A great example of why just came to my attention. I know a person who started a business doing body waxing. She started this business in November of 2007. The business is called The Waxing Bar. For whatever reason she registered the domain the www.thewaxingbar.NET.

www.thewaxingbar.net
Creation Date: 07-nov-2007
Updated Date: 15-jan-2008
Expiration Date: 07-nov-2008

I don’t know if she did it, or she hired some idiot website builder to register a domain and build the site. I’m thinking the later. MAJOR mistake. Anyways, she does radio advertising and from what I understand the business does pretty well. Well, her competition got wind of her radio ads and noticed her failure to grab the .COM domain. So guess what they did. They grabbed the www.thewaxingbar.COM in January 2008, and they forward the browsers to their own waxing business website.

www.thewaxingbar.com
Created on: 22-Jan-08
Expires on: 23-Jan-09
Last Updated on: 22-Jan-08

So what website do you think all those radio listeners are going to go to? And anyone browsing for the businesses web site address? It won’t be the .NET. So she’s basically doing free advertising and web traffic for her competition. And when the Google result return the .COM address, it will direct them to the competition. DON’T GET THE .NET AS A PRIMARY EXTENSION!!! IF THE .COM IS NOT AVAILABLE, THEN GET SOMETHING ELSE!!!