Ask HN: Daily Available Startup Domain Names... Interested?

Sounds exactly like Dan Rubin's mailer from justdropped.com. His is free, you pay when you buy a domain name (usually in the $60-$200 range, sometimes more). The email comes out daily, with about a couple dozen domains, quality very similar to your list.

My observation from being on that list for the last couple years: it seems like a great idea but nothing ever pans out. Just so you get an idea, a few examples of my targets: personal domain for a generic computer consultancy, budget around $300; publishing company e-reader, budget around $20k, friends' projects from yoga studio to nightclub to astronomy, budget around $100, etc. Criteria: relevant, easy to remember, easy to pronounce, no competitors in the same space... the usual.

Try it for yourself. Make a quick list of 10 real-world businesses. Then take a week's worth of your mailers, put yourself in a prospective owner's shoes, and try to match them up. I suspect you would see that it doesn't add much value. There are kinda sorta cool names on your list for sure, but nothing that a few friends over beers (or thesaurus.com) couldn't come up with in 15 minutes.

Sorry to be a downer... I very much agree that domain generators suck. A better offering would be killer.

Perhaps it's just not a "computer problem" (i.e. a repetitive task with well-defined parameters). I'd love to be wrong on this one.

Alright so I read the feedback and it seems there is at least a little bit of interest in this. Here is how I will proceed: I'll make a FREE daily newsletter you can sign up to using MailChimp (or some other good alternative... feel free to suggest) where I list the domains. I will most likely experiment with putting a small percentage of the names on the list for sale everyday and I guarantee prices will always be $50 and lower.

I will post a link to the signup form on this page and maybe also submit it as a new entry. Be on the lookout for it if you want in.

Oh and some more available names for you all :) Enjoy!

arcadehud.com backmaker.com barkmap.com beaminfo.com booktakers.com bubbleless.com cablezap.com clicksir.com clothi.com codecollect.com condovia.com connectmix.com coopsquad.com crowdlead.com discodeep.com duelpit.com echocoach.com flatside.com fluxplay.com gametrex.com gatespell.com hipstatus.com jamshell.com liveways.com mailslide.com marketsensor.com metastyles.com meterclicks.com patterndeck.com picacast.com pitchlove.com playsync.com presshack.com pushcamp.com reptable.com sheetstrip.com shieldset.com sleepmeter.com smartscaling.com springsites.com tagsmash.com talentlever.com torquefive.com travelgage.com wordables.com

This is something that I would definitely subscribe to. The available names that you shared are pretty nice.

I do think that it would be hard to find people willing to pay for a list of available domain names, unless it were a very small amount, but even then you wouldn't likely have very many subscribers (and I think most would be domainers).

I think a way to monetize a free service/list like this would be to charge a fee for specific requests. Once you had established yourself as someone who could definitely come up with good names, I expect people would come to you, and you could charge to come up with a private list of available names for whatever their topic is.

I usually hunt for domain names _after_ an idea strikes my mind. So the signal noise ratio of your mailing list will probably be too low for my taste. Thanks for posting a sample of your findings, though!

OK it has been a while but the newsletter is finally ready along with the website! I'll be surprised if anybody sees this comment but I did say I was going to post an update here.

You can subscribe and learn more at http://domainwhirl.com and can read the Show HN post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1761541

Enjoy!

It's a pretty good idea though I usually am able to find a decent name using bust a name.

I'd consider doing it woot/groupon style and just selling one a day. Based on your examples maybe categorize/tag them ("green" "travel" "hacky/geek" "mail" etc).

I personally wouldn't pay to be on a mailing list but I'd probably try and jump on a good one here and there.

Count me as interested. Whatever business model you end up with, it sounds like you can find decent names, which I would gladly pay a small premium for.

Since this post will fade away soon, you should set up a basic email list so that people here can at least follow what you plan to do.

>>the names generally also give startup ideas! ;)

That was a good one!

The newsletter can work well as a brainstorming tool in coming up with names for ideas one may have.

It sure was tough to come up with names for some ideas that popped up a while ago.

I liked sourcefully.com and grabbed it to use as a place for my friend and I to deploy app ideas. Visit it in a couple of months, we may have something good on it :)

The list is really nice, I'm not sure if people would be willing to pay for this though.

I probably spend too much time picking up domain names and not enough creating the services to run on them already. That said, I'm working on getting codesmell.com :)

I'm curious; what do you call people who are willing to pay for lists of potential domain names they could buy, if they're not "domainers"?