An old friend of mine is seriously PO'd.
Worse, he has no one to blame but himself. Double-worse, he knows he deserves extry blame because he's friends with the wise and fabled Dr. Mercury who's been harping about this friggin' subject for years.
As his friend, and knowing he deserves extry blame, I've naturally been doing my part by sending him little cheer-up notes, like "Are you still blaming yourself? I would," and "Have you forgiven yourself yet? Why should you?" I'm particularly fond of "Don't worry, everyone makes incredibly stupid mistakes in their lives. I'm sure there's plenty more where this one came from."
His name is something akin to "Stephen Gerald McKinley". Not uncommon names, but not particularly common, either. But uncommon enough that, put together, you'd figure there couldn't be all that many of them in the world, and what are the odds that they'd all want personal sites of one type or another?
Pretty good, as it turns out.
When he finally — finally! — got around to checking, there wasn't one single variation on his name available. That includes abbreviated spelling and using hyphens, and at one point he actually tried "stephengeraldmckinley2.com" — and even that was taken.
That's when he knew he had really screwed the pooch big time. Because domain names never return to the public trough. The domain harvesters figure — correctly — that if one person wanted it, then someone else will want it, so they're snatched up electronically the micro-instant they become available.
And, just as a small side note, with many of the domain harvesters, you don't buy the domain from them for the tidy sum of $4,999, you lease it from them for time eternal. It's not pretty.
So if you EVER think you might want a site, even years and years down the road so you can post pictures of yourself looking mournful and bedraggled so your children will take pity on you and treat you to a dinner consisting of something other than dog food, now's the time to grab it.
Conversely, it's a great way to help the grandparents do their Christmas shopping. First, post pictures of 2-year-old Timmy on your personal site. If possible, catch him when he's off-guard and not trying to set the cat on fire. Send the link to Grandma.
When the swooning Grandma asks on the phone what little Timmy wants for Christmas, tell her "Timmy said a large gift card from Best Buy would 'best' suit his tastes -- ha-ha. Quite the precocious child, isn't he? I think he gets it from you."
Of course, you could make tons of money from your domain, but who wants to discuss such a crass subject? Besides, those thousands of dollars a day don't just roll in by themselves. Sometimes the site owner has to spend a good ten or fifteen minutes doing site chores, which can really cut into one's golf and bowling time.
Personally, I suggest you start with actually getting the domain name — then we'll make you a millionaire.
It should be noted that you don't actually have to put up some kind of web or blog site to hold the domain. All we're talking about is reserving it. Cost is a whopping $6.95/mo.
The jump-off point is here. That'll give you some background on the hosting company I use, some tips on picking a domain name and a link to get started.
And best of luck!
I'm afraid you're going to need it.
