[rolenthedeep]

I am the proud owner of my own firstnamelastname.com

When I first ventured into web hosting, the domain was dead, but still registered. I did a whois and got Firstname Lastname. Not sure what I expected, really.

After some years I randomly checked with my favorite registrar, and it was suddenly available for $15/yr. Immediately grabbed that, no regrets.

A couple of years ago, I got a series of emails from some broker offering me an increasing amount of money for the domain. I think they gave up at $5k, and I never responded. $5k would have been incredible at the time, but by then I was fully committed to my [e-mail] email address.

I guess I never really put a website at that domain, it's just an email address. I keep telling myself I'll do it eventually, but it's been almost 10 years at this point...

[acherion]

Many years ago I got mylastname.com for a normal price (like $20 a year or whatever) and then forgot about it. It helps that I have a very unique surname.

A few years afterwards, I woke up one morning with the bright idea that I should probably secure mylastname.com in case some jerk off domain name squatter grabs it. I do a whois from the command line (I don't trust the online domain name search sites anymore) and saw that it was already taken! What the hell! My last name is so unique, how did anyone know, let alone a domain name squatter, to snap this domain name from under my nose!

I go to try and find more info about the domain outside of what was in the whois info (eg. who should I contact to try and negotiate a price for mylastname.com) but the domain didn't go anywhere when typed into my browser. Bummed out, I go into my usual domain name registrar dashboard to try and perhaps get the .net version or something, and there I saw in my list of currently owned domain names, the very mylastname.com domain I was looking at buying.

The squatter was me all along! </callWasComingFromInsideTheHouse>

[arbitrandomuser]

Why are online domain name searche sites untrustworthy ?

[q7xvh97o2pDhNrh]

I admire your decisiveness on the email branding. I own a few domains I could use for such a thing, but I'm still trying to figure out the best local-part.

Consider the possibilities! Sure, you could go classic and timeless, like yours, with FirstName@. But what about cool and terse, like [e-mail]? Or something unique and artisanal (that will hopefully never get old), like [e-mail]?

(I've even seen a few people do [e-mail], though I could never bring myself to do such a thing.)

[MivLives]

I have a domain hack of my name so I use [e-mail]

I wish I could get just lastna.me or lastname.com but I share the name with someone who's worked at icann, google and the white house at various points. I never had a shot.

[kevin_thibedeau]

For long names I'd suggest the [a-z][0-9][a-z].tld abbreviated form. Those three char domains with a digit tend to be readily available, don't command premium pricing, and are very convenient when you need to type an address in or verbally tell someone how to contact you.

[ehPReth]

that's been a big thinker for me as well; wth no real solution yet..

[e-mail] seem rather redundant; like saying "John John Doe". I guess if it was a business it would make more sense; like "John, owner of John Doe Inc." and "Bob, assistant for John Doe Inc." but for a personal domain... eh.

Similarly mail@ email@ seem 'too obvious' since.. of course it's email? Directional local parts like talkto@ to@ only make sense for inbound-only or outbound-only.

I do like io@! hello@, contact@, note@, or communique@ also seem more neutral but at this point I'm getting dizzy lol.

[e-mail] seems more simple in retrospect but also harder to get.

[mappu]

I own [e-mail], that's optimal if your surname matches a ccTLD.

[astrea]

I went with “hello”,”contactme”, and “contact”

[redwasp]

Funny enough, I'm also the owner of firstnamelastname.com: I bought it when I was first in college, and sold it for $300 or so to an actor of the same name when I was entirely broke. For some reason, he let the domain expire, and I bought it again a few years later at the registration price. $5k at this point wouldn't be nearly enough for me to change email addresses again, that's an absolute pain.

[soderfoo]

There's no time like the present.

Finally got around to putting together my personal site this past weekend. Just a simple blog and centralized place to post updates and photos for family. I was dragging my feet for a while but finally made a big push.

Nostalgia for the simplicity of the GeoCity days made me apprehensive over the years.

[Waterluvian]

$5000 can do a lot of good in the world. But it’s your property to do what you will with, for sure.

[rolenthedeep]

If someone offered you $5000 to change the email address you've used on every website for a decade, would you? All of your banking and financial accounts, your phone and utility bills, your doctor. Could you even identify every place you've ever used it?

That sounds like an awful lot more than $5k worth of work to me