On the Script School radio show on Friday we talked about domains and the subject of non .com, .net, .org and country specific domains came up. I mentioned in sort of a semi-joking rant that I thought webmasters who bought these were “suckers.” One webmaster came out after the show and posted at the Adult Netsurprise messageboards that he was doing well with a .WS domain and accordingly disagreed with me. Then several folks went back and forth offering their opinions; it’s been a good discussion. I like it when business people get together and throw business-oriented subjects like this around. It’s one way that I can learn more about the business. Here is what I wrote this morning sort of as a summary on the subject:

In all seriousness, if any of you out there can build a good site using any domain with any extension, promote it, and have it perform profitably for you then just do it. Don’t listen to what anybody else, myself included, says or thinks.

My rant was mostly based on the fact that I haven’t known anybody personally or professionally (Babymaker, you are the first, really!) who has had any significant financial success with domains that weren’t .com, .net or .org (or country specific like .ca or .uk) and I’ve been around the net block since the mid-90’s. I was sharing my own experience and experience can certainly vary from business to business.

It’s a public service ‘portential scam’ warning, is all that I was really saying.

I should also note that I haven’t even tried registering even one .WS domain before, and that says something too. I probably shouldn’t criticize something business-related that I haven’t even tried (and I rarely do this, actually), but then again I rarely have visited and don’t have any .WS domains bookmarked and that says something too. I would have thought by all this time (nearly 10 years, yikes I’m starting to feel like Father Time) that I’d have come across at least one significant, popular website that had a non .com, .net, .org or country specific domain. It is true that for a portion of this time there wasn’t an option to have these other extensions, so I do take that into account.

Now, can anybody here suggest some real world examples of full sites using the .WS extension in place of or instead of .com, .net, .org or country code? I don’t mean mirrors either, because that’s the placed I’ve seen these sites used as. Mirrors don’t really count

Maybe when I get some time, and if enough testimonials from others come forth, I will start a new project using a .WS domain from GoDaddy and run a side by side comparison with a .com for a similar project and then I can offer a more serious and direct analysis and comparison between the two.

In the meantime, though, and I say this all the time — do what works best for you and your business — but the idea, all joking aside, was that if somebody new to webmastering is planning on registering a domain for a project, that he/she should probably be most concerned with getting the .com first if possible, and then work from there into these other options.

Bottom line is that there are still many good .com’s out there, so there isn’t really a need to go to these other extensions and there are some folks still using legacy browsers who cannot view these other extensions without upgrading or special plugins/downloads. So there is a segment of surfing audience that cannot access websites with these domains and that’s not a trivial concern. Although, as time goes by it will be less important.

That has been probably the most compelling business-related reason for me to pretty much ignore using anything but .com, .net, .org or country specific domains in my own business.

To each his own, though Happy coding to you!

I’d be curious to continue reading what other webmasters think about this subject, feel free to comment and/or trackback me to your thoughts.

• How many new domains are registered every day?
• How to keep stride with typo squatters
• Can’t find a domain? Try a domain hack
• Recommend a good mass domain management program?
• Currently your most used Windows browser?
• Measure pixel space Firefox extension