Find Another Domain Name

I know — you paid for a book on getting great domain names, and my first piece of advice is to just pick a different one. But hear me out. Having alternatives in mind is genuinely one of the most useful things you can do, even if you end up going after your first choice.

When launching a new project, I like to move fast and limit my financial risk. So if the domain name I have in mind is already taken, I usually just go with a different one — at least for the time being.

That’s what I did with WIP (Work in Progress). The domain I really wanted wasn’t available, so I launched on wip.chat. I wasn’t thrilled about the .chat extension, but it got me up and running without delay. A few years later, once the project had traction, I acquired wip.co.

That’s the key insight here: you can always upgrade later. Just because you settle for a domain name now doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it forever. As your project grows and resources become available, you can go after the domain you really want.

In fact, you can do both at the same time — launch on an available domain while pursuing negotiations for a better one in the background. Your project keeps moving forward, and you’re not held hostage by a domain name acquisition that might take weeks or months.

The obvious risk is that while you wait, the domain you really want could be sold to someone else or go up in price — especially if your project starts gaining traction. That stings a little. But in my experience, your project’s growth tends to outrun the increase in domain price. It’s a nice problem to have: if the domain costs more because your project became successful, you can probably afford it by then anyway.