I recently had a conversation with a sports executive (whose name is easily recognizable), and was surprised to learn he hadn’t registered his own name as a domain name. In its simplest form, a domain is a web address like sportsologist.com, or espn.com. Whether you are an executive in a sports organization, entry level worker trying to advance their career, professor at a university, or a student, registering a domain name is an easy way to control your identity online.
Here are a couple of reasons to own your yourname.com in addition to any business domain you may own:
- Use For A Consulting Business
- You have a full time job but have developed a following due to your name and want to start consulting.
- Develop A Resume or Portfolio Site For Career Advancement
- Whether you’re a student looking for a job, or entry level worker looking to move up in the world owning your personal name is a start.
- Forward To A Social Media Site
- If you’re active on Twitter or Facebook, simply register yourname.com and have it forward to your Twitter or Facebook account, until you are ready to develop a personal site
- Protect For Future Use
- Even if you don’t see a need now, it’s possible that down the road you’ll want a personal blog, personal website, and it will be too late.
A few more tips:
- Buy the .com. Other domain extensions such as .org, .net, .info don’t garner the same respect as a .com domain.
- If your name is really popular (like mine) consider variations such as first initial/last name, or first/middle/last name.
- I recommend GoDaddy (especially for beginners) to register your domain because of reasonable prices and great customer service.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in comments! I do quite a bit of work with domains and websites particularly in sports so I’m happy to help. I anticipate having more posts in the future regarding domain names as well so stay tuned.
Comments
4 responses to “Have you registered your personal name as a domain name?”
Chris, this was a great idea. I had been discouraged a few weeks ago when I found out my full name (amandamiller) wasn't available, but your post was just what I needed to make sure I didn't miss out on an opportunity to register other forms of my names. Several friends have also responded to the retweet. Thanks for bringing this subject to the front of our minds!
Glad you found a few variations for your name! It's a small investment that can pay big dividends down the road in terms of controlling your name online so I'm sure you'll be glad to have the domain names.
Chris, I agree this is very important in controlling your online presence. I'm in the process of moving over a site I did with a free host to a paying one in order to own my domain as well as have more flexibility with what I want it to become. I've found that my site has been a great extension to who I am when presenting myself to employers and allows me to combine my portfolio, blog and other elements all in one place.
Good post!
Thanks for the comment Deandra. I didn't mention it in the post, but you bring up a great point in self hosting. Like you said, it gives you a lot more flexibility in controlling the name as well as look and feel of the website.