Can anyone please give me some advice about thinking of a domain for a really broad subject? I'm looking for easily remembered things. I know this is sort of like you telling da Vinci what he should invent, but I guess I'm all out of ideas and am desperate.
Please, any advice. Thanks!
[edited by: tedster at 9:21 am (utc) on Dec. 13, 2004]
[edit reason] fix link [/edit]
widgetwise
widgetspot
widgetwatch
widgetshop
Use only dot.com because that is standard. It is easy to communicate. People expect ".com" at the end of domain name. Also don't use hypens. It is difficult to verbaly comminicate a "hypen" domain name.
Keep in mind to make it easy for the customer to remember your name. Too many of your potential customers are itimated by their computers. Make it easy for them.
[wwwdeleteddomains.com...] - this is the best - use the search function to search for deleted domains that end with / or begin with your keyword. You will be surprised how many good names you find.
The search function allows you to limit the number of letters in a search, this way you won't get too many results.
Hope it helps : )
[edited by: tedster at 7:20 pm (utc) on Dec. 13, 2004]
[edit reason] make link hot [/edit]
You won't find any good names that are still available
Great thinking, at least for my domain portfolio, leaves them all to me then. You won't believe how many totally logical two word combinations have never been registered although there is some serious money being made.
Pick the latest WIRED mag and play. You'll have a ball!
This can be offset by the better and most targeted keyword like keyword.cc over this-is-a-keyword.com.
The original subject word is still there, (so it still should be searchable) and the new name when viewed outside the normal perception actually uses a colloquial term.
It is also brandable, non-hyphenated, is 8 letters
Play with letters rather than words and look at every term out of context.
If you are looking to build a very general site beware that you will get lost in the serps for a very long time, especially in Google.
Having said that, I find that few too few people really appreciate the power of a great brand name. Make it short, brandable and memorable. Remember, brands are investments for the long term.
However I am aware that while it is admirable to plan long term, you have to eat short-term, so you really should find a common ground.
My website for instance is www.brandwidgets.com. This is ok since this is my company name and we do well in the serps, #6 in Google for my main keyword in 30 million results.
However, if short-medium term traffic was important to me, I would have gone with www.brand-widgets.com, and I'm sure I'd be #1.
I am not one of those who share the view that non-hyphenated domains are more brandable. On the contrary, I believe that the hyphen allows your brand name to stand out and gives you a valuable edge in the SE's for your targeted keyword.
A year ago, I bought a .us version of my second best keyword and built a website. While I am still lost in the Google sandbox, I'm #7 in Yahoo and #8 in MSN (Beta) for this competitive keyword.
What this tells me is that keyword in the domain is still huge, regardless of the entension. I will therefore advise that you go with www.brand-widgets.com or www.widgets.cc rather than www.brandwidgets.com. Using www.keyword-keyword.com should be your very last option since it has zero brand value.
If you are still stuck, pm me and maybe I'll have a few recommendations for you.
1995 is long gone, folks. Good domain names DO have market value, and they're not sitting there ready to register for $10. As someone said earlier, you can't reasonably expect to find oceanfront property or a location in the middle of New York city for free either, but to say it's 'not available' is simply not true. Great domain names (and oceanfront property) are bought and sold every day.
The WHOIS data is the most accurate way to contact the owner to ask the price, although most reputable resellers will post the price (or a link to it) on the domain name itself. I think Buydomains is WAY overpriced, but that's just my opinion, and there are many other sellers out there.
If you're building a web site that is going to be around a while it's a bad idea to add weird suffixes or prefixes (like 'glue' or 'i') to save a few bucks. You'll have to live with that bizarre name for the life of the site, and it says 'i went cheap' at the launch. It's sort of like adding extra water to the cement so you can get by with less concrete when you build your building. Customers are going to see the crumbling, and no amount of paint later will fix that.
Moving down the scale, you have marks such as 'BestFoods' (you know: mayonnaise); this brand acquired its strength only by virtue of having been around a long time and advertised a hell of a lot in various media, so it's acquired some standing over decades of historical familarity in the public consciousness, all stuff that courts factor in when deciding intellectual property disputes.
Let's say you get, I dunno: 'PrimeWidgets.com' and you build a successful site. A copycat comes up with 'PrimoWidgets.com'...you won't be able to force him to cease and desist, because your weak trademark is only a combination of ordinary words and thus a generic, weak mark in the eyes of the law. Something to keep in mind. Nobody remembers a purely descriptive name anyway. It's far better to get goofy and unique.
Let's say you get, I dunno: 'PrimeWidgets.com' and you build a successful site. A copycat comes up with 'PrimoWidgets.com'...
It's wise to think about predictable variations of your name (including typos) and try to get control of them before your site becomes well known. A smart developer would register "PrimoWidgets.com" for himself/herself instead of leaving it available for the copycat.
If you fail to make your brand known, you've now wasted a lot of time and effort building a site that nobody knows, and even the domain name won't give a clue what you're selling. That's NOT the way to go.
