Have You Followed The Craze?
Not too long ago, it was very rare to come across a website that used the owners name as the domain. However, in the past year or two, many people have begun to grab their personal name domain, such as JoeBloggs.com
When I decided to start this site, the first name I went after was Armen.com. I remember about eight years ago searching for it, and discovering it belonged to a tailoring business in Miami. For the past few years the owner hasn’t been using it, and I contacted him some time ago to see if he would sell it, but he had absolutely no desire to do so.
Buying your domain name
Getting a firstname.com is pretty much impossible these days, unless of course your name is extremely obscure. In fact, even getting a firstnamelastname.com is difficult, unless of course your name is Armen Thomassian or something…
A few months ago I jumped on the bandwagon, and bought ArmenThomassian.com with an eye that I might switch over to it from ArmensBlog.com some day.
Over the past number of weeks I have been seriously considering it. Most of you are aware that I have changed the design of this blog on quite a few occasions, and some of them I have thought about releasing as themes to the public as I believe them to be unique enough to do so.
Releasing your own theme has a number of advantages. If themes become popular, your site becomes more authoritative in the search engines, but it takes time. In fact, if I was to move over now I’d suffer because some of the articles I’ve written have become quite popular in Google. But if a start releasing themes, I’d rather have the link at the bottom pointing to ArmenThomassian.com than ArmensBlog.com.
At some point I will move over…it’s just a question of whether I do it sooner rather than later.
What about you? Have you ever thought about buying your own name domain before? What about buying for your child/children or buying a family domain name such as TheSmiths.com? Thousands are purchased everyday, and your name could still be available.
If you’d like more information on buying a domain name, just let me know in the comments. It’s very simple.
Yeah I’ve thought about it. I am a bit cautious about all this Facebook, MySpace and First & Lastname usage online, for privacy reasons. Now with sites like Spock.com you can basically find out anything about anyone you know.
So until I am in ministry and am forced to have a public image, I like the fact that someone searching on Google for my full name can’t track down every detail about me.
One day I am sure this will be unavoidable, but sadly, my domain is taken, although there are variations available (First Initial & Surname etc…). If I do eventually come out of the shadows so to speak, I would want to move my blog too and I consider the change of domain something big. So really, if you are looking at ever changing domains, the sooner the better in my opinion….
I was lucky enough to get my firstnamelastname address about half a year ago. For some reason the one Jarkko Laine who had gotten his own URL before decided to use jlaine.net instead of using his full name.
Well, that was great for me. So I bought both jarkkolaine.com and jarkkolaine.net and redirected them both to my blog.
A bit later, my son was born and on the very day we came home from the hospital I went and bought a domain with his first name and last name. I hope that when he grows up he’ll thank me for doing it
Nath - Yeah, there are a lot of people who are cautious of identity theft, and it has went through my head a few times too. I mean, if a stranger diligently reads through a personal blog or a myspace page (or the like), then they could find out quite a bit about most individuals.
It’s more financial details you need to be careful with though. Like burning credit card statements, not buying online on an intranet or open wireless environment (like at Starbucks). Not giving bank details over the phone in a public place (or allowing the person to repeat them at the other end). The opportunists often take advantage of such circumstances.
You never know…it could be changed by the end of the month
Jarkko - It’s cool that you bought a domain for you son, especially if it’s a .com They just keep getting more and more rare, and by the time your son is grown up, the odds would have been against him getting it.
Thanks for commenting. I haven’t visited your blog in a while. You’ve just proved the benefit of leaving comments
I’ve just noticed you said this..”If you
Glenn - Check my other reply and see what you think.