At a recent event, one of the speakers suggested that it would be wise to register "How To" domain names - e.g. "howtomakebetterphotos.com" and right there, while he was speaking, I went online and secured 20 or so domain names.
I want to talk a bit about domain names in case you're thinking of setting up a Web site or getting a new name for your site.
I am a bit of a collector when it comes to domain names. For most of these domain names that I've registered, I have not yet spent the time/money to get the sites developed... they are just "parked" for now. All in all, I have 408 domain names at this count. That is a lot according to some but not a lot when viewed by serious domain name businesspeople.
All the same, here are some of my best tips on getting domain names, off the top of my head:
1. Get a ".com" for sure. Everyone thinks in terms of ".com" and it is difficult for people to remember to type in ".net" or another suffix. Better yet, get several. I also get ".net" and ".org" when I really love the name. But when ".com" is not available, I get creative and find a unique and memorable name with ".com" at the end.
2. Keep it as short as possible and easy to speel (that's a joke). In truth, short domain names are difficult to come by, as long as you adhere to Tip #1 and look only for ".com" names. You can go with longer names as long as they are easy to remember.
3. Get the plural of your name too. I paid several thousand dollars to buy "BetterPhotos.com" from someone. Get it now and save yourself the bill. Ideally, though, I only get the plural when I can get the singular version as well. People will often forget the "s". (Or add the "s" as I found many people doing several years into building BetterPhoto.com.
4. On that note, if you get a domain name with "the" or "my" in front of it, people will often forget that as well. It's a rare case, in my opinion, that a "my" or "the" domain name works. I have only used it when I really, really wanted a domain name and putting "my" or "the" in front of the name was the only way I could think to get it.
5. When your preferred name is unavailable, get out the thesaurus and start brainstorming. Or I think of subtopic or subtitle ideas. For example, when creativeconfidence.com was taken, I registered saygoodbyetosecondguessing.com
6. Say it out loud and bounce your best ideas around with friends and family. See if they easily "get" it - and can easily remember it and type it into a Web browser.
7. Avoid hyphens if you can. But I am not 100% on this one... I use them sometimes. The idea here is that it's difficult to verbally relay to someone a domain name with a lot of hyphens in it. But Google somewhat likes the taste of domain names with hyphens. When possible, get both.
8. Do you see a theme here? Get multiple versions of your business or preferred domain name. More is merrier. I don't want to tell you how many different versions of BetterPhoto I have (and I have still regretted missing out on a couple).
9. Get it now. Even if you don't think you're ready, register your preferred domain name right now. When it comes to registering too many names, mistakes are inexpensive. The only mistake that can cost you big time is NOT getting the name now and wanting/needing it later.