How to Create a Domain Name
Filed under: Domain Names
Ok, you’ve decided to build a site of our own and now you have to come up with a name for the thing. You head over to some domain name registrar and realize that a lot of names are taken. loans.com is long gone, as is VeryCool.com, and so on.
Don’t give up though, it just takes a few moments of thought and you will have a great domain name for that killer site of yours.
What is a domain name?
A domain name is simply the primary name of a website. UnixTools.com is the domain name, of this site, for example. The .com part of the doman name is the extension. Since practically any word or phrase can be a domain and since there are literally dozens of extentions there are billions of possible domain name combinations.
Change one letter, add a number, add a hyphen, use .ws instead of .com and you have a different domain name.
Then there are subdomains. This blog is on a subdomain of UnixTools.com: websites.unixtools.com. I’ll write about subdomains in a later post, for now we’ll stick with the primary domains.
Aren’t all the good domains taken?
As you may know pretty much any one word that you can come up with has already been taken by someone else, but this doesn’t mean that all the good names have been taken. Pretty much all the short names are gone, but a longer one may be better anyway, for you.
Actually, not all the short ones are gone. We just grabbed wotkk.com. That’s for the cookbook that my wife is writing, Wrath of the Kitchen King.
There’s also a market in expired domain names. These are the domains that were owned by someone, but for whatever reason their lease ran out and now they’re up for grabs. There are a number of brokers dealing in these expired domains and you can expect to pay a premium over a new domain.
Another option is to make a cash offer to the owner of a domain. He may just be willing to listen.
Just because the perfect name isn’t available doesn’t mean that you can’t come up with one that isn’t good enough.
How to create a domain name:
It really helps if you already have an idea of what your website is going to be about. Are you going to have a site about dogs? Fruit? Fishing? Sports? Writing? Politics? A particular model of Sony TV?
So let’s take dogs and see what we can come up with. Obviously dogs.com is taken as are dogs.net and dogs.org. If we stick a number on it though we might find somethng interesting. Checking with www.GoDaddy.com , as of this writing, dogs365.com is taken, but dogs365.org and dogs365.net, and a few others, are available. GoDaddy will also make additional suggestions.
.com is the way to go if you can get it, but only because .com is what everyone first thinks of with domain names. If someone is clicking a link to your site then it certainly doesn’t matter if you’re .com or .co.uk. By the way, GoDaddy frequently has .info names at a fraction of the cost of .com names.
Add a suffix or a prefix: mydogs, yourdogs, herdogs, dogsrock, bigblackdogsrule, unixdogs… Hmmm… I’ll bet that last one is available.
Let me check: Oops, nogo. But it IS for sale (as of this writing) by the owner. The other extensions are available. Actually, so is BigBlackDogsRule.com. Since we really do have two big black dogs that one’s kinda interesting.
So here’s your homework. Grab a notepad, real or computer, and jot down a few words that fit what your site might be about. Add a suffix and/or a prefix and/or a number. Combine a couple of words, mix them up, play with it a bit, and come up with a list of 10 names that will work for you. For example (feel free to use somethng other than .com:)
- blackdogs.com,
- bigblackdogs.com,
- dogsrulecatsdrool.com,
- dogsneedhugstoo.com, (ok, I’ll use some caps)
- My3bigDogs.com,
- DogsAroundTheWorld.com
- DogsAtWork.com
- 43dogs.com
- NothingButDogs.com
- DogsAreIt.com
Ok, that took a whole minute. Now lets see if any of those names are available (no, I’m not going to buy them.) We have (checking with GoDaddy:) dogsneedhugstoo.com, My3bigDogs.com, DogsAtWork.com (for the low low price of $2,688.00,) and 43dogs.com are all available. Four out of ten isn’t bad these days. Ok, three out of ten if you toss the expensive one.
Why’s that one so much? Someone probably grabbed it with the intent of reselling it at a nice profit. There are people who make a nice living at that game, by the way. Want to play that game? Then get this book, it’ll fill you in.
With a little brainstorming you should be able to come up with a good domain name for your site. Heck, you could even do like these newfangled Web 2.0 sites do and get a really weird name, such as Weebly.com. What the heck is a Weebly???
Qassia? Squidoo? At least HubPages makes some sense… How about Del.icio.us?
The point is, find a name you like and go for it.
Welcome back!
Tags for this post: doman name, expired domain names, what is a domain name
December 17th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Hey, it’s either coincidence or you picked my site name. Go check it out and Dogs really do rule and cats drool.
rebecca´s last blog post >> Anybody Miss Me?
December 19th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Hi Rebecca,
Pure coincidence. I just sat down for a minute and threw some combinations together. You do make a good point, though, and I’ll address it in a later post. Frequently when a domain isn’t available you can use the same name as a subdomain on your own, or someone else’s, domain. Such as yours “dogsrulecatsdrool.wordpress.com”
Greg
April 29th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
It’s always becoming tougher and tougher to find good domains and although many new tld’s are being released I still believe that .com domains are the best.
May 17th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Want to know how to create my own domain name.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Your info helped me pick and purchase a domain on godaddy, so thank you for the help.
(I actually got two; a .com and a .info)
September 30th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
i want to make my system as a webserver. if u know please tell how to do it
November 15th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Love your site. So much to learn from it. Picking a good domain name and getting is set is a really important aspect if you ask me. Thanks for the article. Cheers
December 28th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Great article. Most people make this fundamental mistake. The domain name has to be strong, meaningful and just the correct size. Too big and too small is also a problem. Great article. Cheers