Here's the process I use to come up with available domain names for my side-gigs, using things like colours, animals and rhymes to find something unique. These techniques can also help you with branding if you don't have budget for an agency entrepreneur how earn by blogging blog

I initially wrote this as a comment over on the Indiehackers community, and then it evolved into a blog post, but I think it's really useful for quickly picking a name and not becoming paralysed/disheartened by your favourites not being available as a .com.

 

• Only use .com and .io (or .app now, maybe), it simplifies things and they're cheap. Open domainr for quick and easy availability lookup. Domainr is cool because it'll also show you other domains that might suit your keyword too, like if your keyword is mydevportfolio, it'll suggest mydevportfol.io (full disclosure, that's my side project, feedback appreciated) 👍

• SEO is key, so my go-to to start off the process is often things like my[keyword].com, [keyword]hq.com, [keyword]central.com etc. If you're lucky, one of these will be available, but it's getting rarer nowadays. So we need to go deeper.

• Next, I'll look at synonyms. Open up thesaurus.com, type in your main keyword and see what comes back. This can be fed into the rest of the steps to find suitable variations.

• My next port of call is usually looking at [verb/adjective][keyword].domain. Some of my go-to adjectives are: fresh, sharp, open, free, hot. Some of my goto nouns are: spark, air, bounce, break, snap. Feel free to pop these into thesaurus too to find more.

• My next goto if I don't find a suitable one in the steps above us to get a bit creative with language. I'll open up Google translate and translate from English to Latin. Often Latin spits back decent words that don't make sense, but sound cool and can give a nice story to your brand. Put in your keyword and synonyms and see what comes back. This doesn't work all the time, but can spit out gems sometimes.

• If I still haven't found a name I'm happy with, I'll look to the animal kingdom. What emotion do you want a customer to associate with your brand? If its strength, why not use something like lion, bull, rhino, bear. If it's friendliness, try koala, kitten, puppy, panda. Figure out the emotion and then Google to find animals that best fit that. Once you have some to try, combine them with your keyword and/or a verb or noun. So [noun/adjective] [animal].domain. Freshpuppy.io, sparkbear.com. Or if it makes sense, mix up the animal with the keyword. Koalabooks.com, gorrilladesign.io etc. One of the advantages of this approach is it gives you ideas for logos that suit too.

• Colours. I have a blog post on how to "cheat" when picking a colour for your app, basically how to automatically inspire a certain emotion or action in a user. Use this to identify what colours might suit your business, and try inserting them instead of nouns/adejectives. Once you identify the base colour, Google different shades of that colour to get some ideas. Violetbooks.com. Limedesign.io.

• Rhyming. This can be handy to come up with double-barrel business names that rhyme. Pop open rhymer.com and type in your keyword. You'd be surprised what results you get back that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise!

 

And that's it. What do you think? Let me know if you have a better process, but that's mine for the moment.

I write about this type of thing a lot, and I'm currently trying to build profitable side-businesses as an indie developer. You can follow along over here.

Thanks!

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