It is now time to do research – pick some domain names you like and begin the process of narrowing down the ones you can actually get.  There are many methods and tools to help you do this;  I’m going to teach you an easy one and show you how to use the registrar suggest software to help you find one that’s available.

Step 1:
Create a list of words that have something in relation to your business marketing goal’s message. Since almost all single word domain names are taken and quite expensive, so unless you have a larger budget, we’re going to combine those words with other words.  One popular method for doing this, which makes catchy domain names, involves combining nouns with actions, like FeedBurner.  Another method is to combine the location, such as ____LosAngeles or LosAngeles____ or LA_____.

Step 2:
After you find some examples that you like, go to the domain name registrar.  I like GoDaddy.com;  it’s one of the largest ones and do a domain search. The search will show you what versions of that name are available, if any.  It will also offer suggestions for available names by adding on extra words… ex:  “My”  like if one of your choice words is “onlinediary”,  and it’s unavailable, then the search registrar will offer to you “myonlinediary”, “myinternetdiaries”… and they offer you many options.

Using a thesaurus or looking up synonyms for words can be very helpful when searching for potential domain names. Do not feel discouraged, if all the domain names you’d like are taken. If you want a name that’s taken, three things:

1. Visit the site and it may have a call to action to contact the person who wants to sell– this is  handy because you can negotiate the price.
2. If you Visit a site and it doesn’t load anything or loads a generic starting page– research who owns the domain name.  Luckily there are online tools that ease the process.  Go to domaintools.org and do a “who is” search on the domain name.  It’ll come back with the technical or administrative contacts for the domain name and send them an email requesting the price of the domain name.
3. Visit the site and if it’s somebody’s web page– email them and ask to buy it from them.  Be prepared for the owner to be emotionally attached and want too much money for the site name.

Sometimes it surprises me, that even though millions of .com TLDs are taken,  you can still find a few short and high quality ones that people didn’t think of.   I recently registered “ideaPals” to be a sister site to “MoviePals” which is a perfect name for what I needed, and it was unregistered.

The only domain name I would almost always avoid is .biz.  People have a bias against outright commercial sites and it’s harder to get links and views to .biz sites.  Can you name 3 successful .biz sites?  I would almost never use this TLD (top-level-domain).

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