I always like to have a .com registered. .com is to the internet as iPod is to digital music players. Invariably, when typing in a web address, .com will be what visitors will type in...

As a safeguard, I would register some form of fitnatics.com either including a location name or a keyword that describes your business in addition to fitnatics.ca.

Changing the spelling of the name will only cause confusion...

I have used directnic.com as my domain registrar for over 10 years and have never had a problem. Before doing business with them, I'd registered names for a very low price, $7.99 annually, if I recall, but had to host my sites on their servers, for an additional fee, of course. When I discovered limitations with their servers and wanted to change hosting services, I couldn't move my domain names. I had to let them expire, wait for them to become available again and the re-register them.

As with anything, shop around and read reviews...

Best of luck...fitnatics is a great name, by the way!

If you ignore the .com version of the domain, then there's the very real possibility that at some point, the owner of the domain can create a competing business and benefit from your effort on promoting the name. Why start a business with this looming over your head?

These days, hosting sites are pretty much similar (in fact, you'll probably find people who white label their hosting services that another company is truly hosting).

.COM is much more well known than .CA.

I don't like to admit it, but even Canadians are rather American Centric and tend to type in .COM much more often than .CA. ALWAYS register DOT COM if you can. It has way too much top of mind awareness.

Even though nobody has built a web site on the domain, the domain is owned by somebody as its already registered. I did a WHOIS look up on the domain you want, and yes, it is indeed registered (owned) by somebody out of California. The domain name registration does not expire until July 2013.

If you want, you could wait it out and place a 'back order' on the domain, so if the current owner does not renew the domain registration in 2013, you'll get first dibbs on it. But, can you wait that long?

You may be better off to use a domain name Escrow service like www.sedo.com to act as an intermediary between you and the current owner. The current owner might be willing to sell the domain. Sedo allows you to remain anonymous, and helps make the transfer of domain names (intellectual property) safe and secure for both buyer and seller. I've used this service a couple times to buy domain names for my clients.

In the interest of full disclosure, I own my own domain name registration service: www.customerloyaltydomains.com and I do receive commissions from this domain name sales web site. I am a Godaddy domain name serive reseller, so I'm partial to Godaddy and my services. There is a premium domain name service offered where there may be another premium domain available that you can buy.

There is one final way to get the domain you want, but its going to be expensive and time consuming. You could register your preferred business name as a registered trade mark with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office . This will likely cost you a thousand to two thousand dollars in legal fees and paperwork fees. Once you are granted a trademark, you can then petition ICANN that the person who presently owns the domain name you want is 'squatting' on your IP. You will have to put up a $5,000 bond to ICANN, and they will investigate your claim. If you win, the domain name will be transferred to you, and you might get some of your $5,000 dollar deposit back (but I doubt it because you'll have to pay ICANN's investigation/dispute resolution fees), and perhaps more legal fees. This process can take two to five years.

So, it may be easier to put on your thinking caps and come up with another great name. Sorry to be bearer of such bad news, but, that's the way of the online world today.

Darcy Moen
Customer Loyalty Network

If I couldn't get the .com name, I would seriously consider changing the business name I was using to one that I could get it.

Or use a more descriptive name (not the company name) - an example comes to mind of a company called Trak kayaks that makes a unique kayak. Rather than using trak.com, they chose the domain rethinkkayak.com. Downside that in your industry a lot of people have probably scooped up these descriptive names, so there may not be a lot of good options.