Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

All the Good Ones Are (Not!) Taken

Approximately 210 million top-level domain names are actively registered as of the first quarter of 2011, according to Verisign's Domain Name Industry Brief (see www.verisigninc.com/assets/domain-name-report-may2011.pdf). Moreover, the report states an increase of 15.3 million domain names over the past year. Wow! No wonder people are tempted to claim that “all the good ones” are indeed taken (or are being held hostage for a huge ransom). Not true! Plenty of fantastic domain names are available. The continued popularity of the Internet has prompted lots of acceptable and creative alternatives for domain registration.

Varying the extension

Among the easiest ways to find a good domain name is to use an alternative extension. We can't deny that the old favorites .com, .net, and .org remain the most recognizable. More than a dozen extensions are now in use, and using these alternatives is no longer considered a stigma. (Table 1-2 lists the most common U.S. extensions. We also list some additional extensions by country, but note that more are available, including the popular .Asia, for example.) Don't shy away from any of these. Looking through the list is a simple way to find the domain name of your choice!

Table 1-2 Sampling of Extensions Used in Domain Registration

Extension	Generally Used For
.com	General business (.com stands for commercial)
.net	Internet business (.net stands for network)
org	Nonprofit and trade association (.org stands ...