Don’t Be Dumb – Protect Your Brand

Posted on January 18, 2008 by Tim Schroeder

One of the Niches I plan to enter this year is the diet niche. Yes, this is a highly competitive marketplace but when you are a semi-super affiliate such as myself you can do those sorts of things. I’m only kidding about that one as I believe almost any affiliate can crack ANY niche no matter how competitive it might be over time, and with the right game-plan (learn SEO first).

It can sometimes take a really long time (1 to 2 years) to start gaining high natural rankings for those most competitive keywords. However, you can begin ranking well for the slightly less competitive long-tail keywords almost right away. I don’t discourage you from entering a highly competitive niche (such as diets, hosting, credit cards) but would recommend you work on some other websites in much less competitive fields at the same time. This way you won’t get as discouraged with not seeing immediate results.

Now back on topic about protecting your brand. While brainstorming for a new domain to use in the dieting niche I thought about a new but fast growing and highly popular diet reviews website called DietsInReview.com

When I typed DietsInReview into GoDaddy I noticed that they never took the time to also register the .net version, DietsInReview.net nor another variation they should have protected DietInReview.com

Guess who owns both those domains now and it’s not them!

Nothing personal to them but that was a really dumb mistake and I think they would admit that. I have no doubt that the website is making tens of thousands of commissions a month but someone at that company didn’t think to spend an extra $10 or $20 dollars to protect their brand. Apparently it’s not the only mistake they have made. They have done a lot of things right as well but that’s not what this article is about.

I don’t attend to use either of those two domains for my new diet website (I found another to use) but they could make for a good redirect or 1 page website with diet offers (traffic from typos). Note that name is not trademarked or I would not have purchased the domain in the first place.

When starting a new website that you think has the slightest potential to be a big success, SPEND THE EXTRA FEW DOLLARS to buy at least the .com and .net variations of the domain name IF available.

I’ve made similar mistakes in the past such as buying webmaster-talk.com and webmaster-talk.net but not webmastertalk.com and webmastertalk.net many years ago. Don’t be dumb like that.

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7 Responses to “Don’t Be Dumb – Protect Your Brand”

1. 

   James Lewitzke

   - 20th Jan, 08 01:01am

   Good tips Tim, I’ll remember them as I continue to invest time, money, etc. into my websites.

   If I can afford to, that is. I think when most people start out, they don’t protect their brand because they may not believe it will become a huge success. And some may not want to put those kind of resources into their projects if all they do is fail.

   Concerning domain names, I was thinking the same thing with my forums. Unfortunately though, all those different versions of conspiracy forums were taken already (like consipracyforums.com, conspiracy-forum.com, etc.).

   It does seem curious though that you registered webmaster-talk.com before webmastertalk.com, as the latter is the one I’d have purchased first.

2. 

   Abhishek Kumar

   - 27th Jan, 08 08:01pm

   Yeah you are right, we have to make some solid plan before entering into this field. Your experience with domain name is its perfect example.

3. 

   MattG

   - 6th Mar, 08 11:03pm

   It is surprising how many people or companies don’t think to buy these additional domains. Like you said protecting your brand is just so important to the future of your business. Every time a potential customer types in a .net instead of .com, you could possibly stand to lose money. Not to mention the damage that could be done if a variation of your domain fell into the wrong hands. Imagine someone sets up a site similar to yours with a .net and begins scamming people out of their money, you will quickly lose trust when the word gets out there. Thanks for the great post.

4. 

   Make Friends, Earn Money

   - 26th May, 08 09:05am

   very good advice. I’ve made the same mistake with my domains, but you learn from experience

5. 

   Glass Beads

   - 25th May, 09 01:05pm

   if possible, there’s no room for mistakes when you enter this kind of career. Thanks for this post, very informative.