

Is it ever okay to use a domain hack? - keiferski
http://nomvilla.com/blog/domain-hacks/

======
kaolinite
The rise of domain hacks is due to the biggest scourge on the internet: domain
sitters. That's usually the main reason why people use these hacks, because
there are no .coms related to what they want to do.

I'm about to register a domain hack for my startup. The .com is being sold for
1800USD which I currently cannot afford. Hopefully it will still be available
in a few months time and I will be able to obtain some funding (once investors
see my prototype on the domain hack address) and then I'll be able to buy that
domain from the sitters. Until then, I'll have to use a hack. You can spend
hours searching for the right .com, time that would be better spent developing
:-)

~~~
keiferski
I'd actually recommend using a variation of the .com instead of the naming
hack. I.E. use _GoKaolinite.com_ instead of _Kaolini.te_. Unless you're
targeting tech-savvy people, domain hacks can be confusing.

Then, once you've gotten traction/investors, buy the .com.

~~~
kaolinite
Nice point. My service will mainly be targeted at technical people currently
so it should be ok but I might buy both :-)

With some industries though, e.g. shopping, insurance, etc - I bet you'll find
it hard to find domains with "Go" and similar in front of them.

~~~
keiferski
Safest thing is to buy both. But you don't necessarily need to use Go - try
_NameHQ, NameNow,_ or _GetName._

You're right in that many sites don't have a prefix or suffix in their domain
- but that's because they have the name itself (not a naming hack). My ranking
is _Name.com > NameHQ.com > Na.me_ (the HQ can be any suffix.) The .com is
critical.

I've also written an article about this which you may find useful:
<http://nomvilla.com/blog/exact-matching-domain-names/>

------
nicholassmith
`You are at the mercy of your TLD’s owner. Many TLDs used in domain hacks are
located in unstable or business-unfriendly countries. Why add unnecessary
risk?`

What, unlike all the _really_ , _really_ positive stories we've heard about
the U.S. seizing .com domains for businesses outside the U.S.?

~~~
keiferski
Fair enough, but I trust the US government more than Libya, even if both can
be unreliable.

~~~
nicholassmith
Which is true, but the argument is the custom TLDs are unreliable due to
internal politics whereas .com should be safer, except with the rise of media
lobbying etc potentially it's just as fragile.

But I do actually agree with the rest of the article, fancy TLDs look nice but
they're inherently risky and for a large chunk of the non-nerd market once you
get past .com (or the TLD for the country) they're in uncomfortable territory.

~~~
kaolinite
One thing to add here is that the non-nerd market often will not use the
address bar at all so it arguably doesn't matter if you're .com, .net or .ly -
as long as you're high up in Google. I've asked clients to type an address
into the URL bar and they've typed it into Google - can take a while to debug
issues like that!

