Choosing a good domain name for your blog or website is vital. Why?
Because the domain name is the corner stone of your online brand.
People will link to your site using your domain, your search
engine results will contain your domain and so on.
One common mistake people make when choosing a domain, however, is
to only consider the short term. That is, they figure what their
website will look like for the next three or four months, and they
buy a domain name around that idea.
Let’s suppose that a guy loves the Corvette cars, and he decides
to start a blog on that topic. After researching for a while he
purchases the domain CorvetteCentral.com. It is a good domain,
because it is short, descriptive, it has the main keywords in it and
so on.
The blog grows healthily, but after one year it reaches a plateau.
The guy realizes that in order to make the blog grow further he
would need to start covering other sport cars, and not only the
Corvette. Guess what… too late! He is already trapped with his
domain. At this point his choices are either to keep writing about
Corvettes and accept the fact that his audience will be limited to
fans of that car, or buy a new domain and start from scratch.
I have been in that position myself, and it is not cool.
If you don’t want to get trapped by your domain, you must plan
ahead.
Ask yourself how far you can take a website with the domain you own
or are planning to purchase. What limitations does it have?
Creating niche websites is not a bad idea per se, but you must be
aware that they have limited potential. If you want to create a
business out of your website or blog, then the domain name must
not limit you to a small niche or market segment.
Going back to the example above, a better domain would be
SportsCarsCentral.com or MySportCar.com. This would allow the
person to write about Corvettes the same way, but the moment the
wanted to expand beyond that, the domain would allow it.
source: DailyBlogTips january 11th, 2011