The image projected by many domain names may be costing you work. Having your own can be a game-changer.

What does your email address say about you? More than perhaps you think. And probably not what you want! Are you a dinosaur, amateur or serious business person? Read on!

First impressions count. You wouldn’t meet a client in your scruffiest sweatshirt and you wouldn’t send them a CV hand-written in pencil. Today though our first contact with a client, and therefore the first impression we make, is often by email. What kind of impression are you making?

Email addresses are built up in a certain way. Often it’s [email protected] where xx is a 2-letter country abbreviation, eg..fr or .co.uk, or the 3 letter .com. And each part of the address says something about the owner of the address.

What you can customize in an address can in simple terms be gauged from left-to-right: The further left, the easier to change. We can almost all have our own name.surname@ in our email address. Whereas the possibilities for the final 2 or 3 letters on the right (.fr, .com, .au) are preset and we can only choose from existing options. This is the domain name, which you can define for yourself. For a fee! You may flinch at the idea of paying for a domain name, but you should know that even if your current one is ‘free’, someone is paying for it somewhere and that part of your email address tells us who. And that in turn tells us something about you. More.

See: AIIC

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