CHAPTER 3

Secrets, Strategies, and Silliness

Have you ever seen how much hair I have? It’s because I never pull it out when I’m looking for domain names. You don’t need to torture yourself if the domain you want isn’t available. Just get past your desperation, let go of your preconceived notions, and heed my advice. Some of the most memorable domain names are the result of creative workarounds.

The annual Fancy Food Show exhibition is a dizzying display of delights with hundreds of vendors offering scrumptious samples of everything from charcuterie to cake pops. Vendors find it hard to stand out in this crowd, but Peanut Butter & Co. has managed to do so with a banner featuring an unforgettable domain name: ILovePeanutButter.com. It’s forever etched in my peanut butter–crazed consciousness.

Peanut Butter & Co. also has the expected domain PeanutButterAndCo.com. Which do you think is more fun for the company to use for its website and email addresses? Which name on its business cards is more of a conversation starter? Which one makes us smile? Which one is unforgettable? Clearly the company knows the answers because PeanutButterAndCo.com automatically redirects to ILovePeanutButter.com.

5 Domain Name Secrets

After years of dreaming up domain names, I have some secrets worth sharing.

Secret #1: Not Owning the Exact Match Didn’t Stop Tesla

For the first 12 years it was paving the road to the future, Tesla did not own Tesla.com. If had you typed “Tesla.com” into your web browser, you would have landed on a website that was (pardon the pun) “parked” and proclaimed “This site is owned by Gandi.net.” Tesla got around the roadblock with the domain name TeslaMotors.com.

Many successful online brands launched their businesses with a different domain name before they had millions of users:

Facebook (thefacebook.com)

Dropbox (getdropbox.com)

Square (squareup.com)

Basecamp (basecamphq.com)

Box (box.net)

Secret #2: Google Eliminates the Guesswork

If you’re looking for faucets and type in “delta.com,” you’ll accidentally end up at Delta Airlines. What do you do?

A. Book a plane ticket to Poughkeepsie

B. Boycott Delta because it inconvenienced you

C. Turn on the tears

D. Think “oops,” and instead google Delta faucets

The correct answer is D for “Duh.” You’ll find your intended destination in a nanosecond and probably won’t even notice what the domain is. You don’t care. Your customers won’t care either. To make sure people can find you, you should have a website that is rich in real content (as opposed to one that is unnaturally cluttered with keywords), making it attractive to search engines. Investing in SEO (search engine optimization) or SEM (search engine marketing) can help with discoverability.

Secret #3: First Settle on Your Brand Name, Then Get a Domain Name

Don’t start the naming process at a domain registrar such as GoDaddy. That’s backward. Begin by creating your brand name, then find a domain name. If an exact match domain name isn’t available, you can find a creative workaround instead of dismissing the name entirely. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk took that route. How did it work out for them?

Secret #4: It Pays to Make an Offer

If your dream domain name is listed for sale on the aftermarket, try offering 30 percent less than the price listed and go from there. If the domain name you want is parked but not listed for sale, you can go to Whois.net to see who owns it and email them an inquiry to see if they are willing to sell it. If the owner’s name is masked, a domain broker can help you.

Secret #5: Short Isn’t Necessarily Better

As with your brand name, a memorable long domain name that is easy to pronounce and spell is better than a short meaningless one that’s not. For example, RTR.com may not mean anything to potential customers or a search engine because there are no real words in it. However, RTR spelled out as RentTheRunway.com resonates with humans and search engines.

The internet has more than 342 million registered domain names, so no one expects a new business to have a short URL. Trust me, there aren’t any available real words left. You can’t even get snot.com.

You can find four- and five-letter “wurdz” on the domain name aftermarket. But unless you’re prepared to spend tens of thousands of dollars, your choices are, well, a Bumr. (Bumr.com is for sale at $11,395.) Have a startup in the embryonic stage? Ovumm.com is listed at $17,995. Not wagging your tail yet? Apaw.com is being offered for the preposterous price of $18,595. Bumr, Ovumm, and Apaw aren’t even real words!

Don’t want to sell a body part to get a short domain name? For around $3,000 you can buy one of these “naymz” on BrandBucket, or as I like to call it, Barf Bucket, because of verbal vomit like this:

Bxus	Puey	Tsuq
Ekpa	Vyrr	Tuez
Iazo	Xoyq	Xuvaa
Ifke	Jaeq	Zeax
Ioopo	Kiuky	Zwoc
Iyic	Kleq	Uigu
Ueur	Qovux	Vgzy
Vbim	Qybo	Uyod
Zgoi	Ujip
Quabe	Ewno

Looking at the last one, Ewno? Ew, no, is right!

How much more money would you have to spend to make these empty-vessel names actually mean something even remotely related to what you’re naming?

Barf Bucket’s six- and seven-letter domains are equally nauseating. Some, including Skirby and Swarmia, even sound like insufferable diseases. As I say about Vungle, another name that sounds like a medical malady, your name should be infectious, not sound infectious.

5 Strategies to Get a Good Domain Name for $9.95

Here are five simple strategies to help you nab an available domain name that is easy to spell, pronounce, and understand.

Strategy #1: Add a Modifier

Adding a simple modifier to your name in the form of an extra word or two is now a common and perfectly acceptable way to get an available domain name and help your customers find you through search engines.

Goodbit, a company I named, educates the public about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The company got Goodbit101.com for around 0.002677 in Bitcoins, which at the time of purchase was the equivalent of around 10 bucks. Cha-ching.

International superbrand Luxor makes its global presence known at WorldOfLuxor.com. Swig, the stylish-bottle company, is at SwigLife.com. Bliss, the wildly popular brand of skin-care products and spas is at BlissWorld.com. Pure happiness.

Here are some words you can use as prefixes or suffixes to help get an available domain name:

Suggested Prefixes

Buy_____	Drink_____	Eat_____
Enjoy_____	Get_____	Go_____
Hello_____	Hey_____	My_____
Shop_____	The_____	Try_____
Wear_____	World Of_____	Your_____

Suggested Suffixes

_____101	_____411	_____Global
_____Group	_____Life	_____Online
_____Partners	_____Store	_____World

Strategy #2: Use a Domain Name Suggestion Tool

You can find many more prefixes and suffixes by using the domain name suggestion tool NameStudio. (I love this product so much, I contacted the company that created it, Verisign, and became a brand ambassador.) NameStudio is incredibly intuitive and robust. Just enter the domain you want, and if it’s not available, NameStudio will suggest an extensive range of real-word modifiers as well as related words. This process can result in even better names for your brand. When I played with NameStudio to come up with domain name ideas for a puppy care service, I got PuppyButler.com, PuppyTamers.com, PuppyWranglers.com, PuppyHeroes.com, and PuppyCharmers.com.

Strategy #3: Try a Memorable Phrase

Remember ILovePeanutButter.com? How could you not? Creating an unforgettable phrase related to your business is a surefire way to make a lasting impression. Plus, it can help customers find you online if they can’t recall your business name.

When I go to the dentist, I look forward to two things: nitrous oxide and flipping through the glossy magazines in the waiting room. While paging through the annual holiday issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, I ogled the array of Oprah’s Favorite Things. I studied the selections, making a mental note of a dozen gifts and goodies I simply had to have. But after I got out of the dental chair and the painkillers wore off, my memory was fuzzy. While I couldn’t recall the name Greenberg Smoked Turkey, I’ll never forget feasting my eyes on the company’s love-at-first-sight domain name: GobbleGobble.com.

Don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone with a domain name different from the exact name of your business. Some other catchy phrases that have stuck with me: VeggiesMadeEasy.com (Mann Packing), GreatHomesInSanDiego.com (Kimberly Schmidt) and JoeKnowsCoffee.com (Paramount Coffee Company).

Strategy # 4: Make Your Domain Name a Call to Action

Just Do It. Think Different. Be All You Can Be. Have It Your Way. Don’t Leave Home Without It. A strong call-to-action tagline in an ad campaign can inspire people, move them to purchase, and build brand affinity. You can achieve the same effect by making your domain name a memorable call to action.

A restaurant we helped name, Honor Society, uses Eat WithHonor.com. Technology futurist Patrick Schwerdtfeger makes it a breeze for meeting planners to find him by telling them to go to www.BookPatrick.com, which redirects to his main website. Consider how much mileage Tesla would get from ThinkTesla.com. It evokes the company’s relentless innovative thinking and scales to solar and beyond.

Strategy #5: Get a .net extension

While a dot-com extension is the most desirable one for business, don’t automatically rule out the most trusted alternative extension, .net. Companies using this extension include Speedtest.net, SlidesShare.net, and Whois.net. I’m also a fan of .biz and hope one day it’s more commonplace.

5 Silly Ideas to Steer Clear Of

Don’t make these amateur mistakes that will forever haunt you.

Silly Idea #1: Get a Name That You Have to Spell Out

If your domain name isn’t spelled the way it’s pronounced, you will regret it. The problem with a cr8tiv.ly spelled name like Kwiry, Takkle, or Oooooc.com (Five-OC) is that you will forever have to spell it when you say it because it isn’t spelled how it sounds. And Siri won’t understand it either.

Ditch your idea for a dash, which also needs to be spelled out. When the founders of Blank Label, a made-to-order clothing company, started their business, they couldn’t afford to buy blanklabel.com so they went with blank-label.com. They came to realize that the hyphenated name was troublesome because they always had to spell it out. When they were finally able to negotiate the purchase of blanklabel.com, website traffic increased. Instead of getting the hyphenated name, I would have recommended paying $9.95 for a name with a modifier, such as blanklabelstyle.com or helloblanklabel.com.

Equally problematic are abbreviations of words such as “intl” for International. The latter is a mouthful. I would avoid the word International altogether in your name unless you are Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery.

Sil.ly Idea #2: Use an Obscure Domain Extension to Spell Your Name

While it’s tempting to create a domain name using a country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) extension such as .me for Montenegro, .it for Italy, .us for United States, or .io for Indian Ocean Territory, those names are tru.ly troubleso.me.

When no one was paying attention, the social bookmarking web service del.icio.us quietly renamed itself Delicious because its domain name was exceedingly problematic for users to spell. The company explained the name change in its blog, saying, “We’ve seen a zillion different confusions and misspellings of ‘del.icio .us’ over the years (for example, ‘de.licio.us,’ ‘del.icio.us.com,’ and ‘del.licio.us’), so moving to delicious.com will make it easier for people to find the site and share it with their friends.”

I see the need for some TLDs, like dot-bank (.bank), which can be obtained only by verified members of the global banking community and signal credibility and trust. But other TLDs have failed to gain traction so far because they confuse consumers. If you told someone your domain name was acme.beer, most people would ask, “You mean, www dot acme dot beer dot com?” And they can be confused about pronunciation as well. How do you pronounce Tend.io? Is it “Tend,” “Tendio,” or “Tend dot I-O,” or the often assumed “Tendio dot com”? You want your name to be pronounced only one way.

Equally troublesome is that the human eye is trained to stop at a period. A name like Tend.io or Copio.us causes people to stop reading. For all the wrong reasons.

One final word of caution about getting cute with a TLD. You run the risk of the government shutting down your website if it finds your content offensive. In 2010 the TLD vb.ly was seized by NIC.ly (the domain registry and controlling body for the Libyan domain space) because the content of the website was in violation of Libyan Islamic sharia law. I’ve traveled through Libya under the watchful eye of their government. Trust me, you do not want to tangle with this country. Don’t tangle with a TLD either.

Silly Idea #3: Use the Dot-Org Extension for a For-Profit Business

I personally find it unethical that for-profit companies use a dot-org (.org) domain extension, as I believe those should be available only for nonprofit organizations and NGOs. Using or squatting on a dot-org name is the bad-etiquette equivalent of illegally parking in a disabled parking space. Unfortunately, there are no restrictions on who can buy a .org domain.

Silly Idea #4: Believe Your Domain Name Gives You the Trademark

Before you launch your business at the domain you buy, consult with an experienced trademark attorney. Just because you own a domain name does not mean you own the trademark. The two are unrelated. I did a consulting call for a gentleman who spent $45,000 on a domain name only to find out later he could not legally call his company that name. Ouch!

While researching trademarks for a client, I discovered a data analytics firm Company X that raised $9.3 million in funding and hired a few dozen employees yet never bothered to trademark that name. Company X is a common name, and I’m not even sure the company could get the trademark. Operating without a trademark is incredibly foolish and naive. One day the company may receive a certified letter from the lawyer for a previously established Company X, notifying it that the domain name infringes on Company X’s federally registered trademark. It could be told that it must immediately cease and desist from using the domain name and all references to the trademark, that it must transfer the offending domain name to Company X, and that it must pay Company X damages equal to all the profits made by its online business.

That scenario is not uncommon. Many of the new-business calls we get are from companies facing trademark infringement that are being forced to change their names, not to mention all their branding, on everything from business cards to building signage.

Silly Idea #5: Don’t Look Before You Leap

Before you pounce on a domain name, make sure the words mashed together don’t spell something unintentional. This is called a SLURL, a clever portmanteau of Slur and URL.

The fishing shop Master Bait and Tackle didn’t think this through when it bought its website, masterbaitonline.com. Speaking of fish, dating website PlentyOfFish should have looked at its domain name more closely, as it also spells PlentyOffish (which is how some of my girlfriends refer to it because of how off-putting some of the men can be in their messages).

A Few More Fails

PenIsland.net / PenisLand

Ferreth and Jobs / FerretHandJobs

MoleStationNursery.com / MolestationNursery

TherapistFinder.com / TheRapistFinder

LumbermansExchange.com / LumbermanSexChange

Domain names are important but should never be your primary focus when naming your company. Work on creating a memorable brand name, then start looking for a domain name. With the above tips, there’s no reason why you can’t have both.