Domain .com is one of the most popular domains today. The name of this domain is derived from the word "commercial", since its original purpose was for it to be used by commercial organizations. Eventually, its purpose has been changed and today also used by schools and private individuals as well. There are also many other domains that are quite popular today and are used instead of .com. Here are some of the mostly used alternative domains for bloggers and startups.
.co
.co domain is one of the most frequently used alternatives to .com. It is assigned to Colombia. This domain is recognized by Google as a global domain extension. The very popular and memorable name is an advantage of this domain. It is especially popular among tech startups, for example Vine (vine.co) or 500 Startups (500.co). You can get this domain on their official website.
.me
.me is the top-level domain for Montenegro. It replaced domains that previously existed in Yugoslavia (.yu) and Serbia and Montenegro (.cg.yu). Montenegro was later assigned .me domain by International Organization for Standardization. Four years after its appearance, the domain .me had more than 320.000 purchases which made him the fastest-selling top-level domain ever. It became very popular because of its name. There are many companies that used "me" in this domain in an interesting way. We can take a look at interesting examples of websites such as sync.me, join.me or ask.me. You can register for .me at domain.me.
.io
.io exists since 1997 and it is the top-level domain for British Indian Ocean Territory. It was not used until 1998 when Yahoo.inc registered the domainyahoo.io. Its popularity has been growing ever since it was used for the first time. You do not have to be registered in British Indian Ocean Territory if you want to use this domain. The availability of .io domains is the reason why this domain is so popular. While many .com domains are already taken, there are many .io domains that are available.
.fm
. FM is the top-level domain of the Federated States of Micronesia. It was originally designed for companies from this nation, but because of its name it became one of the most popular domains in the world. Abbreviation FM is associated with radio stations and that is why this domain is most frequently used for streaming audio websites. For example, Last.fm is one of the most popular social music website that uses this domain. Check out dot.fm if you want to get this domain.
.nu
This is another domain which gained in popularity because of its name. It is assigned to the island state of Niue but is mostly used by Danish, Swedish, Dutch and Belgian websites because in those languages "nu" is used for the word "now". Because of the phonetic similarity between those two words, this domain is also used by many websites from English-speaking countries. An interesting example of the use of this domain is the Dutch website waarbenjij.nu, which stands for whereareyou.now. This domain can be acquired at https nunames.nu.
.la
This domain is assigned to the country of Laos but it gained its popularity by the websites from Los Angeles. Even though it is mostly used by the websites from Los Angeles, there is no official association between this domain and the United States. This domain is perfect for websites like ilove.la and similar. In addition, it is used by the French websites since "la" stands for "there" in French. You can get this domain at www.la.
All of these domains are alternatives for .com and are very frequently used, some because of availability and some because of the name. All of them can be a much cheaper option than .com domain, but that still depends on the name of the website you choose. Therefore, if you are looking for a creative website name, try to use it in combination with one of these domains and make it sound interesting. That is how many people choose their domains. The name of the website can be used as a strong marketing tool and should be chosen very carefully.
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