New Photography Related Domain Names Available

Move over dot com era…… welcome to dot photography!

An interesting development ocured this week in the world of internet domain names when a collection of new gTLD ( generic Top Level Domains) were launched. Current TLDs include things like .com, .net and .co.uk. Essentially, the end part of a URL is called the TLD.

The problem is that website URLs are in very high demand and frankly most of the good ones have long gone with many people buying and squatting on domain names they never even plan to use. For a new business, it makes it very hard to get a relevant domain name that isn’t overly long or hyphenated.

Well that’s all starting to change. Starting right now!

ICANN, the governing power behind control of domain names has recently unveiled plans to launch several hundred new domains that will help people find something more suitable to their business. Luckily for photographers, some of the very first new TLDs to be rolled out include photography specific domain choices. In fact out of the latest batch of 7 new TLDs, 3 of them could easily be used by photographers!

New Photography Domain Names

As of right now you can purchase domains with the following end to them:

  • .photography
  • .photos
  • .gallery
  • .camera

Pretty cool right?

So if you’ve struggled to be able to find a great URL, now you might be able to get www.yourname.photography or www.yourlocation.gallery . I can also think of all sorts of creative ideas relating to your geographical location and the type of photography you do.

HURRY! Get yours now

I’m not kidding, if you want a new domain name for your photo business, or one that you intend to start in the future, you need to secure it now. I had a few things I wanted to grab myself and even after these were available for one hour, all of the ones on my list were taken. We’re in the lucky position that the the photography industry has been served first in the lineup by ICANN so you have to take advantage of it right now before all the options get taken and people start squatting on the good ones hoping to sell them for hundreds and even thousands of dollars!

What sort of URL should you choose?

In general there’s a few things to consider:

  • The shorter it is the better
  • Try not to have words in it that can be easily misspelled
  • Don’t get one that contains hyphens if the non-hyphenated version is available
  • Avoid trademarked names (note: please consult legal council if you have any more questions on this one, I’m no lawyer!)

If you decided to go for one that has a location in it, say San Francisco, you’d better be pretty darned sure you aren’t going to be moving house anytime soon otherwise you’ll have to change your domain and your hard earned SEO will go back to zero.

Where To Buy Them

There’s many options for domain registration but my favourite is Hover. All of their registrations include domain privacy settings. They are a few dollars more expensive than GoDaddy though so they can work if you are after the cheapest deal. I personally prefer the simple uncluttered experience that Hover pride themselves in but they don’t offer site hosting, just domain registration. If you register with them, you can then use our special link to BlueHost to get 30% discount on hosting. BlueHost is a great web host for beginners and amateurs who are starting their first proper photography website. For the professionals, I would highly recommend using Kinsta. All my sites are hosted with Kinsta and they have never been faster. Kinsta also have incredible support that is available via chat to help you with anything you need.

Are you going to buy one? Did you already get one? Leave us a comment below and tell me what you got!

Photo of author
Professional photographer based in Yukon, Canada, and founder of Shutter Muse. His editorial work has been featured in publications all over the world, and his commercial clients include brands such as Nike, Apple, Adobe and Red Bull.

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14 thoughts on “New Photography Related Domain Names Available”

  1. Many interesting ideas there Dan. Got mine surprisingly.. andrewhurst.photography not live but will replace current domain..I should add, you left off the .photos domain which is also great, so lots of choices for photogs

    Reply
    • Yep I left that off because frankly the pre-reg fees are insane and technically it’s not available yet. The issue with high pre-reg fees is you are also being forced into paying the same fee each time you re-register each year. So pay $500 to pre register a .photo and then you are going to have to pay $500 again next year apparently…. Also I don’t think the actual date for a .photo domain launch is yet concrete (maybe 15th April) so you could spend money and get nowhere. A pre-registration also does’t guarantee you the name by any means. Once GoDaddy begin offering pre registration we’ll be getting close but at the moment only smaller places are just trying to scam money out of people on that one I think.

      Glad you got what you wanted though! Spread the word, this has gone under the radar a little bit but I think it’s useful for photogs to know about.

      Reply
  2. Thanks for the heads up Dan. I think I’m going to snap up my .photography site soon… I’m starting to do more web design work, so sometime soon I’ll need to setup another site. This .photography domain could be a nice professional look for my photography site…

    Reply
      • Took your advice Dan and got jonharris.photography – stoked! Now I have to go back and re-read your earlier advice about sub domains etc regarding SEO, and figure out how best to structure my multiple websites…

        Reply
        • Glad you got it Jon! I’m trying to figure out the best things as well. Instead of gallery.dancarrphotography.com though I’ll be using dancarr.gallery and that’s a much cleaner URL so I’m stoked as well 🙂

          Reply
  3. This is awesome. I love the idea of .photography, as I am in process of redoing my whole website right now. One thing I noticed and worries me a bit is that at this point .photography does not show up in google search. For example – I checked whistler.photography as website that has been launched already however when I type it in search it shows me other whister photo websites but not the .photography one. How long do you think before search engines will follow up?

    Reply
    • Search engines should index something right away but whether they appear in search results has more to do with SEO. If it’s a new site with no backlinks then Google probably won’t show it for some time. You have to put the work in to build search engine ranking. The website you are referring to, whistler.photography appears to have been a Tumblr blog that someone has now given a new URL to. I doubt there’s many if any backlinks on the internet to the new whistler.photography URL. Mostly they will be to whatever the old Tumblr blog URL was so they won’t be counting towards the search engine ranking.

      Reply
    • By the way I’ll also show you a trick….. go to google.com and search for “site:.photography” but without the quotation marks. It will show you that Google is definitely indexing these new domains and you can check out what some other people have been doing with them! 🙂

      Reply
      • You are awesome. Thanks, Dan. I will definitely use your link for new hosting site as well. I am in the process of redoing everything to get more organized before it really gets out of control and your e book is exactly what I needed. Slowly I am converting to all new softwares and apps. Thanks again. 😉

        Reply
  4. I have recently purchased monika.photogrpahy. My new website is up. I’m having problem with FB. They are not linking anything to new domain name. Any suggestions.

    Reply

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