Do I need a .com, or is a Facebook page enough?

A page on somebody else's platform is a good front door and a bad foundation. You don't own the audience, you don't own the address, and the rules can change on a Tuesday. Plenty of trades have watched their whole customer list get locked behind a suspended account they couldn't appeal to a human about.

The .com is an address you own. It carries your email (yourname@yourshop.com reads like a business; a free mailbox with your birth year in it does not), it can point anywhere you want, and it's the thing a customer types when somebody says your name at a cookout. Keep the social page — just don't build the house on rented ground.

Check whether yours is open before you fall in love with a name. The registry answers in a second, and the answer is final.

In a barn raising, the .com is the first $99 — the ground everything else stands on, registered in your name, not ours.