d arrange to have International Trade Marks patented. However, my understanding is that this process takes quite some time and costs are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, it is hardly an option for a relatively small firm like “Joe's Pies”.

Surely spending fifty or so dollars is a far better alternative. Now, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever, if a firm called “Joe's Pies” exists anywhere. Nor, do I know if Joe has any web sites with any of the extensions I have mentioned above. If there is, then rest assured Joe, I have used the name “Joe's Pies” here for exemplification purposes only.

But, back to my opening three paragraphs, and my reason for writing and publi

I was unfortunate enough today to be at the receiving end of a vicious verbal attack for registering a Top Level Domain (TLD) name.

“How dare you”, I think was one of the comments made.

This vitriolic tirade came over the telephone line from someone that I had classed as a “friend”. Certainly, if friendship is involved, this person has made very little effort to understand anything about me. Because I had spent considerable time and effort, as well as a financial cost with the aim of providing this person, her husband, and their business, with a tool which I thought may have been useful for them. But, I shall come back to this point later.

This scenario highlights the importance for anyone in business to not only have a web site, but to register multiple domains.

Food is one of my passions in life, so lets take it as an example. I am an Aussie, and the meat pie is about as Australian as a pavlova or a lamington. Lets also suppose that your name is Joe, and you have sent up a business making and distributing meat pies. You have done a search and have found that the name “JoesPies” is available to you. You are an Aussie with an Australian business, so you are entitled to add the extension “.com.au” after the “JoesPies” part.

You have your web site designed and published, and over a period of time you are getting increased traffic to your web site resulting in sales of Joe's Pies. Life is good!

However, some time down the track there happens to be another Joe who wants a web site or sites. Or, it may even be a Fred or a Mary. They do a search and find that “JoesPies” with each of the extensions .com, .net, .name, . biz, .info, are available. A dilemma for Joe, Fred or Mary is which one to choose? Well, my advise for what it is worth would be to register the lot. It is exactly the same advise I would have given the first Joe if he had asked me to protect his business.

The cost of registering them all, (with a competitively priced Registrant), is less than a hundred dollars for a couple of years protection.

I would strongly suggest that you do exactly the same, regardless of the type of business in which you are involved. Because you have registered one domain name only, it does not give you proprietary rights over all of the other extensions. You may not want six or more web sites, perhaps you want one only. That's OK, you can park the others free of charge with reputable Domain name registrants, or even better still you could arrange to have all the Domain names apart from your web site domain name forwarded to your web site URL. Once again, there should not be any extra cost involved in this process.

There is another alternative that is available to you to protect your trading name. You could arrange to have International Trade Marks patented. However, my understanding is that this process takes quite some time and costs are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, it is hardly an option for a relatively small firm like “Joe's Pies”.

Surely spending fifty or so dollars is a far better alternative. Now, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever, if a firm called “Joe's Pies” exists anywhere. Nor, do I know if Joe has any web sites with any of the extensions I have mentioned above. If there is, then rest assured Joe, I have used the name “Joe's Pies” here for exemplification purposes only.

But, back to my opening three paragraphs, and my reason for writing and publis

ortance for anyone in business to not only have a web site, but to register multiple domains.

Food is one of my passions in life, so lets take it as an example. I am an Aussie, and the meat pie is about as Australian as a pavlova or a lamington. Lets also suppose that your name is Joe, and you have sent up a business making and distributing meat pies. You have done a search and have found that the name “JoesPies” is available to you. You are an Aussie with an Australian business, so you are entitled to add the extension “.com.au” after the “JoesPies” part.

You have your web site designed and published, and over a period of time you are getting increased traffic to your web site resulting in sales of Joe's Pies. Life is good!

However, some time down the track there happens to be another Joe who wants a web site or sites. Or, it may even be a Fred or a Mary. They do a search and find that “JoesPies” with each of the extensions .com, .net, .name, . biz, .info, are available. A dilemma for Joe, Fred or Mary is which one to choose? Well, my advise for what it is worth would be to register the lot. It is exactly the same advise I would have given the first Joe if he had asked me to protect his business.

The cost of registering them all, (with a competitively priced Registrant), is less than a hundred dollars for a couple of years protection.

I would strongly suggest that you do exactly the same, regardless of the type of business in which you are involved. Because you have registered one domain name only, it does not give you proprietary rights over all of the other extensions. You may not want six or more web sites, perhaps you want one only. That's OK, you can park the others free of charge with reputable Domain name registrants, or even better still you could arrange to have all the Domain names apart from your web site domain name forwarded to your web site URL. Once again, there should not be any extra cost involved in this process.

There is another alternative that is available to you to protect your trading name. You could arrange to have International Trade Marks patented. However, my understanding is that this process takes quite some time and costs are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, it is hardly an option for a relatively small firm like “Joe's Pies”.

Surely spending fifty or so dollars is a far better alternative. Now, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever, if a firm called “Joe's Pies” exists anywhere. Nor, do I know if Joe has any web sites with any of the extensions I have mentioned above. If there is, then rest assured Joe, I have used the name “Joe's Pies” here for exemplification purposes only.

But, back to my opening three paragraphs, and my reason for writing and publi

resulting in sales of Joe's Pies. Life is good!

However, some time down the track there happens to be another Joe who wants a web site or sites. Or, it may even be a Fred or a Mary. They do a search and find that “JoesPies” with each of the extensions .com, .net, .name, . biz, .info, are available. A dilemma for Joe, Fred or Mary is which one to choose? Well, my advise for what it is worth would be to register the lot. It is exactly the same advise I would have given the first Joe if he had asked me to protect his business.

The cost of registering them all, (with a competitively priced Registrant), is less than a hundred dollars for a couple of years protection.

I would strongly suggest that you do exactly the same, regardless of the type of business in which you are involved. Because you have registered one domain name only, it does not give you proprietary rights over all of the other extensions. You may not want six or more web sites, perhaps you want one only. That's OK, you can park the others free of charge with reputable Domain name registrants, or even better still you could arrange to have all the Domain names apart from your web site domain name forwarded to your web site URL. Once again, there should not be any extra cost involved in this process.

There is another alternative that is available to you to protect your trading name. You could arrange to have International Trade Marks patented. However, my understanding is that this process takes quite some time and costs are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, it is hardly an option for a relatively small firm like “Joe's Pies”.

Surely spending fifty or so dollars is a far better alternative. Now, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever, if a firm called “Joe's Pies” exists anywhere. Nor, do I know if Joe has any web sites with any of the extensions I have mentioned above. If there is, then rest assured Joe, I have used the name “Joe's Pies” here for exemplification purposes only.

But, back to my opening three paragraphs, and my reason for writing and publi

trongly suggest that you do exactly the same, regardless of the type of business in which you are involved. Because you have registered one domain name only, it does not give you proprietary rights over all of the other extensions. You may not want six or more web sites, perhaps you want one only. That's OK, you can park the others free of charge with reputable Domain name registrants, or even better still you could arrange to have all the Domain names apart from your web site domain name forwarded to your web site URL. Once again, there should not be any extra cost involved in this process.

There is another alternative that is available to you to protect your trading name. You could arrange to have International Trade Marks patented. However, my understanding is that this process takes quite some time and costs are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, it is hardly an option for a relatively small firm like “Joe's Pies”.

Surely spending fifty or so dollars is a far better alternative. Now, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever, if a firm called “Joe's Pies” exists anywhere. Nor, do I know if Joe has any web sites with any of the extensions I have mentioned above. If there is, then rest assured Joe, I have used the name “Joe's Pies” here for exemplification purposes only.

But, back to my opening three paragraphs, and my reason for writing and publi

d arrange to have International Trade Marks patented. However, my understanding is that this process takes quite some time and costs are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, it is hardly an option for a relatively small firm like “Joe's Pies”.

Surely spending fifty or so dollars is a far better alternative. Now, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever, if a firm called “Joe's Pies” exists anywhere. Nor, do I know if Joe has any web sites with any of the extensions I have mentioned above. If there is, then rest assured Joe, I have used the name “Joe's Pies” here for exemplification purposes only.

But, back to my opening three paragraphs, and my reason for writing and publishing this article.

For most of my work history I have been involved in education, training and professional development. I do have Post-Graduate qualifications in this area, as well as my practical experience. I know that we as adults learn best working from concrete examples, we learn best by doing, not being told what to do. But how adults learn is probably the subject of another article which I should write.

I have been enjoying dance classes and social dancing at several venues, but at one particular venue in the area where I live, for the last year or so. The proprietors and operators of this venue do have a web site. But I thought a blog site would also be a useful tool for them in their marketing efforts. As a facilitator of learning, and based on what I have said in the paragraph above, I decided to set up a blog site for them, and then explain to them how it operated. If they didn't want it, I could easily take it down again. My company covered the cost of registering the domain name and hosting the blog site and the TLD web site associated with it. I had classed these people as my friends and was happy to spend the six or so hours it took me to build the sites to help them out.

I certainly was not trying to interfere in the running of their business, as I was accused. I was merely offering a “tool” that I thought may have been of assistance to them, for them to choose whether they wanted to use it or not.

The web site, by the way, was highly supportive of their dance business, and of the husband and wife team as teachers. It could have been registered by someone else and not be anywhere near as supportive. Other TLD's for this particular business were still available by the way at the time of writing.

Within five minutes of the abusive phone call I received, I changed the Domain Name Servers for the web site, so it and the blog site were no longer “on air”. I would have done exactly the same , if instead I had been told something like, “thanks, but no thanks”!

So, if you are planning to register a Domain Name for a business, please consider multiple registrations. It may prevent angst from many points of view.