You Must Own Your Domain Name Whether You Plan To Use It Or Not

Just the other day I was talking with some friends who are not small business owners and I recommended to each of them that they reserve their dot com name. At about ten bucks a year it's a great investment and a great way to secure a potential spot on the internet that could serve as a "reputation management" source for yourself -- should you need it.

Ironically, a couple of those people have what I consider pretty unique names and when checking we discoved that the dot com name was already taken for one of them (and it wasn't by a relative!). If you don't think your name has much competition -- or not as much competition as John or Mary Smith :-) -- then I invite you to hop on over and visit USA People Search. Just plug in your name and see what kind of results come back. I bet you'll be surprised.

And I discovered today that my colleague Cathy Stucker (aka The Idea Lady) feels the same way I do. If you're still not convinced that you need your own dot com domain name, I encourage you to read Cathy's really great post Do You Own Your Name? 

What do you think? Please leave a comment.