Finding the Perfect Domain Name

Your perfect domain name has three attributes:

1. It bears a clear and obvious relationship to your niche
2. It is as short as possible and is made up of recognizable words not separated by hyphens
3. It has the .com extension.

Sometimes it seems when searching for an available domain name that all the good ones are taken (note that only one person or organization can own any one domain name) and, while this is true to an extent, sometimes it just takes a little imagination.

For example, I wanted a domain name that I could use as a case study for this training course.

So that I could show you how to point it to the web host's servers (and don't worry if you don't understand what that means; it will all become perfectly clear), build a website around it and turn it into a successful affiliate marketing business.

I decided to build it around coffee as it's something most people can relate to, either positively or negatively.

Now coffee is a very, very popular and competitive niche and most of the domain names related to coffee are already taken.

But, by thinking "outside the box", I came up with goldilockscoffee.com.

Why?

Because as well as being familiar with coffee, most people are familiar with the Goldilocks story and how she kept trying things until she found the one that was "just right".

So that's the story I can tell with this domain name.

Coffee beans, espresso coffee machines and other coffee-related products that result in coffee that's "just right".

Sometimes you can get a good domain by adding "best" to the front of something more obvious or "today" or "now" to the end of it.

Here's a great example:

Weight loss is one of the biggest and most profitable niches on the internet.

It can be targeted separately to men, women and children and it can be used to promote affiliate products for diets, lifestyle, exercise programs, home gym equipment and so on.

weightloss.com is of course long gone. It was registered in 1998!

bestweightloss.com and weightlosstoday.com are also taken.

But I checked while writing this and bestweightlosstoday.com was available.

I think that's a great domain name. A little longer than I'd like but absolutely right on point. "Best" tells people that they can expect product reviews that reveal why one product is best-of-breed and "today" tells people that the information is current.

In fact, I liked it so much that I registered it at Namecheap and will use it as a second case study during this training course. It cost me $9.76 for a year's registration.

So that's one way of finding the perfect domain name. Use your imagination and then try out whatever you come up with at Namecheap until you find one that's available.

But there are also websites that can help by making suggestions based on a seed word or phrase.

You can try Lean Domain Search. You can enter a term such as "weight loss" and it will find available domain names around that term. While free to use, if you click on a suggestion, it will offer to register the domain name and host your website at Blue Host. This is not recommended. In fact, I always recommend that you host your domain name and web site at different registrars. There are good reasons for this and I'll cover them further on in this training.

For now, if you find a domain name you want, please register it at Namecheap. We'll cover getting your website's host later.

You could also try Nameboy. It works quite well, but does ask for a Captcha and pushes Blue Host at you fairly aggressively. You just have to be strong and resist!

Outcomes

At the end of this lesson, you should have found an available dot com domain name that will work well with your chosen niche.