I want to purchase a website domain simply for the purpose of being able to have a unique personal email address. I have a very common name so I can’t use Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc without putting a bunch of random numbers and stuff after my name.

So I need help coming up with a catchy domain name. Some buzz words I’ve been thinking about are: outdoors, kinetic, velocity, pursuit, and brown (my last name).

The end goal would be to get an email address of [email protected]. Thanks!

Looking for some advice/ideas. I am not in the domain business (not selling anything); I own a couple of domains, but mostly from failed or unrealized side projects :)

Anyway, what are some of the exciting domain names you own? Domain names that can generate good discussions around "What could one run/sell/do with that domain name"?

(I've started a podcast with a couple of friends where we discuss business possibilities around domain names, and we're looking for some ideas :))

Any help is appreciated!

UPDATE: Thanks everyone for so many great ideas. I'll let you know if we plan to discuss any of the domains on our podcast

I am a student looking to put up my portfolio on my site but while searching for appropriate domain names I realized I have very limited options since I have an apparently common name.

FirstNameLastName.com is taken

FirstName.com / FirstName.Net is taken

LastName.com / LastName.Net is taken

FirstNameLastName.Net is available but doesn't sound fine.

I have no middle name/initial, so that is also out the window. Also, I can't shorten my First name or last name because either they don't exist or are only a secondary level domain. I also don't want to keep a word after my name because I'm still in business school and want to have an open option for career choices.

While I've always used a custom domain for business emails, I'm looking to also register a custom domain to use for my personal email communications to use with Proton and SimpleLogin. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to go about brainstorming a domain name for this purpose?

I have a fairly common sounding name, so of course the .com and .net are taken. Let's pretend my name is "James Thompson". I'm trying to brainstorm some ideas here, have you guys ever seen or done anything creative that works? I'm leaning towards purchasing a .cc domain name just because I think it rolls off the tongue better than other lower-level domains, but I'm interested in your input.

Ideas: jamesthompson.cc jamesthompson.me itsjamesthompson.com

I initially wrote this as a comment over on the Indiehackers community, and then it evolved into a blog post, but I think it's really useful for quickly picking a name and not becoming paralysed/disheartened by your favourites not being available as a .com.

• Only use .com and .io (or .app now, maybe), it simplifies things and they're cheap. Open domainr for quick and easy availability lookup. Domainr is cool because it'll also show you other domains that might suit your keyword too, like if your keyword is mydevportfolio, it'll suggest mydevportfol.io (full disclosure, that's my side project, feedback appreciated) 👍

• SEO is key, so my go-to to start off the process is often things like my[keyword].com, [keyword]hq.com, [keyword]central.com etc. If you're lucky, one of these will be available, but it's getting rarer nowadays. So we need to go deeper.

• Next, I'll look at synonyms. Open up thesaurus.com, type in your main keyword and see what comes back. This can be fed into the rest of the steps to find suitable variations.

• My next port of call is usually looking at [verb/adjective][keyword].domain. Some of my go-to adjectives are: fresh, sharp, open, free, hot. Some of my goto nouns are: spark, air, bounce, break, snap. Feel free to pop these into thesaurus too to find more.

• My next goto if I don't find a suitable one in the steps above us to get a bit creative with language. I'll open up Google translate and translate from English to Latin. Often Latin spits back decent words that don't make sense, but sound cool and can give a nice story to your brand. Put in your keyword and synonyms and see what comes back. This doesn't work all the time, but can spit out gems sometimes.

• If I still haven't found a name I'm happy with, I'll look to the animal kingdom. What emotion do you want a customer to associate with your brand? If its strength, why not use something like lion, bull, rhino, bear. If it's friendliness, try koala, kitten, puppy, panda. Figure out the emotion and then Google to find animals that best fit that. Once you have some to try, combine them with your keyword and/or a verb or noun. So [noun/adjective] [animal].domain. Freshpuppy.io, sparkbear.com. Or if it makes sense, mix up the animal with the keyword. Koalabooks.com, gorrilladesign.io etc. One of the advantages of this approach is it gives you ideas for logos that suit too.

• Colours. I have a blog post on how to "cheat" when picking a colour for your app, basically how to automatically inspire a certain emotion or action in a user. Use this to identify what colours might suit your business, and try inserting them instead of nouns/adejectives. Once you identify the base colour, Google different shades of that colour to get some ideas. Violetbooks.com. Limedesign.io.

• Rhyming. This can be handy to come up with double-barrel business names that rhyme. Pop open rhymer.com and type in your keyword. You'd be surprised what results you get back that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise!

And that's it. What do you think? Let me know if you have a better process, but that's mine for the moment.

I write about this type of thing a lot, and I'm currently trying to build profitable side-businesses as an indie developer. You can follow along over here.

Thanks!

Every time someone asks me for my email, and I have to give them my gmail address from decades ago, I feel a little embarrassed. Now that I want to rework my portfolio, I think it is time I try once again to find a better fitting domain, for both professional work and use in everyday life.
I am curious what domain names people here chose, when they have a very common name and every variation with first+lastname, with dashes, initials, etc are already taken? I am trying to come up with something that doesn't sound too cringy, using clever prefix/suffix, or a clever use of a lesser known domain ending. Or should I simply give up and pick something entirely unrelated (for email i can still put my name in front of the @.

A silly question really, but what do you call your domains? In an enterprise environment it is usually something related to the company name but what do you do at home, since it is a name you would have to be fine with for a long time?

Got stuck trying to find the perfect domain name for your latest idea?push.

Don't spend too much time thinking of a good name to start with. Working some more on your idea first will make finding a name easier, and prevents you from sitting on a bunch of unused domains for ideas you never fully pursued.

After you've sketched out a prototype and thought about what kind of customers you would attract through which channels, thinking up a good name will come more naturally. By stopping to think too hard about the name, you are also preventing actual progress with your idea.

If you still feel you are ready to pursue finding a name, here are some resources I've found.

How to quickly check domain name availability

My favorite tool for brainstorming domain names is Instant Domain Search. It shows if a domain is available or not in real time while you type. It does give false positives, so don’t get too excited until double-checking the result on your domain registrar’s reservation page.

Favorite name was not available? You’re not alone. Hundreds of millions of names are taken. Pretty much any single word and most good combinations of two words are gone. You might desire a short name if possible, but you're unlikely to achieve a super-short name these days if it has to consist of dictionary words. Almost every possible combination of four letters is also taken, unless you include special characters in the name.

Purchasing an existing name

If someone already has the name you wanted, chances are it is being held by a professional “domainer”. They speculate on domain names by buying, holding and trading promising ones in the hope that later on someone like you will come along to buy it. While waiting they collect advertising revenue on the parking page.

They may be holding massive amounts of domain names, hoping that one will end up being a hit valuable enough to cover all the costs spent on the rest. Sadly this means that the names they hold are often not parted with cheaply. What do they cost? While many transactions happen in private, some are sold through online or real-life auction events. You can browse the prices of names that have sold in these events in the past.

Auction sites

For example dnjournal has such a listing. Some examples:

Flippa also has listings of recently sold names. Some example trades:

As you can see the range of prices is vast.

Warning: some unscrupulous sellers in Flippa auctions will try to auction domains that contain words made up of international characters which happen to look like English words. For example if you see womаn.com for sale for a cheap price, it’s a trick. If you look very closely, you’ll see the “a” in womаn.com is actually the Russian cyrillic letter а.

There really is no one answer to the question “what should this domain name cost”? If you have two wealthy bidders going against each other to secure a name, then the price is as high as those bidders can afford.

Direct buying

Besides auctions, you can also contact current domain owners directly. The owner of your desired name may prefer to hold off on making smaller trades and concentrate on the big wins. They may not even bother to reply if you don’t make a sufficiently interesting offer right off the bat.

If they are experienced domainers, they will likely play some psychological games with you to get you to pay more. One is to make you believe that there is a bidding war going on. Whether this is true or just a trick you have no way of knowing, so you may be tempted to increase your price to outbid these possibly imaginary competitors. It also creates a sense of urgency to get you to complete the purchase.

Another mental trick they might use is to claim that they acquired the name for use in a project which they currently have underway. The release of their amazing site is supposedly imminent and they are unwilling to sell the name -- except of course if the price is right. The last time this happened to me several years ago. I walked away from the purchase, but the current owner is still just sitting on their name.

There are also counter-tactics to these, which could be a reason to hire a domain broker to buy the name for you. As their interest in the name won't be personal, they can keep a cool head while negotiate a fair price, hopefully while making use of their prior experience from similar sales.

Transferring a domain name from the previous owner

If you manage to get the domain seller's attention and negotiate a sale, the transfer process itself is easy. The owner of the current domain needs to log in for their registrar and request a "push" through the web interface.

You may need to send the current owner of the domain a special “authorization code” in order for them to do the push. You can find this authorization code in the web interface of your registrar. If you have your registrar set up to allow all incoming domains, then the push auth code may not be necessary.

Securing the domain transfer with an escrow service

If you send the money first before receiving the domain, the seller might decide to just forget to send you the name. On the other hand if you are the one requesting the sale, then it is very unlikely that the seller would agree to transfer the domain to a stranger before receiving payment. How can both parties have confidence they won't get scammed?

Because of situations like these, there are escrow services acting as a third party to guarantee that the transaction goes through with neither side having to put themselves at risk. The escrow process can be done completely online. The most famous of these services is likely escrow.com. It is a US-based service running since 1999, protecting transactions with total worth of billions of dollars.

From the buyer point of view the transaction is quite painless. When you are on the buying side, first you will receive an email saying that a transaction is waiting for you. You then set up an escrow.com account if you have not yet created one. Then you wire the payment to escrow. They will hold the payment until you have confirmed that the domain was transferred to you and only then is the money released to the domain seller.

Grabbing an expiring name

Domain names are reserved for a limited period of time. What if someone no longer wants their name lets it expire? At first it enters a grace period for 30-90 days, during which the original owner can still renew the domain. Then it enters the redemption period, during which the original owner can still renew, but with a fee involved. If even after that the original owner has still not renewed, then it “drops” (becomes available).

You might think that if you see a domain registration expire, you could just wait until the redemption period is over and register it yourself. While that's possible, there is another group of professionals you are fighting against. There are groups which use special software that rapidly attempt re-registration of these expired domain names over and over again in order to be the very first to re-register it. If they have decided they want your dropping domain, you are extremely unlikely to beat them manually.

Luckily these companies are sort of mercenaries for hire. By paying them a small fee they can direct their efforts to securing the domain for you instead. I’ve had some luck using pool.com for this purpose, but there are many others as well. To maximize your chances you should get more than one mercenary on your side.

One danger in using a pre-owned name is that it might have been associated with shady activities in the past. You can try using Wayback Machine to see what it hosted before the name dropped.

Consider a brandable variation of your key term

In the beginning I wrote that all the good names are taken. That's not entirely true. Actually only all OBVIOUS names are taken. Your best option may be to come up with a new unique name that no-one else has thought of. Something catchy, with personality and branding potential.

A non-generic name can have other benefits as well. If you have an animal name or an object in the name, then it instantly gives you ideas of what the mascot or logo might be like. Take for example mailchimp, an email marketing service provider. "Chimp" gives them their mascot, while "mail" tells you what the site is about. To me that's a more appealing name than if they had managed to call their site "newsletters.com".

The tactic is to try your desired word + an interesting suffix or prefix. You can put these ideas through Instant Domain Search to try them quickly, but there is an even faster way. There are services where you can enter lists of words to try as prefixes and suffixes and it tells you which ones are available. Some even have those lists built in.

The best one I have found is called Lean Domain Search. For example if you search for "snack", it will give you suggestions such as "epicsnack.com", "snackboss.com" or "snackgate.com". Try entering the basic theme of your startup idea there and you might just find that many of the suggestions are quite good.

Thanks for reading

I hope I helped you find a great name, or convinced you to forget about obsessing about it for now.

The other day I snagged www.exabit.io, I love it... any techie worth their salt gets it... what should I do with it? What domain names do you have that you love?

As the title says, I am looking for your advice on a personal domain for personal brand/ kind of portfolio site. I have no knowledge about tlds and hence seeking your advice.
following are the options:

1. firstname . com - Not Available/ for sale but can't afford.

2. lastname . com - Not Available

3. firstname . io / lastname . io- available

Please suggest me a tld which will be the best for the use-case and any other advice is welcome. Thank you.

The specific one I am looking for is the one where you give a word and it will lookup all the odd spellings and variants. I cannot remember the name, can anyone, or perhaps suggest another? The site in question had a command line tool as well (I think third party).

Edit: found at http://domai.nr/ and Github has the cmd line utility.

Hey everyone! I'm working on a side project and stumbled upon how crucial it is to find the perfect domain name one that's catchy, brandable, and actually available (because most of the good ones are taken).

I want to know what tools or methods do you use to come up with great domain names that are still available?

Do you stick with the classics like Namecheap, Godaddy, or something more advanced like AI-powered tools such as AI Name Genius, AI Domain Genius or Namify?

I'm curious to learn if there are hidden gems out there or creative hacks that people use to nail the perfect name for their business or side hustle.

If you’ve got one that works, drop it below, I’d love to explore it! 👇

I'm launching a web design and development agency specializing in helping small to medium-sized local businesses create or significantly improve their online presence. I'm looking for a domain that's memorable, clear, professional, and approachable. I own these domains already, I want to pick one from these.

Thanks /webdesign community :)

I would like to start a guide website for the city I live in, but would like to avoid domains that start/contain words like:

Enjoy Explore Guide Visit Experience

I was thinking of allthingscity.com but it sounds pretty long.

Would appreciate any ideas.

Hey everyone.

Hope you are all doing well.

I have jumped onto the Simple Login bandwagon and really appreciate the service. However, I have come to the conclusion that I would like to use a custom domain name.

Although I have a domain name today (it's "myname.tld"), I don't want to use that for simple login because I think that defeats the purpose.

So I wanted to hear from all of you what do you recommend as best practice for selecting a domain name for simple login? I am happy to chuck $10/year at Cloudflare to get a domain name that I will dedicate to simple login, but just want to make sure I avoid any names that may cause trouble for Simple Login or result in websites, etc not accepting the aliases I create.

Thanks for any guidance you can provide. 😀

Kind of dumb, but did you use your name? Full or abbreviated somehow? What about your top-level name?.name, .com, .com.au (your country). Do you have an order based on availability?

Thanks for any help!

So I'm Serbian, but I do NOT want to stay in Serbia and want to find jobs elsewhere.

I keep seeing people say that firstnamelastname.com is ideal, but I'm not sure if I should get the one with my Serbian name or the one with my English name. My LinkedIn currently has my Serbian name, but also my English name inside parenthesis. (my Serbian name has a very obvious English translation and it's one of the most common names in Europe and North America)

I've been considering to purchase a domain for my personal and professional use (differentiated by different address/prefixes such as "hi", "contact" or "work") for a while now. Obviously the no-brainer solution would be to get firstnamelastname.com. However that is already taken and I am considering the following options which are still available. I would love to get some feedback on which one I should settle on.

firstnamelastname.net - 2nd obvious choice. However I worry people would forget and default using firstnamelastname.com instead. This would cause confusion.

firstnamelastname.me - Not a bad choice, just that I would have to avoid using "me" as an address as well, otherwise "[email protected]" sounds awkward. Also the risk of people forgetting it and default to the ".com" version instead.

abbreviated firstnamelastname.com - For example if my name is John Smith, I would abbreviate it to something like jhnsmt.com. The advantage I feel is it's pretty unique (so the domain should be readily available) and it would "click" with people that know my full name, which wouldn't sound awkward when giving them this domain name. The downside is that it might not sound very professional and even a bit spammy and not trustworthy?

Thanks in advance.

Ninja edit: Would also like to add the abbreviated options seems to add slightly more privacy without disclosing too much of my name while still making sense to others after knowing my full name.

Ninja edit 2: Wow, thanks for the suggestions everyone, appreciate all your responses. Found a couple more available options based on your suggestions:

• lastname.contact - ".contact" TLD seems pretty new, not sure how well e-mail verification of old websites will handle this. However it's readily available and is easily understandable and straight to the point. Being available to my family as a whole is a plus as well.

• firstinitiallastname.me - Short and simple and to the point.

• firstinitiallastname.io - Seems relevant if I will be in the IT sector.

• firstinitiallastname.id - Similar to ".me", but I think ".me" sounds a bit better.