Why should you get your dot me domain?

Recent published numbers in press releases show that over the course of a single week, 55,000 .me domains have already been registered and counting. This does not include the .me domains that were put in auctions or considered reserved because of its perceived high value which will be sold at the right price. Everybody is catching on with this domain phenomenon! Well... almost everybody. Some are still refusing to acknowledge the fact that owning their own dot me domain has any value.

But why should you get your own .me domain if you're very happy with your .com domain already? We'll because of the simple fact that somebody else just might register it and possibly sell it to you at a higher price! It's nothing new. Cybersquatting is everywhere and rampant. Cybersquatters are people registering different extensions of other people's domains in the hope that one day they will be approached by somebody, sell it and make a profit out of it.

Let me give you a sample case from the 3 top bloggers I've been following ever since: Shoe, John Chow and Problogger. Shoemoney.com was able to protect his domain name by purchasing shoemoney.me. No matter how absurb buying this .me domain looks for other people, at least he protected his domain name and nobody can take advantage of that in the future. However, Johnchow.com and Problogger.net were not able to do the same thing, as it looks obvious from the whois information of Johnchow.me and Problogger.me that both ae registered under different registrants from themselves. Both got beat to the punch. No big deal for now but I can bet you that one day they will want that .me domain name. It may be worth mentioning that problogger.net remained problogger.net all these years because Darren Rowse could not strike a deal with the owner of problogger.com. It took years for Darren to acquire it hence the unnecesary hassle.

Remember, when buying a dot com domain name, you need to consider if it will be worth your effort to buy the rest of the domain extensions available: .net, .org, .tv, .info, .us so you can protect yourself from other people wanting to take advantage of you or your work. More importantly, you need to register your .me domain name now before somebody else gets an idea.