Get the Goods: What's in a (Domain) Name?

O be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
- Shakespeare

Shakespeare hit the nail on the head that time, didn't he? I never realized exactly how important a name can be for my company until I tried to get a domain name for it and realized it had already been purchased!

Becoming a professional photographer meant I had to get schooled, very quickly, on many aspects involved in the trade, including internet presence, marketing, blogging and even learning HTML to customize my website. I knew little about domain names and was very naive about the process. It took me a while to come up with my company name, and when I did, I didn't stop to think that someone else smarter and faster than me might have come up with the same great idea. But as you guessed it, when I went to godaddy.com to register pictureyourworld.com, it was already taken....along with every derivative you could think, including .net and .org. All kinds of cuss words!

My mindset didn't improve as I continued to dig online for information, discovering the controversy surrounding "cybersquatters," who register, traffick in, or use a domain name with "bad faith intent" to make a buck from a legitimate trademark belonging to....well....to me! It appeared as if the person or company that owned pictureyourworld.com had been "squatting" on the site for eight years without actually using it since all I got was error messages whenever I tried to find the site online? I quickly bought up all the other ways you can say my business name before deciding to go with www.picture-yourworld.com as my main site URL.

But was using the hyphen a mistake that would end up confusing my clients and costing me potential sales later? And was the original owner of the domain name that I really wanted squatting or not?(Cue the Batman soundtrack) "Tune in next week faithful readers to see how our heroine nipped this in the bud!"

Need Tips on Choosing a Good Domain Name Check out this article.

(I just wanted to thank my friend Wulf for giving me this idea to share my experiences trying to secure my domain name. Check out his blog here).