jeudi 9 juillet 2015

Business name and available URLs

Hi everyone. I am preparing to start a business right now I'm focussing on business name and URL issues.

About 10 years ago, my husband and I sat down and brainstormed names for a business for kids stuff, and after two hours, came up with a relatively simple name that didn't have someone squatting on every URL variation (just half of them!). I registered the URL and have sat on it until now. The URL (.com domain) has a dash though because people were squatting on all the versions without a dash.

Now, I'm revisiting this issue because I want to go ahead and start the business, and I'm concerned that having a URL with a dash will be suboptimal or look unprofessional. I expect to sell my products on Amazon, but also to maintain my own website for selling things. I will not have my own physical store, so the website is essentially my home-base.

I've contacted the name owner of the non-dash version, and they want $4K for it. I don't think it makes sense to pay that right now
1. because things could just not work out at all and then it'd be money down the drain, and
2. because I resent the fact that people have gone squatting on every two-word combination URL.
Yet, I sense that down the road I'll want the URL, and if I continue asking, they'll just raise the price and this will be a thorn in my side.


Let's say the company name were something like Butterfly Toys:

Would you
1. Start your business using butterfly-toys.com, with the possibility of never getting butterflytoys.com ever because they'll keep raising the price past what you want to pay.

2. Start your business using butterflytoysshop.com because it, and its .org, .net, .info. .whateverelse version are all cheaply available.

3. Scrap it, and find a different business name that no one is squatting on the non-dash versions of and get them all *now* even if it means going for a less-desirable business name.

4. Start with either 1 or 2 and then change business names later if this issue can't be resolved even though your products would have the original name (and possibly URL) engraved on it.


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