Choosing domains when the co(m) is taken

I personally would go with a prefix/suffix .com, mainly because it's cheap and it eliminates any you don't know what you don't know types of issues that may arise as you try to use or connect to other services that utilize your domain. And since it's unlikely to make a significant difference either way, I'd rather have one less thing to worry about by going with the tried-and-true .com.

To keep it simple, I would go with any .com variation that is short, easy to pronounce and remember so you don't have to explain how it's spelled every time you mention it on a podcast. Pick a domain that is most likely to have the least people getting it wrong by memory.

I'm sure there are better ways to do the same thing and better, but here's one way to search for available .com variations of your name.

1. plug your word in here for instant variations. I like these because you can customize the list as you think of new ones ie. go, get, try, buy, hq, ly, up, ify, aholic

Prefixes - https://nimbletext.com/Live/-413618669/
Suffixes - https://nimbletext.com/Live/-107481385/

2. ctrl-a the list to here with only the .com box checked on the right -
   https://www.godaddy.com/domains/bulk-domain-search.aspx

If your website is profitable, since decent domains aren't that expensive, you will most likely rebrand to a new 5-9 letter .com anyway at your first opportunity, so it's not worth losing sleep over, although it it's easier said than done.

With the exception of .net (feels outdated) and .org (not available for regular sites), I've seen all of the alternatives you mention work fine. Early stage, I wouldn't spend too much time finding the perfect URL, it's more about building value and finding product-market fit.

Hope that helps!

I usually just get an alternative TLD. I'm a big fan of (.io) since a lot of other startups and bootstrapped businesses use them, but they can sometimes be on the expensive side. I've also seen some mobile applications move to .app recently.

For those cases, I actually recently changed my way of naming my products.

I am naming them with more words, like almost sentences :)
They are less likely to not have the .com available.

probably not applicable in all cases, but here are a few examples of mine;
read15minsaday.com
meetingtasks.com
findremoteevents.com
findonlineevents.com

I am wondering, if branding-wise, this actually has any disadvantage. I'm open to comments and feedback :)

Thanks for the pointers everyone! The product I'm building involves users basically running their own sites on subdomains (sub.product.com), so I'm wondering whether or not a shorter domain with a less novel TLD (sub.product.to) would be better than a longer domain that doesn't look as appealing (sub.getproduct.com)

If you're building a professional product for the long-run, then I'll suggest you to find a brandable name with a .com available.

Two resources I'll highly recommend for naming a new startup or product:

http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html

https://igorinternational.com/process/brand-positioning-company-product.php

Hope it helps!

Well as time goes on it’s inevitable for com domains to available and thus as companies are born we’ll see more io, xyz, etc, domain extensions. In the end it doesn’t really matter, find something you like and find the best fitting domain extension for it.