Is there a better place where we can buy domains easily for $200 odd bucks if someone's been holding good brandable domain names. Brandbucket etc. seem too pricy and are good for maybe companies, but let's say for my small project, web game, or a blog, what's the ideal place? Aren't a lot of good use case domains just parked with bullshit ads? Is this even a problem, has anyone else struggled with this ever?
Thank you
Anyway as for actual advice, I've built more than a handful of projects and startups at this point. The recurring theme in every project was that I'd start with something completely nonsensical to use as the name. If your cofounder likes grilled cheese sandwiches, call your project GCS or grilled cheese or whatever, including your github repo. Getting the domain has never been step 1 in anything I've ever built including my current business.
There's weeks worth of work to do before the .com is needed. In the meantime what I do is keep an Evernote of words and phrases that pertain to the industry or what my service will likely do. While we had several product hypotheses, our business model was 95% likely to end up doing some form of data sifting on behalf of customers. So I would think about words that have to do with searching or finding things and kept a log of them:
- Hound (as in the dog)
- Seek/Seeker
- Scout
- Scope
- Vision
Along with general words I liked from a linguistic standpoint: "Labs", "IQ", "Mighty", etc.
When I looked for an available .com, I mixed combinations in my word list: "ScoutIQ", "MightyScope", "HoundLabs", etc. until I found one that I liked and was available: MightyScout - and I reserved it immediately.
But to this day our Slack channel, Github repo, etc. still use the original, nonsense name :)
So I focused on the essence of the thing I was building, which is caching. I couldn't find any concise domain with the word "caching" in it. So I played around with syllables and settled on Cachoid.com. I'm happy with the outcome so far https://www.cachoid.com/
It's been a few years, but google ICANN and I'm sure you'll find something.
If I remember correctly, you submit a petition suggesting things like.. you either have a trademark or that you're a recognised business and then a committee make a decision based on that.
While I was at NYMEX I built a system called NEON (Nymex Electronic Order Network). Followup projects followed the noble elements theme, sometimes with a forced backronym.
One project involved multi-lingual communication, so I tooke "chat", which is "cat" in french, then translated that to Japanese (Neko).
Basically just have fun with it, and don't stress.
A piece of advice that worked for me: don't get stuck on the name. It's hard and it takes time (and sometimes money). Pick any temporary name for $10 and keep building instead. You can always change it later. Many companies and projects have changed their name as they became successful. It feels like it's important in the beginning but it usually isn't.
Don't be afraid to call your company one thing but have a slightly different URL.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that domain names needs to be easy to type but the reality is that most of us click on links to get to a company url we don't actually type it in (and even if you do Google is perfectly fine helping you find the right url)
However, if you find a domain you like, it doesn't hurt to try and ask the owner. But don't hold your breath.
My suggestion: don't give in to these people. Keep digging for a good name, or look into one of the new generic tlds.
1- make up a new word based on a word that best describes your business (e.g. Maker = makr)
2- if taken, look for synonyms of that word and repeat step one (e.g. Craftsman = krafsman)
3- if taken, repeat 1 and 2 with a combination of 2 words (e.g. HomeMade = Homade, etc.)
For domain name example.com: tryexample.com, getexample.com, goexample.com, hiexample.com, exampleapp.com
