I did not read the full text of the proposed legislation until today. Some of us have things to do, companies to run, etc.

Many of the people commenting on SOPA have probably never read it at all.

So I’m a happy medium, better late than never.

No offense intended…

“I finally got around to reading the text of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) today”

Really?

This has been going on for months(SOPA/Protct IP Acts) now, and the domain seizures by ICE & HLS for well over a year, with “Operation In Our Sites”

Peace!
Dan

And it is a shame that so many people do not care about their domain name and keep on using gmail addresses. But usually when you talk people thru at some point it hits them and they realise that a good domain name can actually help out.

I have to agree and I have to disagree.

I agree that owning a killer domain doesn’t mean a company will be successful. Your idea/product/service has to good because if it isn’t it really doesn’t matter what domain you won’t succeed.

Here’s where I disagree:

Since most companies today don’t use generic domains as their business name (Google, Yahoo, Micorosoft) it certainly doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be interested in them.

If my business is online or ships products worldwide I can reach a lot of people. To reach those people ONLY through advertising is going to cost a hell of a lot.

Please don’t misunderstand, advertising obviously has its place and you can’t dump it just because you own keyword domains.

But lets assume that I’m a store that sells books and lets say I call it Bookworm.com. But making Bookworm.com the best place to buy books will be difficult (In my world amazon.com doesn’t exist).

But if I invest some of my money into domains that directly tie into my business (Books.com, MysteryBooks.com, Fiction.com, etc.) These will pull any traffic from those sources and instantly suck that into Bookworm.com.

This would give my business a boost and if my business is good it will help to boost sales.

Obviously, this is a numbers game and the numbers would have to be looked at before you make a decision, but I believe keyword domains can provide a boost to a brand.

So really it’s a bit of both.

Sorry for the essay

You made some great points in your post and I agree with you on some. But overall, I hate to sound like ‘the only guy who cares about domains’, I have to disagree with you.

If you run a business and a big part of it is online, to have a good domain name is very important. Of course you can set up the office in the dumpster, but I doubt you will get a lot of business out of your office. You can dress up like a guy who lives on the streets but I don’t think you’ll get far in your business no matter how how bright you are unless you’ll change clothes. Domains are as big part of any business that has an online presence as office/dress code etc. Of course,many businesses didn’t realize it yet, but with the time they will. I’m not gonna talk about technical advantages etc., but when you see a nice domain with the great website as a customer something in your brain will tell you that it’s a trustworthy place.

Of course there are many other factors which will determine the success rate of any business, but owning the right name with the business that relies on the web presence is vital, in my opinion.

Thanks

Your key point – that a domain name ALONE will not guarantee success, you’re business model & its execution determines that – is well taken…..as far as it goes.

Its not ‘either, or’, imo…

…A great business model, well executed, by a team that knows, lives & breathes the business, will be assisted by a highly descriptive, easy to spell & recall, domain name. A great domain simply makes the target consumer recall of your brand easier…’Search.com’ would have been easier to market & establish than ‘Google.com’, because more people would remember & relate to what their business, faster, if the founders had been able to buy ‘Search.com’ at the start.

…The owners of ‘Books.com’ should have beaten Amazon.com, in the book business, all things being equal….The owners of the ‘Books.com’ business just weren’t good enough, that’s all.

I could’nt agree more. We’ve been asked a lot for our opinion on the new TLDs, seeing as how a lot of what we are doing is quite related (that is… turning pre-existing single-word generic domain names like Villa.com or Importers.com into an ecosystem unto itself whereby users could register: Tuscany.Villa.com or Hardwood.Importers.com and use these as “Marketing Names”). We have often said that if you type into most software applications today diamonds.importers is a typo, but diamonds.importers.com is a domain.