Have you tried to think of a great name for your startup — or side project — only to discover the .com domain for every decent option is taken already?
You know the value of good domains, and are even willing to pay a few thousand dollars for it, but it seems like there’s just nothing available.
If you’ve been hunting high and low to find a cool domain name for your website and had no luck, it may be because you’ve been doing it wrong.
To make the process easier and give yourself a better chance, you need to change your approach.
Read on to discover a smarter way to hunt for premium domains and where you can go to get a top name instantly.
Conventional Way of Choosing a Name
Most entrepreneurs waste a lot of time searching for their blog, website or startup’s name.
They spend an unexpectedly long time looking for something catchy — where the matching .com domain must be available to be registered or can be acquired from the current registrant.
Unfortunately, this normally ends with not much to show. Or you only have lame names that no one really likes.
This is the usual process most people follow:
- Try to Think of Suitable Names
- Narrow Down a Shortlist
- Check the .com Availability
- Discover it’s Too Expensive or Not for Sale
It’s a hopelessly frustrating experience.
First of all, there’s nothing you actually really like. It’s all a huge compromise right from the start. You and your team can’t even come up with any cool names.
So, you’re left with a bunch of ill-fitting backup options just because you need to have something on the list. And even these crappy names aren’t available. Or the owner is demanding ridiculous sums for them.
Digital Brand Naming is Hard
Until you try to do this properly, you just don’t realize how difficult it is to come up with an innovative brand name where the .com domain can be acquired for an affordable amount.
Even the multinationals and well-funded startups with 6 figure budgets have a tough time finding an ideal name for their new ventures.
How can this be?
It’s quite simple — there’s a finite number of truly top grade names in the English language. There are a limited number of words with positive connotations that may be meaningful to a brand.
Some of these are being used already. Some are not for sale. Others have outrageous asking prices.
And this is if you have $100,000 to $200,000 in hand to do an immediate deal.
With a limited $5,000 to $10,000 budget, it would seem like there’s no chance at all. But don’t give up. You just need to approach it differently.
Problem: Very Low Chance of Success
There are lots of reasons why the normal way of finding a quality name/domain isn’t very effective:
- It’s Hard to Think of a Good Name: most people know a catchy name when they hear one. But coming up with one — or a bunch of choices — isn’t easy. As the hours go by, you start to understand why there are Naming Agencies that do this for a living. And why people pay them 5 figure sums to find creative names.
- Most Good .com Domains Not for Sale: identifying a great name is hard enough, but finding one where the .com domain can be purchased is even harder. It seems that everything you can think of, someone else has already thought of it first. Every name you’re willing to pay up for, someone is willing to pay more.
- Most Sellers Asking Ridiculous Prices: good names are hard to come by. And people who own the best domains in the world know this. They’ve had countless offers to buy them. They turn down 5 figure sums daily and can’t even be bothered to respond to your email. They’re holding out for a million dollar sale, and have the holding power to wait for years.
- It’s Time Consuming to Find/Assess Options: brainstorming, searching, negotiating, deliberating, and coming across constant disappointments is exhausting. It’s a lot more draining than most executives or startup founders imagine. One of the reasons is because it’s such a frustrating hit-and-miss process.
- Slim Chance of Success with Limited Budget: the odds are hugely stacked against you. Especially if you’re trying to fly first class with an economy ticket budget. You need to understand the market and have realistic expectations to have any chance of success. There’s no point hoping there will be Grade A name that’s underpriced. Thousands of domain prospectors have trodden the path before you searching for such opportunities. Any low hanging fruit has long been picked already.
So it’s not surprising how so many startup founders end up wasting precious time only to end up with nothing but disappointment.
They’re going about it the wrong way.
Buying Premium Domains – an Alternative Approach
To have a higher probability of success, you have to change the first step of the previous process. In fact, you need to reverse the order completely.
Instead of narrowing down potential names and then seeing if it’s for sale. Start by making sure any names you look through are all available for sale already. Then narrow down to find something suitable.
Forget about trying to come up with names you like as a starting point. That’s time consuming and very limiting. There’s also a high chance the domain can’t be acquired.
Instead, only consider options where you know the .com domain is for sale at a price that’s within your budget.
This is a smarter way to find a name for your new venture:
- Start with Domains Listed for Sale with Prices
- Narrow Down Shortlist that’s within Budget
- Discuss with Team / Get Second Opinions
- Purchase Chosen Domain Instantly
Much easier isn’t it?
Domains for Sale with Buy-It-Now (BIN) Prices
There are plenty of places on the Internet where you can find domain names listed for take.
Most are a total waste of time though so you need to know where to avoid:
- Poor quality inventory: there’s so much junk available for sale in the majority of domain sale websites. It’s usually hard to find anything worthwhile and you’re better off skipping these rather than trying to find a hidden gem. They’re just not worth it.
- Limited quality domain listings: some of the better sites have reasonable names offered at fair prices, but there’s normally a very limited choice of domains that may be suitable. And amidst all the mediocre domains, anything half decent that catches your eye tends to be overpriced.
- Inconsistent pricing: the big domain marketplaces have more to choose from, but most don’t have quality controls for the listings. This means you have to slowly sift through pages of inconsistent domains for sale to hunt for potential candidates. Unfortunately, most will be overpriced relative to their quality as the good deals have probably been picked off already.
Here’s a list of places with domain names listed for sale. You need to be selective in knowing where to go as most of them are not worth spending too much time on.
- Webmaster/Hosting Forums
- Domain Owners’ Portfolio Sites
- Domain Name Forums
- Domain Auction Sites
- General Marketplaces (ie eBay.com)
- Domain Marketplaces
A lot of these venues used to have a range of quality domains that were listed at good prices. But over the last 10-15 years, the market has changed. There’s no point going through most of these sites anymore.
Where to Buy Premium Domains
The best way to search for a premium .com domain to buy depends on your budget. With more money, you’ll have more options.
- Over US$25,000 — with a low to mid 5 figure budget and above, you can engage a specialist premium domain broker to consult, research and find suitable domains for you to consider. You will have to pay a commission if there’s a successful transaction, but at the high end of the market it is well worth it to have an industry expert by your side. What you pay in their fees will probably be covered by how much they save you when negotiating for a lower purchase price. You will also get access to inventory that may not be openly listed for sale in marketplaces.
- US$10,000 to US$25,000 — at the lower end of the 5 figure budget, it may not be feasible to work with the independent brokers who focus on larger deal sizes. However, you can reach out to the brokers at the top marketplaces who will be more than happy to provide you with dedicated services to consult and curate a list of suitable names for sale within your price range, and then assist in negotiating with the seller to help facilitate a successful sale.
- Under US$10,000 — with a more limited budget, you can still get help from marketplace brokers, but on the whole, be prepared to do it yourself, especially if you only have a maximum of $2,000 to $3,000.
Listings of quality domains for sale can be found in a number of domain marketplaces. Some of these are open marketplaces with listings from thousands of sellers, while others consist of domains from extremely large portfolio holders.
Top Domain Name Marketplaces
- Afternic.com
- Sedo.com
- Dan.com
- GoDaddy Marketplace
Large Domain Portfolio Sites
- BuyDomains.com
- HugeDomains.com
- DomainMarket.com
Brandable Domain Marketplaces
- BrandBucket.com
- SquadHelp.com
- FrozenLemons.com
You should definitely be able to find something among the many thousands of premium domains listed in the sites above.
If you are searching for higher value, single word or more niche domain assets, there’s a comprehensive list in the Ultimate List of Domain Marketplaces & Domains for Sale.
Create a Domain Acquisition Plan
Before heading to any of these sites, you should definitely have a plan. It could be a list of related notes or a more detailed guide.
But you need to have something which you can add, amend and expand on, to help you navigate the potential rabbit holes you’ll inevitably get lost in.
This is likely to be a journey that takes various twists and turns, so you should track what’s going on to assess all the options clearly.
If you don’t know where to start, take a look at this domain buying template and just fill in the blanks.
Advanced Domain Search Filters
There are millions of domains listed in the marketplaces. To find suitable names, you need to use the advanced search functions to filter out irrelevant listings.
At a minimum, you should be clear about a number of things in order to specify what to search for:
- Price Range: enter your maximum budget to exclude all the domains you can’t afford in the search results. It is a good idea to filter out the lower quality names by putting a minimum price too. Eg. If you have a max limit of $5,000 — perhaps you can set a min price of $2,000 to view all listings in the $2,000 – $5,000 range. If you can go up to $15k, it may be worth reviewing options from $5k to $15k.
- Domain Extensions: making a clear decision on what extension the domain must have, mustn’t have and may have, will help to narrow down the search. If in doubt, just stick to the .com ending. But if you have a specific audience (ie locally targeted in the UK or a not for profit organization) then you can select the .org suffix or a ccTLD like .co.uk.
- Keywords: having a keyword to target (for domains with at least 2 words) will focus the search a lot. You should jot down a list of words you like and try them all out. You can search for domains that start with the keyword, end with it or have it appearing anywhere within the name. Get inspiration for this keyword list from names you like. For example, if you think Jeff Bezos’ “Blue Origin” is a great name, you could look through all domains starting with ‘blue’ or to another search for names ending with ‘origin’.
- Unwanted characters: to reduce the results listing further, you can choose to exclude domains that have numbers in them, or a dash/hyphen. This will give you a cleaner list with fewer irrelevant domains.
The key to a more effective domain hunting experience is to have a very large pool of appropriately priced quality domains, and then to use advanced filters to refine your search accordingly.
Doing some research to get ideas from names you like and knowing what you want in your domain helps tremendously. Try not to dive into this with a blank sheet of paper. Make sure you do your homework and brainstorm with your team first.
Conclusion
Finding the ideal domain name for your website or business is harder than most people think. That’s why it is important to have the right approach.
A good way is to follow those who hunt for good domains to buy for a living.
Professional domain name investors use domain marketplaces to buy domains because there are quality names listed that can be acquired at reasonable prices.
If you’re searching for a new domain to help your digital brand succeed online, try going through the leading marketplaces to see what’s available.
Even if you don’t find the right domain instantly, you may get ideas from the names you come across, and understand the market better in terms of quality vs pricing.
Good luck & happy hunting!