MBA1445 Q&A Wednesday: Do I need to also buy the .net and .co for my domain?

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Visit Dell.com deals. Hey, welcome to the $100 MBA show where your business gets built every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, the complete business Training and Community online and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over at Omar MBA Net and I'll make sure to answer your question right here on the show. Today's question is from Felix and Felix asks do I need to also buy the. Net and the.co extensions for my domain or is just having the.com fine? Solid question Felix. It's a common one and we touched on this topic and in the past but it's been a while so I'll make sure to answer it right here. On Q and A Wednesday when you're registering your company's domain name to start that website to start that business, you might think hey, do I need to buy the other extensions like YourBusiness.net, yourBusiness Co or if you're like outside the US YourBusiness.com AU or UK or NZ? These are all country extensions. You might think I need to snatch these up in all forms. Well, in today's episode, I'll give you my advice if you should buy all the extensions available because, hey, they're offered to you by the domain registrar. Or maybe not, or maybe when is the right time to do it? We get into all that and more in today's Q and A Wednesday. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Felix is starting an online business. He's got his.com address, which is great, but he's asking does he need to buy the.netextension, the.co as well. And for those who are listening, any other extension you might be thinking of us. Whatever it is, it could be very tempting to do this because hey, it's only like $10 a year and you want to kind of COVID all your bases because, hey, you thought of this as a great name for your business, a great URL. Let me get all the different extensions available and at the end of the day it may cost you 40, 50, 60, maybe $100 to get all the extensions. So you might think, hey, it's not a huge, huge expense. It's like a fancy dinner out. But here's my advice. You need to validate the business idea first. You need to make sure people are actually buying what you're intending to sell or want to buy it, right? So you need to make your first sale or two first because you might be buying things you're just not going to use. The business idea might be a bust and the name may not be congruent with the next pivot you're going to make. So if you have the dot com, that's great. Hurry up and validate this business idea. Make sure there's an audience for it. Make sure that you can sell what you're intending to sell to to your potential audience. And it shouldn't take long to do this. It shouldn't take more than a few weeks. If you're starting a T shirt business, print one T shirt in the way you're going to sell it and sell to one customer, to two customers, to three customers. Find out are people willing to buy at the price point you're willing to sell it at to make a profit. This is an online course. Pre sell the course, show them the results they're going to get, give them a preview, put up a sales page. If you got buyers, you got people that are willing to pay for it. You have some traction and it's worth investing in that traction at that point, okay, that $100 investment to get all the domains is probably going to be a good one. But by buying all these domains and not knowing if the business is going to fly yet, this is like saying, I'm going to move to a new country and I've never been there before, right? I have no proof or validation. I don't want to live there. Why buy property there, right? I know it's not the same thing, it's not the same kind of price point or investment, but I know a lot of entrepreneurs that have hundreds, hundreds of domains that they never use and they just continue to have them on auto renew. And in my opinion, that's just a waste of money. Leave those domains available and leave them for somebody who's actually going to do something with it. And focus on what you're going to do in your business. Focus on how you're going to use your domain. So if you got one, great. And if you have a dot com that's Even amazing, the.com is not available. I recommend going with the net or a.co validate the idea and then go and see if you can grab the other extensions once you know you can make money off this business. Now, what I love about this is that it puts you on a deadline. It has the time ticking. So put yourself on a deadline. Say, I need to validate this business idea in the next month at max. And you have this sense of urgency because, hey, you don't want those other extensions to get snatched up, right? That's why you were thinking about grabbing them in the first place. Well, validate this idea quickly, get it done under a month and then you can grab those extensions and feel better, right? But this puts a little fire under you and pushes you to get the wheels turning on this business. A lot of us, we have good ideas in the middle of the night, we grab the domains and we do nothing with them later. This is the difference between someone playing business and doing business. People that do business, they valid ideas and make sure people are willing to pay for something for it. They make a transaction, right? They actually make money. They make a sale. Remember, I mention this all the time, but if you ever watch the show Shark Tank, the first question that the sharks ask the contestants is how many sales you have, how many units have you pushed? They're not going to invest in something that doesn't make money, that's not validated, that isn't out there for sure. Making money that you have actual audience members, actual customers that want to buy that product, so make sure you validate. Then go ahead and grab those extensions later and put yourself on a deadline to push you to do it quickly. Hey, Fidelity.

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We've all been there. You hold onto a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store. But then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk?

Oh, mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico. You could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Oh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico. To wrap up today's Q and A, Wednesday's question from Felix. The only exception I would make to this rule is that this is your absolute first business. You have no other domains and you've already established your business, meaning that you already have customers. And maybe you're just buying a new domain and you're rebranding and you're changing the name or you're getting serious and actually buying your own domain. If this is the case, go for it. Because hey, the business is real. It's out there. Secure those other extensions. Also, if you can't find the.com for your website for your brand name, no problems. Grab the next best thing, the dot co the dot net. You could always possibly buy the dot com later on. This actually happened to us. We were webinar ninja co for a very long time, for a few years actually, until the.com became available. I bought it from somebody and I had Both the.com and the.net and other extensions, which is great. So don't think that the dot com will never come to you. If the business is rolling and you become an established brand, the person who owns that domain will reach out to you actually and say, hey, would you like to buy the.com? so opportunities will be there to grab it later on. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you Felix for asking this question on Q and A Wednesday. If you have a question you want to ask Just email me over at omar100mba net and I'll make sure I answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss a beat when you hit subscribe. When the next episode's available, it's ready on your device. It also gives you access to over 1400 episodes. 1400 Lessons. Business Lessons for you to check out. It's the only way to get access. Hit subscribe right now and whatever you use to listen to podcasts. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The business making money is what's important. I can't stress this enough. Your product actually sells. That's what you really need to focus on. The domain name. The actual business name really is not even that important. The product, the offer, how compelling is it? How much profit you make? That's what's going to get your business growing and thriving. There are huge brands that have rebranded and changed their name and have done fine because the product is great. So make sure you validate your product, your service, your business before you move forward. If you want to know how to do that for free, we have a free course you can check out over at 100 MBA NET. It's on the homepage. Sign up. It's absolutely free. He'll walk you step by step how to validate your business idea. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of foreign.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store, but then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk.

Oh, mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico. You could save about 900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.