Purchase Your Domain Name To Secure Your Personal Brand

April 7, 2008 at 10:29 am | In Futures, People, Reputation Management, Success Strategies, eBrand | 29 Comments
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Get Your Domain Name or Lose

I tell people all the time to purchase theirname.com, but few still take the initiative. You need to secure your eBrand these days or it will come back to bite you. There are billions of people in this world and many share the same name (John Smith, etc). This means that once an alarm goes off in their head, they will purchase their domain name ahead of the others. When this happens, they get placed first in Google and have protected their reputation. Everyone else, has to find creative domain name strategies that STILL won’t be as strong in search engines. Listen, there are people who are in the “personal brand domain name” business as we speak. These people are viewing a lot of us that are becoming ever more popular in the social media front. They will buy our names and then sell it back to us when we have a large audience and become celebrities. Do you really want to spend $50,000 to claim your domain 5 years from now? If you do, then tell me your name and I’ll sell it to you.

Are you still not convinced? You asked for it! (Case Study)Shel Israel Personal Brand

Shel Israel is one of the most prominent bloggers on the internet. He co-authored Naked Conversations with Robert Scoble and was a trusted advisor for many startups that needed strategic communications help. Currently, he is the host of Global Neighbourhoods on FastCompany.tv, which covers enterprise and trends in social media.

ShelIsrael.com. Now your saying to yourself “Shel must have bought his own domain because he is very web savvy and has been in this space for years.” Shel has been building his personal brand for a while now, starting with the book and his blog and now FastCompany, but he never secured his eBrand. His “super stardom” came with haste and he disregarded that he would become a larger target to people who either disliked his brand or his content. I really like Shel, but we must learn from this mistake.

Reputation DISASTER. As your brand grows, more people are attracted to it, in a positive or negative way. If you have no “disbelievers” then you haven’t succeeded at a high enough level. Loren Feldman discovered that Shel didn’t register www.shelisrael.com and quickly purchased it for less than $10 (No excuses people). Loren created an entire website that makes fun of Shel, with podcasts, where there is a puppet interviewing tech guru’s. You ask “why would he waste his time doing all of this”? Simple, it’s because Shel already has a large audience and there are more people like him who aren’t keen on the Shel Brand. He’s been receiving over 10K hits because he’s tapped into what’s already popular (Shel). The podcasts are somewhat funny if you’ve ever met Shel, skimmed his blog posts or watched his podcasts, but obviously I don’t think Loren is very ethical.

Update: If you Google Shel Israel, his domain is already #10!

Call to Arms. Please (I’m begging you) purchase your domain name right now. Visit Godaddy.com and on the top part of the screen type your first and last name (no spaces) and conduct a search. With the promo-code OYH3 you can receive your name for only $6.95 (I don’t work for Godaddy). If it’s taken, try .net first and then .org. If everything is taken, then do what John Moore did and purchase your full name, including your middle name.

Are You Not Convinced Yet? Then Watch This Podcast!

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

29 Comments »

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  1. I’m still trying to rank #1 for “Robert Kingston” in Google, ahead of a painter by the same name and a veteran war general in Wikipedia.

    You make a solid argument about getting our domain names. I kind of wish mine wasn’t taken… Oh well. The painter won’t be doing anything too nasty about me.

    Comment by Robert Kingston — April 7, 2008 #

  2. Good point…it is hard for people to really know where this is going…for instance, is .com better than .co.uk? Will the domains .com or .com.au be worth as much in the future as .name? Regardless, owning the domain that is your name is fun…and essential if you go into business for yourself according to Peter Montoya!

    Comment by Luke — April 7, 2008 #

  3. Good post Dan. As usual I agree with you.

    I also want to explain here that sometimes you can have some surprises with domain names, especially if english is not your mother tongue.

    A couple of years ago I saw that all the Personal Branding domains was occupied. However I saw that http://www.brandingpersonal.com was free. Probably Branding Personal is a terrible mistake gramaticaly in english but it is a very good option for Google.

    In other hand I seriously believe that personal services must be associated with people names not with company names. People trust people.

    Sorry for my english. :-)

    Comment by Andres — April 7, 2008 #

  4. Just other thing. I think that there are a lot of good domain possibilities yet. I suggest you one. Branding is positioning.
    Personal Branding is Personal Positioning.
    Have you checked http://www.personalpositioning.com?
    and professionalpositioning.com? :-)
    Global Positioning System (GPS) vs Personal Positioning System (PPS) is a good metaphore.

    Comment by Andres — April 7, 2008 #

  5. @Luke – .com is the strongest possible domain on the web.

    @Robert – you will need to get people to link to you and not just anyone, but high authority websites.

    @Andres – good move.

    Comment by Dan Schawbel — April 7, 2008 #

  6. Dan – Great article. I actually didn’t own AndrewFlusche.com for a long time. I figured I was the only person with such a unique name anyway. But yesterday I realized there is another Andrew Flusche!! I’m certainly glad I bought it before he could. Now I just have to find out how he and I are related. :)

    Comment by Andrew Flusche — April 7, 2008 #

  7. @Andrew – There are 6.6 billion people in the world (http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html), therefore someone is bound to share the same name as you.

    Comment by Dan Schawbel — April 7, 2008 #

  8. Great post, Dan. Drew McLellan harped on this very point a few months ago as a guest lecturer in one of my classes. I’ve gone a little overboard and bought 3 domains: jerikpotter.com; jerikpotter.org, and erikpotter.com. The “J.” is my way of differentiating myself with all the other Eri(c-k) Potters out there. But I still wanted to own the main name.

    Comment by J. Erik Potter — April 7, 2008 #

  9. I purchased my name on the web (www.jonathancoffman.com) a couple of years ago.

    But, just this last year I also purchased my younger siblings’ “names.com”, They’re too young to appreciate it now, but I figure the $7 spent now will be much appreciated in 8 years when they need that domain for their high school, then college, then career portfolios and resumes.

    Especially as time goes on the likelihood of someone else grabbing yourname.com goes up, so you are exactly right, spend the time and money now and you’ll be rewarded very soon.

    Comment by Jonathan — April 7, 2008 #

  10. @J. Erik – good move on taking that futuristic step. Drew is awesome!

    @Jonathan – a lot of people are buying domains for newly born babies. That is how our culture is evolving.

    Comment by Dan Schawbel — April 7, 2008 #

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  15. Thanks Dan on your advice. after i read your post i quickly bought my domain name at http://www.maorkaplanski.com.

    My original thought was “hey , I dont have to worry since Im the only person in the world with this name”.

    but Shel Israel’s (hes one of us, right…?) stroy push me to do this sooner the better…

    again – a very intersting and usefull toll

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    Comment by AjiNIMC aka Web Kotler — May 1, 2008 #

  19. My friend bought dresstokill.com about 8 years ago. Shortly after, he opened 3 clothing stores. He didn’t know anything about the internet, so I offered to do his website for him. He refused. 2 years later, his domain expired and some domain broker snagged it… He wanted $5,000 for it.

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