Thinking Up Good Domain Names for Your Own Projects

Forget your head and go with your heart? See more great illustrations on Christina Mrozik’s* site

Buying domain names for profit is one thing. When you need to come up with a good name for a project of your own - that’s quite another. If you find your topic well trawled over for names, you don’t have the luxury of just moving on as you do in domaining. And while you might think the best available name (for resale purposes) is also the best name for your project, well, that’s not always the case!

Developers are often after something different than a successful domainer is as a strategy - they’re looking for a one off solution to make their site a world-beater. And good domain names can be hard to find these days as us domainers, and millions of end users, have made sure.

So, to come up with the best possible name ourselves, we sometimes have to forget some of the “rules” we all know about wise domain investing. Some of those rules might be:

• - .com is king
• - a LL.com is the best name you can own
• - Generic names are the best
• - Forget exotic extensions, like .cc and .ie
• - Avoid typos
• - Avoid .net (as traffic can “bleed” to the .com)

In place of these rules, here’s one fairly simple process you could work through, to come up with the best possible name for your own development projects. This process could be used to get into the mind of and end user, and to find names to reg for profit. But, more often than not, these types of domains all require development to become valuable, and so are generally not worth registering for reselling purposes. It can reveal some powerful names to develop and make money on the internet, however.

Subject suitability and credibility (for your particular target audience) are two key attributes you are looking for. To a large extent, these will be self evident as you scan your options. There is one other quality however - memorability - that trumps all others. Memorability will be the gas that drives your name - from people’s mouths, and to people’s brains as they think of a problem, or look on the web.

A trick to finding a memorable domain name is to firstly try brainstorming all of the websites - in any area - that you yourself can remember. Importantly, that you can remember in full, off the top of your head ,without reference to a search engine (don’t scroll down here and cheat, either!). These should ideally be sites that you, or close friends, use regularly, and you don’t need to Google to see if you have the wording or extension just right. Sure, you might know 200-400 sites like this (if you think hard), but about 30 should come to mind before most of the others. These will be the ones most likely to stand the word of mouth test. Write these 30 down.

Secondly, order these names into their categories of types names, such as: made up words (eg. “Skype”), generic keywords (”American Airlines”), deliberate misspellings (”Digg”), and the different prefixes and suffixes used (”Pal”, “i”, etc.)

Words eh? Just 24 letters jumbled up*

Next, go ahead and brainstorm all of the keywords relating to your service you wish to offer, thinking as broadly as possible at this point. Broad is the key here. For while Facebook might be a website for talking to “friends”, it takes its name from Highschool yearbooks, where pictures of faces represent people. “Face” is hence a surrogate replacement for “Friends”. Urbandictionary.com, also, is about slang, but “Urban” is a closely enough related term. A trick to be able to do this well is to play a word association game on paper, where you write one word, and around it list off branches of all the related terms that come to mind. Repeat the process for each of the new words, and so on, until you have some really unique terms others may not have thought of. Use a real life (hardcover) thesaurus to help you in this process (the online ones are often weak, and well used by other domainers).

Now take some of those keywords and start playing with some of the “tricks” you found were used in some of your most memorable website name list. This is not to mindlessly copy these past trends (we don’t need any more Godtubes, Foodtubes, and Basketballtubes) but, instead, to get you thinking creatively about your name. Besides, Alexa 500 names have something to teach us about bringing in the crowds.

Everyone’s website list will be different, but here’s some obvious examples you might have come up with. Words that signify “largeness” are usually winners, as Google (a variant of a very large number) and Amazon (a large river) attest. With a bit of clever marketing, these can be bigger (no pun intended) than a perfect generic term for a name (who has ever used searchengines.com, or bookshop.com?). So, think if any “large” words can be used for your particular product.

Conversely, perfect match keywords in exotic extensions can become brandable names, in their own right. I use favicon.cc most weeks, and the name sticks in my mind very easily. Dot me names should work great in this regard. Generally, these names follow the rule that your name should only have one thing to remember about it (in this case, the extension). Greatfavicons.cc would have been two things to remember - the “Great” and the “.cc” - which makes it a weaker choice. This is one reason hyphens are often a bad idea, unless you have a really generic keyword to begin with. Perfect keyword choices are great for search engine optimization, also.

Don’t forget local extensions (like .co.uk, .it, .co.nz etc), also. You’d be surprised how many generic .co.uk’s there are available, and sometimes locality can be important to your service. Some of the biggest sites on the web use local extensions (”realestate.com.au”) and these generics go for a fraction of the cost of a .com.

If you provide a unique service, then grabbing the generic or most descriptive term is a great strategy - to both explain your service, and put off the competition. DNCleaner.com is a great example - “DN” for Domain Name, and “Cleaner” because - well - it cleans domain names.

Noun or adjective dictionary words are another regular winner, but these have been zooming up in price for a long time now, and already well sought after by the big companies (Pool, Fabulous, Apple, Sky, anyone?).

The original Apple concept- as thunked up by the Beatles*

For this reason, typo variations of dictionary words are a great reg fee option (again, with only one thing to remember - the spelling). Good examples are digg.com, fffound.com and our good old Google. But, if you need more than three double letters, or cannot easily remember and describe your own domain name - start looking for other words!

Some prefixes and suffixes might be more obvious than others (”e”, “Pal”, et al) - and also more taken. It is the lesser known ones that might hold richer pickings. After all you don’t want a name too much like someone else’s, do you? Dynadot is one great name - maybe I just like them because they got me my .me domains. But “Dyna” is a relatively underused prefix (meaning “power”), and the “dot” is a pretty basic brainstorm variation for “domains”. The result is both unique, and seems to “fit” its purpose. Namejet and Snapnames follow a similar logic. For a great list of prefixes and suffixes, try out this great list.

Remember, this process might not yield you a Microsoft.com straight away. But let the process rest, and see what words, terms, or examples your brain picks out, using your subconscious to do the hack work for you. When you do see a new term - in a magazine, billboard, or on an available domain name list - you might be ready to pounce.

If you still haven’t found anything yet, try one of the “Domain Idea Generation Tools” listed on the homepage of this site. There are some great name tumblers, random word generators etc - and one might just hit the mark. There will be plenty of these for a while now - even if there is a big difference between Yahoo and Qxyty.com

Sometimes, however, it seems all of the decent variations are taken, especially relating to strong keyword areas, such as loans, food, or domain names. If you do find favorites that are taken, consider making an offer (via whois.sc) for an already taken name that turned up in your search. True, often you will get a reply saying that a name is for sale for $50,000 - and minus a percentage original stake. But at other times you may hit the opposite reaction. An owner may have had a name for a couple of years, had no offers for it - perhaps even trying to sell it at forums with no interest. Such a seller may be willing to part with it for under $50. Consider offers somewhere between $40 and $100 as a good range to try, that could enable you to both walk away happy. If you are approaching a fellow domainer, also consider too swapping a name for something that might suit them just as well, is a good option.

Other options are to put your desired keywords into an automatic expired name keyword update service, such as that provided by Pool or Just Dropped - and snag a great expired name that way. Or, if you see an unwanted looking domain name about to expire (again using whois) put a backorder on it and wait, just as you might a resale name.

Putting up a want ad, in a “Domain Name Wanted” section on a forum such as at Namepros is another great way to find quirky names. Domainers can also be generous in answering advice about name finding ‘problems’ - twenty heads are better than one, and they are the professionals, after all. Having them help choose between three or four options is another thing fellow domainers might be able to help you with.

Finally, when regging a name for a pet project, make sure you use a good registrar, such as Dynadot or Moniker, that allows deletion for credit (minus a small fee) after 4 days if you don’t like a name. There’s nothing worse than having an account full of project name “drafts”, that even you don’t like the look of anymore!

Once you’ve found your perfect name? Well it’s brand, brand, brand! There are plenty of tricks in doing that successfully - but ones we’ll leave that for another guide.

Do you have any more hints or tips for thinking up good domain names for projects? Or some successful examples of your own? Get an easy link by mentioning them here.

Share this article