I was watching the news last night and there was a story about New York City offering nicotine patches to people trying to quit their smoking habit. Instead of calling them “nicotine patches,” the news anchor referred to them as “tobacco patches.” I hadn’t heard that reference before, but I thought that if a person with a teleprompter in front of him made this error, there are probably others out there who might do the same thing.
I quickly did a Whois search for TobaccoPatch.com and saw that the name was registered in 1998, although the domain name doesn’t resolve. I searched for TobaccoPatches.com, and voila, it was unregistered! I snatched it up and will park it to see if anyone is making the same mistake as the television anchor. Just a few clicks a year, and the name will pay for itself. I know a name like this is certainly a gamble, but I would rather take my chances on this than on creating a random word that doesn’t exist.