This is a very unstructured post. However, if i could go back a long, long time and pick out domain names here’s what I’d do -
BTW there are two assumptions here - firstly, building a business - a long term sustainable business. And secondly, the view is 5-10 years and not a very short term view.
- A short, short .com domain.
- No hyphens. Just don’t - people never remember names like that. I’m speaking from painful personal experience.
- Easy to pronounce with a few syllables - ideally 1 or 2.
- Has a keyword in it without being too generic. CouponFish is a reasonable name. CouponCodes becomes too generic. Coupon.com of course is great - however way too expensive by now.
- Great example of the types of names I’m talking about are veeo.com (on auction at tdnam), netflix, tivo and so forth.
- If you were a big established business, would the name pass muster. An example is the deals website cheapstingybas***.com who had to change his name to cheapstingybargains.com. Instead of changing the name down the line - consider whether the name suits a big audience.
- Don’t pick too narrow of a niche. I helped arrange tangosoul.com for someone and was a bit upset that they didn’t want to use it. Truth is - their stated reason that they might want to banch into dance in general down the line makes a lot of sense. DanceNow.com is much better than SalsaNow.
- Do not pick a hosted solution where you do not own everything. An exception is ning.com which lets you build social networks and also own your code and content. Wordpress.com is a nightmare to get off of because they don’t allow 301 redirects. Well, technically they do - however compared to their 5 minute install its a nightmarishly complicated ‘basically we don’t want to ever let you leave’ type of arrangement. So - don’t choose wordpress.com or blogger or livejournal or anything else if you think your site could ever take off or make you money.
Here are the things I can think of.