inluminent

Buying a good domain name is a bitch in an extrenched market. There are only so many options, and my little start up is having a hell of a time getting a ‘great’ one for less than $500. All of the good ones are already taken. All of the almost good ones are already taken. All of the advice out there says ‘wait till you find a good name’ but that’s hardly a good option, when you need to start generating an income, and the product is almost ready to launch.

So, the questions we’ve been asking are along the lines of:

• does the name have to be ‘on topic’ like news.com is, or search.com?
• can the name be ambiguous to the product as inluminent.com is, or google.com was?
• how much harder is it to brand a not-so-great, yet still good domain name?

I’ve been looking for information, as have the other partners, and we’re still at a standstill. I saw an article on webmasterbase.com today that I thought would help, but it didn’t… we already know the basics of choosing a domain name. The only good part of the article to us was this list of links (from Buy the Ultimate Domain Name):

DeletedDomains.com - This is a powerful domain name search engine that will allow you to find recently (or not so recently) deleted domains, as well as on-hold domains. It also allows you to narrow your search to domain names that are not longer than a certain number of characters, or domains that end with a certain word, etc. This is my favorite resource — I’ve found some great domains on it!

Whois.net - This site has many tools that allow you to run searches such as the deleted domain name search and they even have their own (although not very powerful) suggest a name feature.

Nameboy - Nameboy allows you to enter a term or two, and specify if you want hyphens or rhyming in your domain name. They will provide a list of available domain names around your selections.

Domain Guru - Domain Guru has a lot of good content that can assist you in the process of selecting a domain name. You will most likely spend several hours at this site reading if you’re serious about domain names.

Got any answers to the questions above? Leave a comment please.