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20 Comments

Tips on finding brandable domain names

  1. 3

    All very smart. ccTLD should proly be last - and used as a last resort.

    I would add that NOW is the best time to do this... even if the company/brand/idea comes along in 2-5 years

    1. 1

      Not a big fan of ccTLD. But if you go big, you can later buy the .com one. Zoom.com still redirects to zoom.us.

  2. 3

    Another idea: Integrate the ccTLD into your brand itself. My startup is PeopleFish -- URL is people.fish.

    1. 1

      Reminds me of feedback.fish

    2. 1

      Yeah, that's another one. Just googled "People fish" and your brand comes up. So it's SEO-friendly too! xD

  3. 2

    I've been working in this exact area! It really sucks to see all the good domain names taken.

    Still a work in progress, but should start being useful in the next few weeks:
    https://www.namehunt.dev/

    1. 1

      Just tested it - looks like doesn't work yet

  4. 2

    Nice, currently trying to come up with a name, and felt like all good ones have been taken, but this one has some really good ideas. Especially the examples really help, thanks!

  5. 2

    Agree with everything except the ccTLD point. It's a myth that dotcoms are expensive.

    Shameless plug: https://zlipa.com

    1. 1

      I don’t like cctld personally, too! But some startups are killing it with it. Even zoom used to have zoom.us at the beginning.

      Loved your site! Also domains are reasonably priced

      1. 1

        Yeah - totally agree. That's why I didn't suggest removing it entirely ;-)

  6. 1

    Love all of those tips, super creative. The only thing I'll add is that I actually like ccTLDs. There are more and more popular websites using dot io or dot co like www.material.io, www.greenhouse.io, www.codepen.io, www.ouo.io.

    I made a bit of research about this topic and learned that .io grew from 3 “.io” pages in the top-visited 10.000 Websites (2017) to 58 in the top 10.000 (2021)
    Similarly for “.co” going from 16 to 87 in the top 10.000.

    And I think that growth will even be stronger over the next years. .com still clearly is the go-to, but alternative TLDs start to be a viable option IMO.

    Definitely going to try this to find good names for https://indiebrands.io/

  7. 1

    Its super hard to find good domains and even harder to find good .com domains.

    This is because of two things:

    1. People. Literally anyone can buy a domain so pretty much every word, combination, and play on words has been thought of by someone else.

    2. Time. You're only just looking now but before now, people have already collectively spent years looking and researching and finding names for their products.

    Because of this, you aren't just going to stumble across the perfect name. You're more likely to settle for a non-.com domain and move on.

    But! If you persevere and have the time and a little extra cash it's absolutely possible to find the domain you really love.

    My #1 tip is to use instantdomainsearch.com for two reasons. The first is that it's extremely fast. Nearly instant. You can play around with words etc and immediately see whether it's available. The second reason is that it also shows you domains that are taken but also available for sale on sites like BrandBucket and Sedo etc, with the price.

    I recently almost gave up finding a good name for a new product because the industry words were saturated. Everything was taken. It took me a few months of daily searching to find a .com that was short and simple and within budget.

    All I can really say is not to give up. Good names are out there, but they might cost a little more than the standard $10 and they'll take a while to find.

  8. 1

    Great tips :)

    This is also exactly how I picked https://www.zlides.co/ - keen to hear your thought how I can leverage the name even more.

    1. 1

      Love it. You can later buy .com one when it goes big...

  9. 1

    Ohhh - I should have also mentioned, whatever you do use, sometimes it's good to see if the brand is popular already for the wrong reason - esp with ccTLD - or [brand]app.com or [brand].app

    A lot of bad press/social media press might be good/bad - depends. You want to consider how hard it's going to be to unseat that other stuff with good SEO.

    A .com domain that's currently just parked is gold when going the ccTLD route. It may cost more when you're big, but at least your audience won't usually be confused.

    1. 1

      Zoom.ai had to rebrand to calendarhero and now redirects to https://calendarhero.com

  10. 1

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  11. 1

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