Once I find a domain thats not taken by someone else (hopefully in this lifetime) should I register the .com, .net, and .org? I'm not anticipating a huge rush, but I am worried about someone possibly sidetracking people by registering one of the others. Is it a good investment to register all three if I am only using the .com?

I would consider it more and insurance versus and investment. However, you could do separate tasks with the other two domains. For instance your .com might be your primary site and your .net a membership site.

Fortunately and unfortunately there are sever extensions besides the big three. .name, .info, .us so you can never be completely assured that your visitors do not get "sidetracked"

It depends on how much you want to put out for it and how big you're expecting your place to get. Like Brian mentioned, there are several other extensions that people can snatch up and promote to possibly take some of your traffic, but it 'is' usually recommended to have the big three (I've seen the .info included in the recommendations, too). Personally, I'd say to start with your .com and once it starts getting built up, invest/insure yourself in the others if you really want them. You can certainly utilize them in different ways or simply reroute people to your place, but it helps prevent a few of the copycat possibilities.

I think registering .com, .net is just enough if that domain name looks worth to register.

Is it sad to say I never realized there were so many "standard" .___ websites you could buy and register? Every domain search brings up possibilities I never thought about since I don't regularly visit websites that use them. Thanks for the feedback.

If you want to protect your brand, covering the three main extensions are worth the it.

It is all about how important the domain name for you!
If you really invest on brand and want to protect it than for sure register 3 extension and maybe even more like .info ,.biz etc.
But if it is not that important for you than take just what you need.

For my key domains I usually just register .com and .net - .net being the "backup" site. Sometimes I'll register the .org, but not for all of my domains.

For some of them, I've got the hyphenated and the nonhyphenated .com and .net. In those cases, the hyphenated version was available when I first went shopping and the unhyphenated ones came available later...so I grabbed them.

I've only done that for business-related domains, though, not for my personal or hobby sites.

I usually prefer .com and .biz domain extensions.

I too would only worry about .com and .net but really I haven't had anything yet that I would even consider buying the others. I think that having others sidetrack as you put it can also be beneficial to you on occasion if they are a success too. However the other domain could potentially be used to hurt the rep of your main site.

I haven't give much thought to this in the past, so I am glad that it was brought up.

Domains with the .biz extension are being filtered out of a lot of email providers due to spam issues. A lot of spammers grabbed up .biz extensions a few years ago when they were cheap so if you're planning any kind of email list, don't bother with the .biz domain.

But lots of com[panies still use that. I personally think if I like that name and it avialible with any extention I would register it with noregret as well as use.

I don't think I'd worry about the .org and agree that looking at .biz would be a better option. When I see a .org address I generally associate it with non-profit organizations or other agencies that support them. I don't normally associate it with a business. I would definitely also recommend the .com and .net to start and see how things progress.

Chris

I would recommend you to register all three or even more.
Try to have a look at hyphens, typo, etc as well if you think it is important for you.

In my experience it's not worth the extra $$$