Registering a online forum for car enthusiests, Any help?

[john1]

Hey everyone, Me and a few guys who are car enthusiasts was talking about starting up a car team today.

Now i have searched and cannot find anyone even mentioning the name we were thinking about and wanted to know what the legit way to register the name would be. I just want to make sure nobody else has it for sure 1 and 2 register it so i can start a online community and accept members through the internet and everything because the last thing I'd want is to get the domain and have it going then have it shut down.

I would sell decals of the website/forum which would help pay for the domain and website upgrades etc

I have plenty of web design and forum installation and modification knowledge so i just need to figure out what legal things to do.

I looked at registering it as a non-profit for my state but since it's a online community also i'm not sure that's needed.

Thanks for any help!

 

[toomeycustoms]

Are you talking about a forum for a specific make/model of car? or a forum for a car club? Is the domain available? If so, buy it and start the forum. Do you own a business now? I don't see why you would want/need to start a non profit.

Forums are a dying breed with all of the social networking out there. Don't start a forum with the intention of it being profitable. If it does end up being profitable, it is just a perk. Start it because you are passionate about the subject and it will grow. I own and have sold a few automotive based forums. Forums take a lot of time to manage and make little money, unless they are large forums in which case they can be very profitable.

 

[john1]

Yeah the domains available but isn't it a good idea to check that someone else isn't using the name? If so how?

I own my sign business but a car forum for a nationwide car club wouldn't have anything to do with it would it?

 

[Fred Weiss]

A good start would be Googling the name to see what comes up. Follow that with a name search under trademarks at the patent office website. Then, based on that, you would have to decide if there is any possibility of confusion between you and anyone using the same or similar name. If such exists, would it lead to anything worse than you having to change your domain names after you already established it?

If you think the name would have a significant value in the future, then pay for a registration of it as a trademark ... if it can be had. Other than that, you would also want to consider the value of paying extra for all the variations and extensions you can think of for the domain name.

I can tell you that a direct competitor pays for the name sign101.com and forwards any hits on it to his main site. It hasn't caused me any problem of which I'm aware. Neither has it helped him very much. He has an Alexa traffic rank of 23,973,150 using it and a rank of 259,945 for his main site while ours is ranked at 84,249. The lower the Alexa rank number, the higher the rank. Or, to put it another way, we have three times the traffic he has.

 

[btropical.com]

whois.com I think i still have carclubchat.com