You do want a .com domain...
by Axel... that's why BuzzMeIn is now FreshBuzzer!
I started "BuzzMeIn" just over 4 years ago - back then with the brilliant buzzme.in domain. The name was great, the domain was clever and I could focus on building a great product.
As time went on I saw people struggling with the .in domain. Maybe your target audience is extremely tech savvy and knows their TLDs but even then you'll loose a bunch that didn't remember your domain correctly.
Unfortunately buzzmein.com was taken - by a defunct competitor - so I went with buzzmein.ca as I'm based in Canada. I didn't think much of it, I figured it's easy enough for people to distinguish the two and know which website is the "real BuzzMeIn".
One day, after looking at my visitor analytics (by Plausible!) that for every 10 visitors from Canada I only had 3 from the US - and difference is even larger for my actual customer base. Unsurprisingly Google didn't rank me very well for searches in the US - they probably think I'm some kind of local mom-and-pop shop doing local only business.
So I tracked down the .com domain owner and they demanded "something in the high 4-figures to the low 5-figures" or a lease agreement to hand over the domain. I know this extortionary practices are common in our industry, I still think they're unfair and unethical.
Unable to acquire the .com domain, I didn't make the same mistake again and go for .co domain which probably would have solved my SEO ranking problem, but worsened the confusion with the defunct competitor.
A few nerve wracking weeks later I finally came up with a new name - FreshBuzzer 🎉 - and I start liking it.
And if you don't listen to me, listen to Paul Graham who made all this common knowledge almost a decade ago 🙄 http://paulgraham.com/name.html
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I also switched to .com and I don't regret the decision. For all new projects I only search for .com domains.
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Just don't go for regional domains (.in, .ca etc.) and you'll be fine (and avoid the cheap ones e.g. .info, .cc etc.).
.com works great, but .co, .io have risen to ranks quite well. -
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Interesting... I have changeit.app and I have around 150 visits per day and most come from the US... Did you see a big difference now that you own the .com?
ps: I do own the .com for the wbe space
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Still too early to say but in your case it should be fine as I assume that Google treats .app as an international TLD.
Actually even though .co is the Columbian TLD it is treated as international by Google (at least for now)
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I've been looking at the domain industry for a while and have seen this a ton. I find that changing names when good domains are not available is a pretty decent approach. as you say, .com domains are really the best there is and chances are your brand is not big enough yet to warrant major concern with the name change. Even multimullion $$$ businesses change their names on a regular basis.
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Thank you for reading and your support!
It seems a little counter intuitive because we're often too attached to the name we gave our projects. But in fact customers usually don't care.
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