Fun With a Website Domain
Fun with Domain Names
No self-respecting Internet Entrepreneur would launch a new website without carefully considering a proper domain name. Sites such as CardWoo and CarWoo.com illustrate the distinct possibility that just perhaps all the good names are taken.
Our dilemma: find a hip and cool and trendy domain name that rolls off the tongue, fits on a business card, and doesn't cost millions of dollars to purchase from a squatter. Yes, many good names have been snapped up with the single-minded purpose of reselling at a megaprofit. Is this a bad thing? We're not here to judge. If your business plan includes funding to obtain the rights to Business.com or Happy.com, you have our blessing. We prefer to deploy alternative search strategies in hope of unearthing a heretofore unnoticed domain name that won't break the budget.
The source of our words
What's Our Strategy?
We considered convening a host of erstwhile Madison Avenue advertising savants. We thought about hiring a local web design firm to suggest options. We pondered the possibility of bringing in Co-op students from the local design academy and paying them in Starbucks gift cards.
Eventually we settled on a much more scientific plan. We propose to allow the Internet to choose our domain names for us. We will leverage free services offered by smartypants web sites to identify our perfect site. Instead of investing in known quantities, we will throw open the doors to the power of the cybercrowd. Stand back and watch as our ultimate domain name falls together with virtually no expense whatsoever.
We begin by leveraging the English Language. A typical two-word phrase consists of an adjective and a noun. HappyBird, ColdTable, and ChunkySoup are excellent examples. Two-word phrases are easily recalled by potential customers. Our strategy will be to identify potential phrases consisting of an adjective succeeded by a noun.
Adjectives and nouns seem to be easy to come by. We could make camp at a local Starbucks and easily obtain several hundred of each over a relatively short period of eavesdropping. Our costs could become prohibitive, however. The price of premium coffee served in pretentious surroundings may outweigh the value of our word inventory.
Instead of sitting around waiting for words to drop into our ears, we plan to use a specially engineered web site to generate nouns and verbs for us as we sit serenely at our desktop computer sipping instant Sanka softened with powered milk. Our site of choice will be a random word generator thoughtfully provided by the good people at http://www.watchout4snakes.com/CreativityTools/RandomWord/RandomWordPlus.aspx. We've never met them, but we gladly credit them for any domain naming success that arises from this project.
What's the Process?
Here is our data collection model:
- Ask the site for an adjective.
- Ask the site for a noun.
- Combine the adjective and the noun, in that order, with no spaces.
- Append a .com extension to the result from Step 3.
- Plug the synthesized domain name into our browser to check availability.
- Marvel at the results.
What Do We Get?
Test Case #1 yielded these words:
Adjective = obliging
Noun = detector
Combining these English words together and appending the obligatory .com prefix gives us:
ObligingDetector.com
Wow. It works.
We're Not Done, Yet!
A potential domain name is within our grasp. The final step in our process is to check the availability of this amazing combination of adjective, noun, and suffix by plugging it into our browser. If a real web site loads, then obviously someone else usurped our concept.
Some technical types may object: this obviously is not a scientific test in the scientific sense that it doesn't actually involve real science that we all learned in 10th grade Chemistry. We respectfully respond with a hearty pish-posh. We're not angling for a Nobel Prize here.
This Is What We Want To See
Our first test case proves to be a raving success. The domain name http://ObligingDetector.com/ is available.The next step would be to register the name with one of the gabillion domain name registry services, then devise a stunningly popular web site to accompany the name.
Flush with success, we charge ahead.
Our Second Attempt
For our next trick, we request yet another adjective and one more noun from our obliging web site. We are given:
Adjective = Premature
Noun = Confusion
This looks promising. The combination might be trendy and hip, in a meaningless way that attracts disaffected counter-culture aficionados who hang out in coffee shops, bemoaning their parents' choice in outerwear.
Tacking on the .com, we derive the domain name PrematureConfusion.com. Is it available? Let us check... Bingo!
Round Three Yields A Very Cool Domain Name
Our third venture results in the domain name FightingParent.com. It's also available.
Perhaps a Nobel prize is imminent,.
We Branch Out
Our method has proven to be inevitably useful, so we propose to expand our domain of potential domain names by combining random adverbs and adjectives. Fortunately, our word source proves sufficiently flexible to provide such types of words. Our first foray into this adjunct application gives us:
Adjective = Publicized
Adverb ={system crash}
oops. Our font of ideas crashed and burned. Perhaps random words proved to be too taxing.
OK, OK, One More Try!
We persevere. The lure of a random adverb and a random adjective calls to us like Democrats writing earmarks for artistic grants into the Highway Omnibus Bill...
Adverb: typically
Adjective: sliced
Ok, that looks promising. We carefully browse to TypicallySliced.com...
and it's available. No one owns it. For less than $10 per year it can be our new Internet home base. All we need now is a concept to go with it.
Conclusion
We conclude that this is silly but effective. All our randomly generated combinations rolled easily off the digital tongue and offered no end of kitschy combinations. This could work. Instead of obsessing over population studies, social trends, and Google Keywords, this strategy just might offer a level of imagination heretofore unimagined.
The next time you're chilling at Starbuck's and you notice a creepy researcher lurking next to the biscotti, suggest to him that his next domain name might be readily available at http://www.watchout4snakes.com/CreativityTools/RandomWord/RandomWordPlus.aspx.
