Thoughts on the .ws Domain Extension

December 8, 2007

When I knew I want to start a personal finance blog, everything I read said I needed to get a .com. Among others articles such as Free Money Finance’s blog said I needed one. Well, easier said than done. I suppose there are good .com’s available if you’re creative, but I’m not so much.

Why godsgreenearth ?

The name godsgreenearth came to me in the shower(sorry for any visuals), and usually something that comes to my mind in the shower I pay special attention to. Take it as you may, but it’s true. I knew I wanted to use it because it has multiple meanings: God, money, earth(I love nature), and godsgreenearth is a used in a phrase that commonly exresses surprise as in “What on God’s green earth…”. All these things are things I wanted to talk about in my blog, so I settled on it. I assumed that the .com was already taken, which it was, so the task was to find an acceptable alternative.

.info? .name? They didn’t seem quite right for a blog - godsgreenearth isn’t a name, nor is it a wiki.

What’s .ws?

I’ve read a lot about it and basically it’s a country code top level domain (ccTLD) that comes from the country extension for Western Samoa, which owns the .ws top level domain. Some forum posters seem to think it has an association with the terms “wireless” or “warez stuff”, but the overwhelming majority think it stands for “web site”. I’ve also read that Western Samoa was promoting it’s use as an ideal TLD and also was promoting it as “web site”.

Without finding any show stoppers about the .ws domain, I settled on it.

What’s the downside to using a .ws?

Well, it’s not a .com. But I don’t plan on spreading my website by word of mouth, so I doubt people will be going to the .com version of godsgreenearth to find me. (There’s nothing there at godsgreenearth[dot]com by the way, maybe I should make an offer!)

I figured that all my traffic will come from links on other PF blogs and forums, so I figure a .ws domain clicks the same as a .com!

I read on some forum that Google doesn’t like to index pages from .ws sites. To me, this makes no sense, and can’t be true, because I can see that Google has indexed every page I’ve written so far (site:http://godsgreenearth.ws)

I also read that you can’t transfer a .ws domain to another registrar, butthat should be an issue.

Other than just being different, I see no downside to using a .ws domain. But I guess we’ll see as I develop the blog. I’m actually starting to like it. It’s short and sweet and I think it’ll catch on someday as an alternative to the big TLDs.

Overall, my primary goal was not to have huge amounts of traffic, it was to have a place, a method, an accountability device to help me get out of debt and be financially free. And that will remain my goal. If a .ws domain extension limits my traffic in some weird way, so be it.

I’m new to this - so I’m open to any suggestions and please point out any goofy things you see on my website, except my .ws extension. He He.