Don’t get addicted to buying domain names. I’m addicted to it. Here’s why buying domain names can be addictive.

1) High perceived value. It only costs $8 to buy a DotCom domain name. Wow $8 for a potential million dollar a year website? Great, I’ll be 20.

Many times you get so wrapped up in an idea for a website in your mind that you lose signs of reality. You think the business idea is so good that you better block the domain right now.

2) Sense of urgency, what if someone else takes it? A domain is meant to be unique. That means that only one person can have a particular domain name at any given time.

That means if someone takes your domain name that you’ve been eyeing for months, you’re screwed. This, coupled with the fact that it’s only $8 for a domain, makes you think it’s best to block this domain name right now.

3) Plurals and misspellings. Man, if you get Booking.com, you need to get Bookings.com too, right? What happens if someone takes over Bookings.com? Half of your potential traffic would go to them.

For any given domain, you may encounter many plurals and misspellings. For example Google.com. You can imagine people typing in gogle.com, or gooogle.com or googles.com, so Google should capture them, right? Wait, I think they did…

The potential for misspellings and plural domain names, along with their low cost, makes you want to get them, too.

4) .Net, .Org, .Info… man… if my site is Booking.com, shouldn’t I use Booking.net too? What happens if a competitor of mine takes over Booking.net?

Like plurals and misspellings. You will often become paranoid about other people getting the .org, .net, .info, .us version for your domain. You often feel that since it’s so cheap, you should buy them too.

5) Keyword research can find good domains. If you know keyword research, you know it could give you ideas for phrases you hadn’t even thought of. Now, for SEO, you could improve those domain names and achieve better rankings.

All these domain names add up. I bought $200 worth of domain names in a single session before. I didn’t end up using any of them. Beware!

My advice is to buy 1 domain name a day. That’s all, if you feel the need you can get the rest another day. Build your domain first, before worrying about competitors etc. Stop being so paranoid.

Though on second thought, someone took over QuangVan.com, so maybe you should be paranoid…