Welcome.to

A service called “Welcome.to” offers you the ability to “register” (note the usage of quotes) a subdomain hack with the extensions .to, .at or .am. All you do is choose one of the pre-determined subdomains and extensions, add in your trailing word (which is actually a folder off of the subdomain), and you’re done.

You’ll also get a matching email address (me@welcome.to, etc.) and can forward the address to any URL you want. There’s no limit to how many domains you can create, according to their terms, but it cannot point to any kind of questionable site – I don’t think I need to list out the categories for you. The domain lasts forever, unless it points to a 404 error for longer than three months.

Much like the infamous .co.cc extension – you don’t technically own these domains, they’re owned by the “welcome.to” service. You’re simply registering a subdomain off of them, much like you would when you register a Stumbleupon account and get your “myname.stumbleupon.com” address. Regardless, it’s a fun service, and as you may have imagined – all of the good domains were already taken long ago.

Ever.com

Squidoo‘s own Ever.com project lets you create a subdomain hack in the form of “best.(WhateverYouWant).ever.com”, which is a rather fun concept that I’ve been toying around with ever since its inception. Needless to say, search engines seem to hate web pages that have two subdomain levels, but these things are so damn brandable and fun to advertise (check out my very first Ever.com page, Best.Television.Ever.com).

There’s much more to Ever.com, since you can choose from several dozen “action words” that go far beyond “best”. Try it out and see what funny, interesting or cool combos you can come up with. Of course, by now, most if not all of the really worthy one-word domains have already been taken.

chi.mp

I’m not so sure of which domain hacks you can come up with the .mp extension (which is of the Northern Mariana Islands – yeah, I had no idea where the hell on earth they were located, either), but I decided to include it here, anyway.

Chi.mp lets you register a .mp domain name for free. It basically creates a big profile or somewhat of a resume for you, which lists all of your contact information, social networking accounts, and things of that nature. While it is free to register, you can only use your domain as a chi.mp account profile. If you want to use it outside of this service, it will cost you $20/year.

There you have it – a list of subjectively fun and cool domain hack registrars!  Hack away – and if you know of any I’ve missed, let me know and I’ll add them!

Take this scenario: I once had to divvy up a website into major sections, since the main site began to lose its focus. This site fell in the ‘online video’ category in the television industry. There were two considerations: register 4 new domain names (since the .com’s were already taken by others, the idea was to register .tv’s…a very costly expenditure with their $20/year upkeep fee), or, create subdomains.

The Dilemma: Subdomains, or New Domain Names?

• The re-branding effort to raise awareness for domain names would be a short to mid-term struggle.
• The promotional aspect would be equally as difficult, especially in terms of raising awareness to domains that were not .com’s but .tv’s. Keep in mind, second-time visitors might forget the .tv extension.
• The cost of renewing .tv’s would be near $80/year, a costly expense for a small business that is looking to save money.
• If this site were to divide up further into more mini-sites, yet even more .tv domain names would be needed in the future. Common sense would dictate that they should be purchased immediately so that other people who have caught on to this site’s strategy won’t go ahead and purchase these future names (there goes the marketer’s paranoia again).

When Subdomains Can Be Attractive

• There’s zero competition. Only you can create subdomains off of your existing domain name – nobody else can. That means no threats from cybersquatters. It’s almost like going back to the early 1990s and being able to register any domain name you want!
• It’s the closest thing to being able to register a 1, 2, 3 or 4-character domain name. Doesn’t go.mysite.com sound cool? How about sell.usedclothing.com?
• Subdomains keep the original domain name within them…therefore, they also keep the branding schema that has been built up for that domain name. In essence, you’re not straying from the brand, but are building upon it. No effort has to be done in “re-branding” the subdomains in regard to logo, theme, tone, or anything else. Simply follow the same formula as before!
• Not only do subdomains retain visual branding, but also brand identity. With every website residing on a subdomain, you’re expanding your business and relating that subdomain’s term to it. In this case, it was seen to be much easier for people to associate with a domain like “sitcoms.televisionshows.com” instead of “televisionsitcoms.tv”.

What Else are Subdomains Good For?

• How about websites that need to use more than one CMS? If you’re running the main site off of WordPress and desperately needed to use Magento as your e-commerce solution, simply create a “shop.mysite.com” fashioned subdomain, and run Magento on it.

Everything varies on a case-by-case basis. For the most part, buying new domain names and building sites on them is more like creating separate businesses. They’ll all need their own logos, branding efforts, and tactics. They’re all starting from a clean slate – nobody has heard of them before, and you’ll have to fight hard to promote and raise awareness for them.

Subdomains, however, start off with the advantage of already having brand identity from the parent domain name. It’s always much easier to expand on something that’s already there!

Many big companies use subdomains. Just look at Microsoft. They also run privacy.microsoft.com, go.microsoft.com, profile.microsoft.com and many more.  Sun Microsystems has blogs.sun.com, forums.sun.com, wikis.sun.com and store.sun.com. IBM uses them to segregate brands, using subdomains like redbooks.ibm.com and alphaworks.ibm.com.  Even Apple has gotten in the action with store.apple.com. Yahoo has the ever-popular answers.yahoo.com

If you do go with subs, don’t forget to properly 301 redirect your old content over to your subdomain. When properly done, those subdomains will keep the search engine positions and page rank as seen on the parent site.