Own your domain name. Register it. Otherwise someone else will and you may not like what they put on it. I finally got mine: camhughes.com. I’ve wanted to get this domain for years, but it was owned by another party. It finally dropped and I guess good things come to those who wait. I’ve also had my eye on cameronhughes.com but it was also already owned (and is now squatted by Network Solutions). Cameron Hughes is also a wine maker with a fairly large Internet footprint so there’s some potential competition there. And to be fair, I’m really “Cam” more than I’m “Cameron” these days, so camhughes.com is my first pick. Go ahead- type www.camhughes.com into your browser. Ah yeah- it goes right back here.

Even though she doesn’t really care I picked up my wife’s domain name (www.francoisehughes.com) and redirected it to her blog. Interestingly franhughes.com is taken, but since Francoise  prefers her full name things worked out just fine.

You know what I want? I want to be the first result for me- for “Cam Hughes”. Right now I’m not. I’m in the top ten, but that doesn’t quite cut it. Also, much to my chagrin I share “Cam” with some girls (sweet girls who tweet). The women can share “Cameron” but “Cam” is clearly a guy’s name. It’s a freaking car part. Nothing feminine about that. “Pass me the cam so I can massacre this guy when we race.” Yes. Not “Pass me the cam so I can rest me tea cup on it.” Hell no. Luckily I’ve learned a few things about domaining and SEO in the past couple years. Mark my words people. When you type “Cam Hughes” into Google- yeah, all seven of you- the first result will be me.

On a separate, but not unrelated note, domains names are a blast. I’ve been actively engaged in building a portfolio (nothing to sell, just stuff to use). Some of it’s for business, but some of it’s just for fun. For example, I just picked up camshq (dot) com.  Some of my businesses end in “HQ” so I figured that I could have my personal headquarters at Cam’s HQ. For now it’s just a redirect- I already have way to many blogs set up. Yes… too many blogs.  But I know there’s one more coming for sure. More on that later though. I often wish I could go back in time and pick up some great domains names. Digital real estate is cool.

Oct 24, 2014: I recently sold the aforementioned domain name. I see they have turned it into a porn site. Awesome. That’s one thing that I don’t enjoy about my nickname. To many unsavory things are linked to the term “Cam.” Ah well.

February 24, 2015: The guys I sold the domain name to apparently left my personal contact information on the domain. Now if you do a search for my email address it looks like I run a porn website. Geez. Awkward. I got them to change it, but it could be a long time before Google alters their results.

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Cam Hughes (<– Oh! SEO keyword!)