How to Find a Great Domain Name Revisited

A couple months ago I wrote about how to find a great domain name. Since then, I’ve found several other tricks, related articles and sites… here they are:

1. Instant Domain Search – This is the site I’ve been using most. Start typing a domain name and as you type it shows you if it’s available or not. No submit button, no waiting, just good quick results. Can’t beat that. There is a similar site called Ajax Whois that’s not quite as fast (it requires verification), but adds the functionality of seeing whois results.

2. Domainers – Turns out there are people making a bit of money off buying and selling domains, or buying domains hoping people will land on them and click a link. By a bit of money, I mean millions of dollars a year. Business 2.0 has a great article on the subject.

3. Sedo.com – If the domainers article piqued your interest, check out Sedo–a quick place to park your domains to make money off ads or put them up for sale. I’ve parked a few there myself until I have time to develop them. If Sedo doesn’t meet your fancy, check out Afternic, DomainHop or DomainSponsor.

4. Looking for a different way to sell your hot new domain? Check out DomainState or DNForum. The former appears to be less trafficked and free while the latter is not free but is always buzzing.

5. All existing domains – This one is a gem sent from Beau (the guy who made Instant Domain Search). Fax in your address get access to a list (available over FTP) of all active .com and .net domain names. Very cool.

6. 2.99 domains – From Yahoo, sign up for them all at once because the offer is good for new customers only, after you’re signed up the price goes up to $9.95. I was able to get 5 domains for 3 bucks a pop. After that offer expires, I’d recommend checking out Namecheap. Their domains are 8.88 each and the tools to manage them are outstanding.

7. A ton of other name finding tools. My last post generated some good ideas in the comments. Here are tools that people recommended:

• WordConstructor – This one is awesome. It comes up with short, catchy names with greater ease than any of the other tools I’ve found.
• OneLook – Dictionary that supports wildcards. Could be useful. There’s also a reverse dictionary.
• RhymeZone – This one also comes up with some surprisingly good made-up word.
• Whois Source – A smarter-than-average tool for domain name spinning.
• Nameboy – Enter two words and get suggestions. This one wasn’t as useful as some of the others, but I figured I’d add it here anyway

8. DomainsBot – I mentioned this one in the previous article, but since then they’ve pulled a few more tricks out of their sleeves. They now have a Lab where there are a few really cool tools.

• WordTrends – Plugin a couple words and see how often they are used in domain names.
• DomainStats – A couple interesting research papers on domain names. No charge to read them.
• SearchCloud – I found this one to be the most useful, type in some words and get a list of related words and available domains.
• SplitIt – Make sure your domain name will be interpreted how you hope it will be.
• Shadow – I didn’t try this one, but it’s a piece of software you download to crunch data to find good domains… let me know how it goes if you decide to test it.

So.. there you go, more tools for finding domains than you can shake a stick at. Enjoy.