I'm almost finished with one of my lead capture websites but it seems like all of the website addresses I want to use are taken up already.

However, a lot of them can end in .net instead of .com.

From a marketing standpoint, do you guys think that www.whatever.net is just as effective as www.whatever.com?

Mike

Any of the extensions can be as good as dot com. From a marketig perspective ( perception ) dot com is a better site..better name..more credibility. Same arguement for realtors. Do agents that charge X% offer better service than X - 1%?

It's all perception when it comes to marketing.

If you grab a dot net extention I would stay away from building a site that is anything similar to the dot com. The reason is trademark lawsuits. When people send emails to Someone@somewhere.net they often mistype and send to someone@somewhere.com.

This confusion can arouse the greedy dot com owner to take you on for trademark infringement.

Most dot com owners will wait until you pull a profit then watch! They'll sue you.

I would never buy anything but dot com because most people will default to dot com after the first visit so you are really giving dot com owners free advertising.

Agentsonline.net is a good domain and works only because most posters are regulars. For the general public I would go with .com.

But since almost every "good" .com name is already taken, wouldn't an easy to remember .net site be better than a long spelled out .com, especially if the .net name would be more easily identified with your company? My company's site is a .org, but the .com equivilant luckily isn't a real estate company, it's an "importer and fabricator of fine architectural stone", so I don't think we'll lose any business to them...

I would do one step better. Send the administrator of the dot com a certified letter that you will be developing a certain business at dot net or dot whatever.

There hasn't been many lawsuits filed over dot extensions but when profit starts pouring in then a trademark lawsuit can eat up all your hard work.

always go with .com if you can