What's the Big Deal with having your own Domain Name?

I was on my Facebook account chatting with an individual I had just befriended. This particular individual is active in network marketing or what some people call MLM. For those who don't know, MLM is the acronym for Multi-Level Marketing. There are literally hundreds of MLM companies out there. That in itself is a totally different topic to be covered at another time. Back to my chatting.

We were chatting and getting to know each other. I let him know my background and what I currently do and he talked about his day job and the two companies he was affiliated with for MLM. To develop the friendship and get to know him better, I asked more about his companies. In the process, he gave me the links to the two replicated websites he uses to direct people to information about what he does. A link to a replicated site would look something like

www.CompanyName.com/YourName_or_ID_number

which can be pretty lengthy and hard to hand out, if you're talking to someone in person.

While chatting with him, I went over to Domain Sale! $7.49 .com at GoDaddy and searched his name to see if it was available as a dot com domain. Surprisingly enough, it was. I let him know this. I also told him he could just go straight to GoDaddy or he could come to my web blog and link through to it. Either way, he'd pay the same amount, but if he clicked through from my web blog, I'd make some affiliate commission.

Let's get to the question I posed in the title. What's the big deal with having your own domain name? You tell me... would you rather tell someone, "You can go to my website at www.YourName.com or www.YourName.info," or would rather tell them, "Go to my website at www.companyname.com/62945YourName.php and check it out."? I don't know about you, but I think it's a lot easier saying the first two. Some other options could be www.YourName.biz or www.YourName.me or if none of those are available you can try www.YourNameOnline.com as an alternative.

The way it works is pretty nice. You go to Domain Sale! $7.49 .com at GoDaddy and sign up and pay for a domain name that you choose, considering it is available. You then go into your account with GoDaddy for that domain name and set your domain to redirect to your company replicated website. You now can promote your company replicated web site by giving everyone you know a website domain that is much easier to remember.

Some final ideas for website domain names would be www.YourName.us or www.YourNameBiz.com or www.OnlineWithYourName.com or ... well, the options are endless. So, the next time you talk to someone you want to direct to that company replicated website, give them your domain name, not the replicated domain name.