Hi,

As in traffic you will find you will get more 'blind' Visitors (blind visitors are visitors who just come accross your site, while randomly searching) With a .com domain, but if you are willing to pay for advertising in specialist magazies etc. There shouldn't be much difference in traffic.

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If people find you via a search engine and bookmark your .net site then there's not much of a problem. I think the main issue involves building a brand and name recognition. Most people are well aware of all the .coms out there. As you go down the list of other TLDs (top level domains) .net, .org, .gov, .mil, and so on people have decreasing knowledge. Not to mention all the newer TLDs that have been introduced.

What happens when you tell someone "hey please visit me at www.mySuperCoolName.net" and when the finally get around to finding it they go visit www.mySuperCoolName.com? If the .com was already taken, but the .net was available you are likely to lose traffic to the .com version of your name. Not to mention if the person with the .com has registered it with the patent and trademark office there could be all sorts of other issues.

I know finding a name is hard. It took four of us weeks to find a suitable company name: www.TrailerParkSoftware.com and just as long to come up with a good game name: www.RebelFactions.com. we spents untold hours coming up with names (some great, others bad, and some just silly) only to find most of .coms already taken. Even when we did find .coms there were still possible problems with previous trademark holders.

As frustrating as it is i would continue looking until you find a .com that you like and that doesn't conflict or is easily confused with something/someone else.

cheers,
PD