[def13]

If you live in the west/developed world, the solution for hobbyists/small projects/individuals is generally to use the a local ccTLD. I'm from Australia, I use a `.au`. Between `.au` (which they opened up recently) and `id.au` its not hard to find a memorable/useful url for about $20/year, as people/companies have been mostly keeping to the `.{org,com,net}.au` names.

I see a lot of .fr, .de, .jp (and many other European ccTLDs) used by people from those places for their hobbyists/small projects/individual purposes. The regulators and operators of these domains tend to be pretty decently reputable. They often require proof of either local residence/citizenship or local business, which keeps domains more available, at the cost of requiring you to hand over some identifying information.

Now for whatever reason, I don't really see the `.us` one in use at all, so that is potentially a big exception to the initial premise for people from the US. I presume that its due to combination of it being operated by GoDaddy and the fact the `.com` and `.org` are sort of defacto US ccTLDs..