Why an athlete should care about their domain name and personal brand.

As long as domain names have been around, professional athlete domain names have been valued property by domain speculators (domainers), cyber squatters, and sports fans.  If you do a whois search for most professional athletes, no matter what the sport, chances are that the domain is registered.  Even college athletes who have a shot at the professional level as well as high school recruits who haven’t committed to a school are having their domain names registered.

In a future post, I will dive deeper into the domain name speculator market, why names are registered, how to inquire about buying or recovering a domain, etc.  But in today’s post, I want to go over the reasons why you should own your own domain, and why an athlete should place a high value on owning their own domain.

Before the internet, branding an athlete was only done via commercials, magazine ads, and radio spots.  But with the age of the web and social media, from sports fans to teammates, family and friends, and advertisers and sponsors, anyone can type in a player’s name, do a search, and pull up everything they want to know about an athlete.  So here’s my question to you: Would you rather send visitors to your Wikipedia profile or to your very own custom designed and personally branded website?

For the athletes who do have a website, depending on how recently the site was launched and how your site was designed/developed, the official site should rank #1 no matter what search engine is used (a newer site does take a little while to climb the ranks above player profile pages).  But for those who do not have a site, fans have to go elsewhere to the likes of Wikipedia, league profile pages, team profile pages, Yahoo.com, CBSSports.com, etc., ultimately diverting traffic to other virtual real estate.

In my experience helping athletes build their brand online, here are 5 reasons why an athlete should own their own domain:

1. Creates a consistent place for visitors to learn more about you on and off the field.
2. Allows potential visitors using type-in-traffic of a domain name find your official website immediately.
3. Gives the ability to promote your favorite charity or your own charitable foundation year-round.
4. Protects your brand from cyber squatters, irate fans or fans that have an agenda.
5. Allows for marketing off the field for opportunities after a playing career is over.

There are more reasons that just these five for owning your own domain name to build your personal brand.  Feel free to discuss this in the comments section below and via Twitter.

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About Tim Evans

Tim Evans is the CEO of Athlete Web Design, a web design and internet marketing firm for athletes and sports professionals based in Chicago. Tim has been online since 1997 and is an expert in the domain name sales, acquisitions, and monetizing realm. This expertise in domain names has evolved into helping athletes and sports professionals with a virtual presence online through official websites for athletes / sports entities. Twitter: @athlete E-mail: tim@athletewebdesign.com

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The domain name industry has come a long way in the last 20 years.  In the early 1990s, an individual needed to write in and request a domain name and there was a limit of five names.  A few years later, Network Solutions came on the scene and you could register a domain name, but had to commit to a two-year registration fee of $70 – it was so primitive back then that they would even allow you to register names and they would send you an invoice for the domain.  There was no obligation on the invoice, so if you didn’t pay it, the domain would back into the pool of available names.

In 2001, Network Solutions lost its monopoly, and companies like GoDaddy came on the scene offering domain names for less than $10/year.  Although the internet bubble burst between 1999-2000, excellent domain names became available when people chose not to renew their domains fearing that the internet was not all that it was cracked up to be.  This allowed for many people to find great names.

Fast forward 8-9 years and here we are in November 2009.  Is it easy to find a one word dictionary term domain name?  The answer is no; the days of the single word names being available for registration are long gone.  What about a killer two-word or three-word domain for that new sports business you are starting up?  Or even finding your first and last name?  The answer to these questions, in my opinion, is yes – you can still find great domain names with the right tools, and background knowledge.

Here are just a few of the many ways I research domain names for my business and for my clients.

1.  Check the desired domain at your favorite registrar, such as GoDaddy or Moniker.  I would not recommend checking domain names at Network Solutions.  They’ve been know to put a hold on the domain you research so you could only use them as the registrar.

2.  If the name is already registered, and you still would like this name, check the site to see if it is being used for anything.  If it’s an existing company, then you’re pretty much out of luck and you’ll need to think of a new name.  But if it’s a blank page, a parking page, or a page with ads on it, that is a good sign that the owner has registered it with the intent to sell it.  You can then look up the contact information for the owner of the domain name and see if it is for sale.

3.  Use third-party sites such as GoDaddy’s TDNAM, SEDO, AfterNIC, and BuyDomains, to research potential keywords that you’d like to have in your domains.

4.  You can also do similar keyword search as in the above with Just Dropped and Domain Tools’ Advanced Auction search.

Just Dropped allows you to search for names that have deleted over the past 90
days as well as name that are going to becoming available in the near future.

The Advanced Auction search tool at Domain Tools allows you to search for names by
keyword as well as see if they have any linking value from the Yahoo and DMOZ directories.

Notable sports related domains becoming available in the next few days include:

• AthleteStocks.com – November 25, 2009
• BadBets.com – November 26, 2009
• AnyAthlete.com – November 30, 2009
• CycleGifts.com – November 30, 2009
• GameTrends.com – December 1, 2009
• SoccerLinks.com – December 3, 2009
• SportFun.com – December 3, 2009 (name was originally registered in 1996)
• SportPitch.com – December 12, 2009
• SportSeats.com – December 13, 2009

In the coming weeks, I’ll be going over some of the details and intricacies on the above methods of finding a great domain.  If you have a domain name story or an idea that you would like to share with the readers, please comment below.

With 63,688 domain names dropping tomorrow, I’m sure there is a golden nugget domain you can use to help build your sports business or your personal brand!

About Tim Evans

Tim Evans is the CEO of Athlete Web Design, a web design and internet marketing firm for athletes and sports professionals based in Chicago. Tim has been online since 1997 and is an expert in the domain name sales, acquisitions, and monetizing realm. This expertise in domain names has evolved into helping athletes and sports professionals with a virtual presence online through official websites for athletes / sports entities. Twitter: @athlete E-mail: tim@athletewebdesign.com

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Let’s face it.  Many big time athletes are starting to build and expand their brand to new audiences by connecting with fans on social networks.  Shaq and Lance Armstrong are two all-stars who are using Twitter and Facebook and seeing great results.  They are doing a fantastic job, but a lot of it has to do with their already “big brand” presence they have offline.

Even if you are not a “big time” pro athlete, actor, entertainer, or brand, there are still things you should be doing online to connect with your audience.  Luckily for us, we don’t have to think about how to implement everything online because there are experts like Amy Martin who can lead the way.  Amy works with powerful brands such as Shaq, the Chicago White Sox, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), and more.   Check out the video below for a few of her tips you should be implementing to develop your (athletes) brand online.

What are some other things athletes should be doing to connect with their fans and build their brand online?  Feel free to share you thoughts in the comment section below with your top suggestions.

About Lewis Howes

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