So here goes: picking a domain name.

I register about one a day so I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes a good domain name.

My rules of thumb are:
Keep it short (under 10 letters is best)

Keep it .com (.org is good for certain sites but the others not so good. It is like real estate and .com is by far the more impressive)

Keep easy to understand (it should roll of the tongue and stay crisp. couchsheets.com is a terrible domain name and probably available. it slurs in the mouth)

Keep it unambiguous (rest4life is not good since when you speak it there is no way of knowing if it is restforlife or rest4life)

Keep it at least below three ideas (bigbluecar is three ideas: big, blue and car. ideally you want one or two)

Make it easy to spell (duh!)

Make it an easy word to understand (prodigalson.com is nice but what the hell does prodigal mean? reckless might be a better substitute since more people know what reckless means)

Keep the spelling clean (recklessson.com is just plain ugly. Copyyourrat.com is another great bad domain)

Don't use useless words unless you really have to or if it adds meaning (icar.com, houserentalweb, foodadviceonline, enetworkpeople. i, web, online, e, the, your, my - only use them if they add to the meaning of the domain. for example icoach, networkonline, myspace, youtube etc)

It should tell a story and ideally have more than one meaning (one site i worked on was called redcowboy. i like that because it tells a story. the name tells you it is a ballsy site with edge)

It should be easy to remember (pick up a book on techniques to increase your memory to get an idea of what I mean. for example the brain likes something it already knows but that is presented in a new way. so pinkballoon.com is better than siennaoval.com both describe a round color but sienna oval i less familiar to most people)

And for the most important rule of all….
Always ask yourself this question:
Can you easily yell the domain name across a street to your friend? Will your friend remember it when they get home to their computer? If the answer is yes then you probably have a winner. Either that or your friend has very good hearing and memory.

There are exceptions to the above rules. For example TheFoco.com. By my own rules that is a terrible domain name. What the hell is The doing there? What can I say, Foco.com was registered in 1996 when I was still writing letters to people and sending them by mail. But also it IS The Foco, not just Foco. unfortunately that doesn't translate well to a domain name. But what the hell, it really is The Foco, so its ok. That's not to say that the owners of Foco.com don't know who I am and they are very aware that I want to buy the domain.

Another exception is to play with the other extensions. For example I am doing a site in a very competitive market so all the cool domains were taken. Then I thought of a genius domain. Genius. You ready? Here it comes. One, two three….

Mogul.LA

The .la extension if for businesses in Laos. Who cares? What does Mogul.LA make you think of? It tells a story, it is short, it is catchy. If you had to guess what would the site be about? It is a networking site for the film industry.

In terms of buying domains, I search for them on enom.com and buy them at ipowerweb.com. And don't take your time. If you find a good domain name, buy it! Don't take a week to think about it. There are sites out there with programs that actually track domain name searches and buy them up. I know this. It has happened to me. I searched for it then my brother searched for ti across the country. A script noticed that there were several searches for the domain, thus it might be a good one, and it baught it.

I got the domain back by sending a nasty email saying that we owned the rights to the name because we had a business by the same name. We didn't go to court or anything. It is not worth it to the company most of the time. We want it much more than they do and so would be willing to fight for it more. They know that. They could have offered to sell it to us but we were lucky or they just knew we were right.

So if you ever do loose it that way, contact the company, they might give it to you.

Also if you let your domain expire it will be bought by an automatic script that just buys anything. Contact the company and they might give it back to you.

I let that happen with SaomiSunshine.com. I gave them a sob story about how it was for my daughter's photos to show to her grandmother. I don't know why they gave it to me. Maybe they knew that it probably wouldn't sell or maybe they actually have a heart. But it worked.

To find out who owns a domain name go to whois.net

Happy domain hunting.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 6:02 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.