Why it's not a good idea to own a domain in all the matching extensions? (1.Viewing)

So, here is a scenario...

You find yourself with an insanely good misspell that nobody has thought of and you just registered the .com. You are ecstatic, you make a logo and the name looks absolutely phenomenal.


Now to maximize your profit potential you go and register the .net and .org and possibly the matching ccTLD.


So here is the million dollar question.....


What maximizes your profit potential, owning the matching extensions or not?



THE FOLLOWING IS BASED ON MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND YOUR RESULTS MAY VARY.

I own a number of misspell domains and I usually buy up the matching extensions but for one domain I did not do that. It ended up selling because I did NOT own the matching extensions. So basically I did not bother to register them when I made up the word.

To my surprise someone registered the .net and actually launched a business on it.
Over two years later they contacted me to buy the .com.


So had I registered all the extensions this business would not have registered the other extension and I probably would not have had a sale.


Interesting scenario, don't you think?

It is interesting you mentioned selling the .com to the .net - that is the EXACT reason I never buy other extensions when I own the .com... I want someone to buy the .net .org .co etc and launch a successful businesses on it ;-)

This being said, occasionally I will buy the matching .ca if the business will likely have a customer base in Canada.

Nope. I never buy the inferior extensions. I would rather they make the mistake instead of launching under another name in the .COM

As a domainer I only buy .ca and .com but in some instances I own the .net. I don’t go out of my way to attempt to get the other extensions.

In the past I've purchased the extensions for domains that I have developed, but not for those in my portfolio intended for resale.

I believe that being Canadian, it’s important to have the .ca and obviously the .com if it’s available. All of the other extensions are irreverent in my opinion.

For the most part, .ca & .com or all I care about too. But there are always exceptions to any rule. There are a few circumstances where it made sense for me to own other ccTLDs and gTLDs. I don't own any new gTLDs though.

I did a repeat on this experiment....

I dropped the miscallaneous extensions on a domain where I owned most of the popular extensions. I kept the .com and the .org and watched as the other extensions made their way throught the drop systems.

On a domain I had zero action on I now get numerous inquiries on the .com and .org. When I owned all extensions I got zero inquiries on the domain.

So I in my opinion owning all popular extensions of a domain name can be detrimental to actually selling the domain because prospective end users look at the domain as unachievable. When various extensions are available someone may register one and put it to use. If the site does well the natural progression is to come after the .com or .org.