Brainstorming Domain Name Ideas

Already have a specific domain name in mind? Feel free to skip straight to Acquiring a Registered Domain.

If you’re still looking for the right name, this chapter will help. We’ll look at various ways to come up with domain name ideas — from good old brainstorming techniques to browsing domain names that are listed for sale and fit your budget.

But first, a quick note on how product names and domain names relate to each other, and the two broad categories of names you can choose from.

Product names and domain names

Your product name is what you call your product. Your domain name is where people can access it. There’s nothing stopping you from having a domain name that’s completely different from your product name — but typically, you want them to match as closely as possible.

Ideally, it’s an exact match. Sometimes the domain extension even becomes part of the name itself — think Booking.com. People don’t say “Booking” — they say “Booking.com.” The domain is the brand.

A mistake I see a lot of people make is brainstorming product names first, without any regard for domain availability. They fall in love with a name, only to discover that every reasonable domain for it is already taken. Now they’re stuck — either they start over, or they settle for an awkward variation of the name they actually wanted.

I prefer to think about the product name and domain name at the same time. That way, by the time you’ve landed on a name you love, you already know the domain is available. It saves a lot of frustration.

Descriptive versus brandable names

I like to think of domain names as falling into two broad categories: descriptive and brandable.

A descriptive name tells you what the product does. Startup.jobs is a job board for startups. BetaList.com is a list of startups in beta. You read the name, you get it. Descriptive names are especially useful when you’re bootstrapping without a big marketing budget, or when organic search is your primary growth channel.

A brandable name doesn’t describe what the product does. Instead, it creates a feeling or an identity that you build meaning into over time. Google.com meant nothing to most people before the search engine existed. Neither did Yahoo.com — but it evoked a feeling of excitement. One of my personal favorites is homerun.co — a hiring platform for startups. The name has nothing to do with hiring, but it captures the emotion of a great hire perfectly.

Plenty of names sit somewhere in between. Take handle.horse — it describes the service (monitoring when a social media handle becomes available), but the .horse part is completely unrelated, making it more distinct and memorable.

The next two sections cover brainstorming techniques for each type. After that, I’ll share a simple rule for keeping your domain name memorable, and then we’ll get into more techniques — domain hacks, bulk search tools, and browsing marketplaces.