Stake a virtual claim

Having been in the Web Development business for the past 10 or so years, I've managed to accumulate a fair share of website ideas as well as domain names to go along with those domains. While some of the ideas are now obsolete, I believe a lot of them still have some value and we're only now finally able to start working on some of them.

If you've ever had an idea for a Website, you're probably aware that one of the hardest things to do is come up with a name for the site. People make fun of all the "Web 2.0" names - Redit, Flickr, Tumblr, Digg - but there's a chance that the reason for those names is that Readit, Flicker, Tumbler and Dig weren't available. People weren't necessarily trying to be cool and edgy - they just wanted a nice short name and couldn't secure a real English word that had a useful meaning.

Finding an available .com domain with a name that at least makes some sense is very hard but once you find that magical name it feels like you conquered half the problem even if it takes years to actually get the talent and/or money together to get the project going.

So imagine your surprise when you check a anywhere between a few month to a year later and there's a hyphenated version of your-sweet-name.com and someone banging at your door asking you to hand over yoursweetname.com because it they've actually built something with the name while you've been doing with other things.

Why does this happen? Why would someone pick the same made up word or combination of words as you had already registered when they can see that you've had your domain since 2006?

I'd say the answer lies in that crappy network solutions or GoDaddy.com landing page that newly purchased domains default to. I've come to the conclusion that at this point, everyone sees themselves as an Internet entrepreneur, everyone can go online and buy themselves a domain for $10.00 a year, and everyone does - but most of the time the name just sits there. This means that of the 50 or so names you come up with, 48 of them probably look like someone just bought the domain and isn't doing anything with it. It's just sitting there in it's generic landing page state. At some point people run out of names and just go with variations on something that's already taken - cool-site.com is available even if coolsite.com isn't. We did this as well a couple times figuring that if the project took off, we'd buy the unhyphenated domain from some squatter once we'd made our first million.

The best way to combat this is to not leave the default landing page up but to stake a virtual claim with some sort of content on the site. Put a coming soon graphic that looks nice up (not a "Website Under Construction" road sign) on you most important projects-in-waiting and people will most likely see that and move on to the next made up word on their list. Then you just need to fulfill your end of the bargain and actually build the site.