[eightturn]

I can see your point of view.. What I was trying to convey - albeit poorly - was a more holistic view of the domain, ie. the domain on the side of a truck. The domain on a tablecloth. The domain on a bumpersticker.

If I saw a plumber driving around Atlanta with www.AtlantaPlumber.com on his truck, #1 - it'd be easy for me to remember, and #2 it'd be a more positive than negative perception of that business.

[louprado]

This is even more important if your business uses e-mail to communicate with customers.

I used to own a print business with a .net domain name. We'd often tell a new customer our e-mail address at the end of our first phone call. But too many times customers would just type .com in the e-mail address and then assume that our business has lousy service.

After a few months I paid a cyber-squatter (if that is still the appropriate term) $1600 for the .com version of our name and I never regretted that decision.

[eightturn]

author here:

yes.. this..

side story, a friend of mine owns a city dotCOM name that also has a university with the corresponding .edu..

He receives email regularly from students pleading (to teachers) for an extra day for thesis completion or a gpa bump : )

[df3]

People click strong and authoritative names. Generic domains often are strong and authoritative, but they aren't the only example of strong and authoritative names. I think your article misses this point.

One thing I would mention is that many people know that names like "BikeTours.com" were the first to be registered in the early Internet days, and these days do carry a degree of trust through age.

[maxerickson]

Are there plumbers in Atlanta that aren't fully booked without having nice domain names?

[alasdair_]

If they are fully booked, they should be raising their prices.

[solutionyogi]

Are you the author of this post? Is there any way to contact you?

[eightturn]

oop.. I guess I should mentioned that I'm the author.. you can ping me on twitter if that works.. or here : )

[pryelluw]

Please add your twitter handle to your profile. :)

[eightturn]

done : ) I'm a HN noob.

[jensvdh]

xD