I own jarema.com (my last name), mikejarema.com (my full name), and a few other variations and TLDs. I take pride in my slick email address (m<i></i>*@jarema.com) and my blog ranking highly in Google for name queries. Based on HN submissions coming from personal domains, I expect that there are others here like me in this respect.<p>When I encourage others to grab a personal domain, especially when their last name .com or even first name .com is unregistered, I find myself all but pleading the case, most times unsuccessfully.<p>I mean for ~$10 annually, and a bit of upfront effort, you can:<p>- move your email from gmail, ymail, hotmail, whatevermail over to your own domain<p>- redirect visitors to your favorite social media profile (FB, twitter, github, dribbble) or in minutes have an about.me page going aggregating it all<p>- alternatively spend some effort building out a blog or portfolio site<p>- avoid worrying about being "cyber-squatted" or pranked by a buddy with some initiative<p>- just sit on the domain (defensive registration)<p>The truth of the matter is that a good number of personal domains are available in the .com namespace, and many last name .coms are also up for the taking.<p>However, if & when your name is taken, you're basically SOL.<p>So... I'm curious, why DON'T people register their personal domains?
Mike, I totally agree with you and it drives me crazy and has become a bit of a personal mission. My field is career development and so I work a lot with people during their job search, and one of the first things I ask is "what happens when someone googles you?" Then I'll explain the value of having your own domain. I understood when older workers would say they didn't understand how to set it up, or were confused, etc so I often walk them through it.<p>Then I went back and spoke at my college (I'm 42). I figured, well, these 21 year old internet whiz kids will certainly have this figured out. Nope. The number of people I met that owned their domain was about the same... consistently about 1-2 out of every 10 people I ask.<p>So in tech geek/lean startup mode, I got frustrated with explaining it to people over and over, so I purchased a domain, bought a theme for $8, used my friend Jayme as a guinea pig, and in 1 weekend recorded a how-to video and built a site so I didn't have to explain it over and over. It's called GetYourNameToday.com.<p>Look, I realize there's no way for me to not make this comment look spammy, and yes, in full disclosure there is a GoDaddy affiliate link on there (which I note in both the video and on each page), but I figured if it doesn't cost the person anything more, I am genuinely helping them out, and I can get a little something for my effort, why not.<p>I'm very transparent with who I am on the site, link to my career development/new media blog to show that it is in sync with what I do for a living, and even tackle questions such as WHY to register your name and what to do if you have a basic name that isn't available. I'm with you... seems like there are very few reasons why someone wouldn't see the benefits of securing their name for the "investment" of $10.<p>Would love to hear your feedback on the site and if you would have positioned it any differently or what I could do to improve it. Thanks!
Jim
- People may feel there is no content they wish to broadcast about themselves to the world. I don't have a desire to promote myself constantly, I'll just continue being quiet. Not everyone feels the need to tell the world their thoughts constantly.<p>- A single gmail/similar address can work fine.<p>- Not everyone has enough friends to warrant using "social media".
My surname is Benedetto and unfortunately "benedetto.com" is owned by a funeral services company. However I managed to register "benedet.to", which makes a great personal domain!<p>My only fear in owning an extremely personalized domain is that if for any reason I fail to renew the domain, some squatter could get it and do whatever he wants (it happened with my previous blog: someone picked up the domain and used it for a porn website. It took months to take down every link that still referred it as my personal blog).
i think it's because i internalised the "domain names should be cute/clever/creative/individual" mindset; registering yourname.tld comes way too low on the imaginativeness scale. i wouldn't name a star/planet/city/village/company/building/house after myself either. the internet at large does seem to be shifting more towards seeing domains as equivalent to email addresses, though, so i'll probably go ahead and register myname.net at some point.
My name is too common. I think it was already registered before I started coding back in '85.<p>Though I agree that for programmers who want to create a brand around themselves, having their name as their domain is a fair move.
In my case, [lastname].com is owned by some domain squatter looking to make a quick buck (or 12k of them last I checked). I own [firstname][lastname].com and that seems to be good, but it'd be cool to have my email me [first]@[last].com and my blog at [first].[last].com.<p>First world problems!