explain the difference between those TLDs.

But your first point stands: you can only use the .org because you willingly forego brand building. If you want to build your brand, you need the .com, because branding must agree with consensus, which is that powerful brands own the .com. I argue this is common fact.

So if you are not buying the .com, you are choosing not to build the AppointmentReminder brand. Why? Surely, more markets exist for you to sell to. The recognizability of a brand bridges market segments. Since every market segment communicates in its own language (because of varying contexts), they need standard identifiers of solutions to problems, which a brand provides. With a solid brand, you control a channel of communication between markets. Thus, you naturally expose the company to new markets.

There is nothing stopping you from growing AppointmentReminder 10x, at least. The markets exist for you to capture. So why don't you try to do capture them? The first step is paying $30k for the .com (maybe make the marketing materials first).

AppointmentReminder isn't a brand. For the reason that Snapchat is a brand while DisappearingPics is not (and probably wouldn't ever be) a brand.

My guess is that patio went for SEO boost over brandability when picking the name.

Did you actually try his experiment? You should. Find someone who might actually buy an appointment reminder service --- the person who manages the calendar for a professional services company --- and ask them the difference between .COM and .ORG.

Your "common fact" is "common" on message boards. You have message board blindness, and it's begging you in this instance to spend $30,000 on something that would potentially not improve sales at all. That's a disastrous decision for an early stage startup.

> The first step is paying $30k for the .com (maybe make the marketing materials first).

Isn't paying 30k for a "brand" piece the last step? You know, after making 30k with the business (or multiples of that?)

It seems really bad business strategy to vomit 30k on a domain name before you even get started in a business (and I love branding).

Apologies for the self-admitted low quality of this response, but this is a fantastic response.

"...but this designation no longer exists..."

Is this just the fine print? Or does it just not matter anymore.

Perhaps you should read a bit farther down that Wikipedia page:

Anyone can register an org second-level domain. Although org was recommended for non-commercial entities, there are no restrictions to registration. There are some instances of org being used by commercial sites such as craigslist.org.

Refer all complaints to Craig Newmark.

It's been decades since anyone cared what those suffixes used to mean. Just look at all the .co domains. And how many of those .cc domains are really in the Cocos Islands?

Depends on your audience. There are people who type "facebook.com" into the google search bar. Do you think those people know what a .org is?

You may have saved nearly $30K, but how much business are you losing to those people that type in the .com version trying to get to you. The parked page may have ads from your competitors. What is the value of all that potential (albeit difficult to quantify) business?

I keep hearing this weird reasoning, but have yet to come across anyone who confused a poorly designed, ad-filled placeholder site for a real website.

Put differently, if you're losing people who click shady text ads on a shady website, they probably weren't potential customers to begin with.

The "shady" ads are usually adwords ads - yes, adwords allows some shady ads, but they also include lots of legit advertisers too.

Yes, the parked pages are nothing but ads, but users who land there are looking for an escape and a surprisingly high number click on the ads.

You can find out more from Marchex which is a public company (ticker: MCHX) that runs a large domain portfolio (since it is public, they disclose lots of info).

that's awesome. I am looking for more of a brandable name however. so you think <$2k is reasonable? I'm just trying to establish a ballpark range.

If you want a .com and have 2k to burn? Possibly.

If you've already generated 2k+ in revenue - it's probably a more definitive "yes."

Really depends on the property. If it's a single word - you're looking at multiples of that. If you're looking for a made-up word version, you might be able to get it for closer to 1-5k.

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