How to avoid making domain name mistakes that will haunt you later on

One of the first actions founders take when deciding to form a new business is to register a domain name. This seemingly inexpensive five-minute task can end up with disastrous consequences if you don’t make the effort to do it right. Attempts to save small money while purchasing your first domain name can end up being one of your most expensive legal fights down the road.

Facebook famously had to pay $200,000 for the domain name Facebook.com, since the company was originally founded as TheFacebook. In reality, that sum is a pittance compared to the $8.5 million they paid for fb.com, but this $200,000 purchase would never have been necessary had they just created their company with a name that did not start with “the”. As another example, file sharing company Box originally had the domain name Box.net. As they grew bigger, they were forced to buy out the company using Box.com, which actually sold boxes.

The previous examples, while costly, at least had happy endings. But you can’t expect to be that lucky.

The Japanese automaker, Nissan, still does not own Nissan.com. They spent years in court trying to seize the domain from its rightful owner. (I recommend reading up on the history of this dispute!)  During the 2008 election, US politician Sarah Palin did not own Sarapalin.com, and currently, a variation of her name with the .IN extension, sarahpal.in, is redirecting to Hillary Clinton’s campaign website, likely not an outcome she would support.

Here are the steps you can take to avoid making domain name mistakes that will come back to haunt you later on.

1) When deciding on a name for a company, the first thing you should do is to check the domain possibilities with a good registrar that can show you all the top-level domain (TLD) variations of your desired name. For a business local to one country, try to get the most common TLD, but if you are going global, it might be a good idea to purchase the .com.

In a survey I conducted with nearly 500 people using SurveyMonkey Audience, the majority of users believed the .com would be the official site of a beer company from Australia. For this reason, I don’t think its worth even using something like .co.

2) Ideally, you should register the other common domain extensions like .org and .net and redirect them to your core domain. While you might want to save money, now is not the time to be frugal. If a competitor or squatter picks these up later, it will cost you thousands of dollars and millions of tears to recover them, even if you rightly own all the trademarks.

3) When registering the domain, make certain that the email address on file is one that you will see any important notifications from your registrar.

The US presidential candidate Jeb Bush allowed his domain JebBush.com to expire, and Donald Trump was able to purchase it thereafter.