having a paid domain makes your website look more professional. if you have a .tk domain & your a hosting company or trying to be on than but are going to think your ran by a 12 year old. quite honestly you can get a 99c domain from GoDaddy for a year witch is a great deal!
Yes good post 🙂 It is a very good idea to get a paid domain. In my opinion, .tk is not professional but that's down to preference. I prefer.co.uk or .com which of course, are much more expensive.
Paid domains always look professional whether you host a blog or a website. It will ensure more traffic and help in optimizing your website better. There are various services that offer cheap paid domains.
I've always been iffy about this theory. I don't mind people using .tk domains or something similar, or a free domain in general, but what I do mind are when people stick with the subdomain their host gave them. For example: yoursitename.prophpbb.com (not a real link... please don't click! Just an example link). Anyway, it's not really a matter of whether or not a domain is professional that gets to me, it's when someone doesn't have a domain at all. Then I get somewhat turned off. Especially by forums hosted on Zetaboards that have those really super long subdomains... that always throws me for a loop. I mean, I know that's what the favorites bar is for on your browser, and I'll gladly utilize it if I have to, but all the same, I feel better knowing that a url to a site or forum is easy to remember.
Yes. Getting a paid top level domain is better than a free domain. If I visit a hosting company which use .cf or some free domain, I wont trust my website and money with them. The same goes to site which need us to pay such as Ponzi scheme.
Honestly, I won't even visit websites that don't have a top level domain. Webmasters who know what they're doing and care about getting the most visitors will shell out the ten bucks or so for a domain every time.
I think if you are at least willing to pay for a domain, it shows that you have some care for your forum, I find a site with a free domain really tacky and dont normally ever return to the site.
I have seen a DRAMATIC difference in my traffic and activity in my blog once I purchased a domain name for my blog. I think it truly makes a difference. Languavel is another perfect example, we used to advertise our community at http://languavel.thelearningnerd.net (or was it .com, I don't recall) then Cierra secured the domain http://languavel.net and traffic has been excellent (for the most part anyway lol) I think it truly helps with exposure for sure to have an easy to remember domain name as opposed to a generic looking one.
When I started making websites, I would always use the co.cc domain names, just because they were free and I didn't have any monetary resources at my disposal at all.
However, now I always use a .net or .com domain name, no matter what!
Domain names make you more accessible and rank higher on search engines. Most people are too lazy or forgetful to type a long URL, so they'd want a simple address that they can always type on their own. If they forget it, the next best thing is that they can look up your Web site's name on Google.
I recommend getting at least two or three domain names and forwarding to the most popular one. You get more exposure and reduce the chances of a competitor registering the same name as their domain.
