Want To Run For Office? Secure Your Domain...

Ready to run for public office?  If you haven't registered your campaign domain name yet you might want to get that done first.  Even more important, have you registered your full-name domain yet?  That's "yourfullname.com!"   "JohnJones.com" or "AlbertSmith.Com,"  for example.  A politician's name is his brand name and if you don't have that brand name under your control you could have serious problems later.  If someone seeking to find out more about you--maybe because they are making up their mind about who to vote for or where to send a check--types your name into the address bar of their browser and your smiling face doesn't appear on their screen, you don't have control of either your brand or your destiny.

In fact, it might be a good idea to register all three "yourfullname" domains, dot-com, dot-net, and dot-org.  Michele Bachmann, one of those on the Republican presidential short-list for 2012 apparently  didn't think she needed all three, and now when her full-name dot-net is called up it resolves into a website touting her opponent in the last election, Tarryl Clark.  Still does, years later!  Jane Corwin, running for Congress in New York,  failed to register the dot-org of her name and a very clever political enemy turned it into an entertaining parody of her dot-com site.  Talk about an example of letting your opponent define you!  Guess who won the race? Right, it wasn't Jane Corwin...

And if your opponents don't get you, the cybersquatters will.  Meg Whitman, running for governor of California took her cybersquatting tormentors to court over a number of domain names they had registered early in anticipation: megwhitman2010.com, meg2010.com, whitmanforgovernor.com, and whitman2010.com.  What she discovered was that having a famous name is no protection against cybersquatting for politicians and she had to bring out her checkbook. In 2000 the Bush campaign bought up every domain they could think of including Bushsucks.com. Now that is smart!

Don't make the mistake of throwing your hat into the ring until you have your brand fastened down.  Register your name.  Register it in at least the three most common extensions, Com, Net and Org.  All three can be registered for a year for less than thirty dollars.  That's some of the cheapest insurance you'll ever need.  Or you can relinquish the initiative to your opponents and let them define you. 


Cheap Mike isn't planning to run for office, but he'd like nothing better than to sell you a few cheap domain names and host your website for a reasonable sum! Visit his site at CheapMikesDomains.Com