Having a good domain name is a crucial part of the success of any website or blog.  A good domain name conveys the spirit of your venture, is short and memorable, and is unique to you.  Getting such a domain name is unfortunately not easy!

As everyone scrambles for virtual real estate on the web, good domain names have become big business, and often change hands for enormous sums.  What would you pay for greeting.com ?  It recently changed hands for $350,000.  Perth.com sold recently for $200,000.  Want a name for a site promoting leisure activities?  Unwinding.com went for $10,000.  And in 2007 porn.com sold for $9.5 million, computer.com for $2.1 million, and seniors.com for $1.8 million.  (For more current high sales, see DN Journal).

Literally millions of domain names have been bought over the last decade by big operators, who then resell them.  While they are still holding them, they "park" them.  If you type in the name of a parked domain, you will see a page of adverts come up.  The owner of the domain makes a small amount if you click on any of these - just cents really - but over thousands of domains, those cents add up to substantial sums.  The biggest player in this space is Kevin Ham, a medical doctor who has built a $300 million empire out of his portfolio of domains, which generate $70 million in revenue per annum (read his story).

This means that it is becoming harder and harder to come up with an original domain name that is not already registered by someone.  Virtually every word in the dictionary has already been acquired, and millions of combinations of these words.  Of course, many of these are for sale, but with prices that often start in the thousands of dollars.  Visit Sedo, the largest and best site for sales of existing domain names, and spend some time browsing to get a feel for prices.

First of all, you ideally want to get a .com name, unless you are a non-profit organisation, in which case you would go for a .org domain.  Although there a lot of other TLD's (Top Level Domains, the . extensions), such as .net, .biz, .info, and .ws (for website), the fact is that people predominantly, if they remember a name, expect it to be a .com.

So how do you come up with a good name?  One of the best routes is still to combine two words, as I did with Worldshift.  Or use a short phrase - a popular reminder list site has the name rememberthemilk.com.  Simple, catchy and memorable.  Another idea is to use simple, melodic words from another language (I once spent an entire evening combing through a Sanskrit dictionary!).  Having a good thesaurus at hand is also a good idea.  (I also have a rhyming dictionary).

And although I said that you should always shoot for a .com name, there are times when you can break this rule.  When I started my personal blog in 2005, I wanted to use the word "worldsong".  All the major TLD's for this word were gone - but I was able to get worldsong.ws, with the .ws TLD.  Precisely because the .ws TLD is seldom used, this made it somewhat memorable, and the "ws" played off the W and S in both Worldsong and Worldshift.

Getting a good name is not enough.  If you are planning to build a serious venture around the name, there are a number of related names that you will want to get as well (see Other names you should get too, below).  So, being able to get these as well may also be a criterion in choosing your name.  Finally, be careful to check what other words could be "read out" of your name.  Is therapist.com for a counsellor, or a sexual offender? (the rapist) etc.

To look up if a name is available, there are a number of sites on the web offering what is called a "whois" service, which allows you to look up domain names.  (You will want to avoid using the Network Solutions site for this - see here for why).

There is also a superb little site that I always use for these searches, called Instant Domain Search.  You can type in a word on this site, and it will instantly - as you type - tell you if it is available as a .com, .net or .org.  (A word of caution - typing very fast sometimes confuses the site - always double check important words).

It will also, for names that are taken, give you options to make an offer on the name through Sedo, or backorder it through GoDaddy (more on them later), or visit a full "whois" service to see exactly who owns it, to some "hacks" of the name (not recommended), to see its rating (how often it is visited) at Alexa (an Amazon company), or to visit the site itself (if there is one for this name).

If you cannot find a name you like that is not already registered, you may want to consider buying an existing domain name.  As I mentioned above, there are millions of these that are "parked" in the hope that someone will buy them.  You can shop for existing names on Sedo or bid for them on GoDaddy's Domain Name Aftermarket.  Most domain registrars also have facilities for you to make a "certified offer" on a domain.  This protects both parties, as the domain registrar handles the exchange of money for the domain.  (See for example GoDaddy's Domain Buy Service).

You may also want to wait for a domain to expire, in the hopes of snatching it up before anyone else.  This is quite a fine art, as expired domains go through several lengthy stages before becoming available.  See How to Snatch an Expiring Domain for tips on this.

Ideally you should be able to get the other major TLD's for your name as well.  This will prevent someone else from starting a business with the same name as yours, if all the major TLD's for that name have been taken.  For example, not only do I own worldshift.com, for one of my other ventures, but I also own worldshift.net, .org, .biz, .ws and .info.  At a minimum get the .net and .org TLD's as well.

You also want to consider getting key "cc" (country-code) TLD's as well.  These are TLD's for specific countries.  Important ones are .us (United States), .co.uk (United Kingdom), .eu (European Union) and .ca (Canada).  (South African readers see footnote 1).  Absolutely essential for me is .cn for China, since within a decade China will have more Internet users than any other country.  I also like to have .es, which while officially for Spain, is used widely in the US for Hispanic sites in Spanish (eg macdonalds.es).  The Hispanic demographic in the United States is now the largest minority in the US, ahead of African-Americans.  Note that some ccTLD's (such as .eu and .ca) require that you have an address in the country concerned.  Many registrars will allow you to register these however, by giving their address as a proxy for you.

Another essential TLD to have is .mobi, for mobile.  Mobile phones (over 2 billion in the world) are placing Internet access in the hands of millions of new users.  Many companies now have a .mobi site, specially formatted for cellphones, in addition to their .com site.  (The name poker.mobi recently sold for $150,000). Another TLD that you might consider is .tv.  Television delivered over the Internet (IPTV) is increasing every year, and just as anyone can now post videos on YouTube, in the not too distant future it will be easy to have your own IPTV station - just as anyone today can have their own talk-radio show for free (see BlogTalkRadio).  You should own this regardless to protect your name.  For example, a while ago a company overseas made an offer (which I politely declined) to buy the domain name worldshift.tv from me, for a series of programs on New Age topics.  If I hadn't already owned the name, they would have simply bought the domain, and today I would have people confusing their programs with my material.

If you have big plans for your venture, you should also acquire all the basic variations of your name.  For example, I also own worldshifter.com - but slipped up on worldshifts.com, which is now a parked domain - aargh!

Have a catchy name?  How would you feel if someone made a movie - or a computer game - with the same name?  To protect yourself against this, also consider registering yournamemovie.com and yournamethemovie.com, since this is the format studios usually use for the sites for movies (look at the movie posters at the cinema).  The same applies for games.  I slipped up on this, and now there is a computer game called Worldshift.  Would they have chosen that name for their game if I had owned worldshiftgame.com etc?  It's unlikely.  So an oversight like this on my part has led to someone else using the name I invented (Google search results for "worldshift" in 1998: zero), and usurping my top position in Google for searches for Worldshift.  You can be sure that after this nasty surprise that I wasted no time in registering worldshiftmovie etc, and worldshiftbook etc as well, as a precaution against any further uses of my name!

You will also want to check easy misspellings of your name - you don't want to discover that your name is one typo away from a hard core porn site!  (Also, if you have made up a word, check on Google to see if it means something in other languages, or is in use in other parts of the world.  In the early days of Fundamo, before we had settled on that name, we considered the word "karix" - until we discovered it was a brand of condom in South-East Asia).  If misspellings of your name are available, buy these as well (along with all the other extra domains, you can set these to redirect to your main name - see how below).

Finally, if your name is going to be a brand that could attract criticism, you may want to pre-emptively acquire "hate" names, such as yournamesucks.com, and easy negative variations of your name.  (For an excellent example of these, see the site Helkom.co.za, which delivers some [much-needed] criticism of the telephone company Telkom in South Africa).

One more:  With the growing importance of domain names, consider getting the .com for your own name, if it is available.  For example, I own neilhinrichsen.com.  You could use this domain later for a "portal" site with links to all your other sites and services (photoblogs, Facebook pages, etc).

You want to register your domain with a company that will be around long-term (you are truly stuffed if your registrar goes under; this has happened), and who offers cheap registrations (given how many domains you may have to register).  You also want a registrar that offers an easy interface for editing your domain details, and ideally (makes life simpler), you should register your domain with the same company where you will host your site - so you want a registrar who also offers affordable, reliable web hosting.

My recommendation here is GoDaddy.com.  GoDaddy is the largest registrar in the world, has the cheapest rates for domains ($9.99 pa for .com's), has a superb interface for domain DNS editing, and offers great rates on web hosting as well (from $3.60 pm).

There is another advantage to using GoDaddy.  Because they are the biggest registrar in the world (and work closely with Google among others), many services that require you to edit your domain's DNS have detailed instructions for how to do this on GoDaddy.

(Most registrars also force you to have a separate hosting account for each domain that will have a website.  GoDaddy also has an option whereby you can have an unlimited number of domains use the same hosting account - great if you have several small websites).

Make sure that you register your domains with your name.  I know plenty of small businesses who have had "Fred" set up everything for them.  A few years down the line and Fred has vanished - along with the password for the domain account - which turns out to be registered in Fred's name too!  Make you sure you have total control over your domain name - your whole Internet presence rests on this.

Tips:  If you are going to register a number of domain names, register them all at once and take advantage of the bulk rates at GoDaddy (which apply for more than ten domains).  Also, note that no one registrar offers all the possible TLD's.  For example, GoDaddy does not offer .ca domains.  A good registrar for these is Dotster.  And finally a warning:  do not choose the "free" private registration option that GoDaddy offers (see here for why not).

Once all your domain names are registered, you can set the others to all redirect people to your main domain name. So if someone types in www.yourname.net, they will automatically be taken to www.yourname.com.  To do this on GoDaddy see Forwarding Your Domain to Another URL.

You will also want to set your main domain so that if someone types in its name without the www prefix, that they still come to your site.  To do this on GoDaddy, follow the above instructions for forwarding a domain, for your main domain name, and set it to permanently (302) forward to http://www.yourmainname.com.

Finally, if you have invested a lot of time and money in a unique name, protect it by monitoring it on the 'Net.

An easy way to do this is to set up a Google Alert for your name, so that you get notified every time it is referenced anywhere.  For example, I recently got an alert pointing me to an article discussing a "Worldshift University".  I quickly checked if any such domain names had been registered.  They had not, so I registered them myself (prevention is better than cure!), before notifying the parties concerned that "worldshift" is a registered trademark in the United States that belongs to me, which they graciously acknowledged!  Again, it's best to nip things like this in the bud before they gain momentum.

You could also consider the Mark Alert and Domain Monitor services from DomainTools.

Useful sites

• DN Journal - the Domain Industry news magazine

1. South African (.co.za) domains
   
   Only use one of these as your main domain name if you feel it is essential for you to project a "South African" identity.  The reason for this is that there is no registrar that offers a proper interface for editing a .co.za domain's DNS - so every time you need to change a DNS setting, this is going to either be a case of a long-winded (and probably expensive) process through a third party (Hetzners are good), or hacking it yourself through the dismal Uniforum site. Rather use a .com as your main site and acquire a co.za which you then set to forward to the .com.