I had the domain beezway.com for a while now, even if it didn't have a real purpose. I didn't exactly know how to put it to use, but it was available and it was cool, so I took it anyway. Now that the blog is taking shape and I am starting to see this as a possible new venture, it is about time to start using the domain for what it is supposed to do. Now you can find my blog at blog.beezway.com and a simple welcome page at www.beezway.com. I will take the occasion to share some tips with you regarding domain names.

I spent hundreds of hours both personally and professionally researching domain names and creating new brands, so I wanted to share some cool tips, which will help you choose or discover your next domain or even create a new on-line brand. So here it comes:

The definitive how-to guide for start-up on-line branding.

I will focus mostly on the idea that you don't have a brand yet. If you are building an on-line company or if you want to have a cool new business, you really want to have a nice domain name. I could even bet, that today it is a good idea to start off with a good domain and build a brand around it.

Domain real estate is getting scarce this days and good domains are really hard to find. So what are my criteria for choosing a good domain name and create good on-line branding:

• It has to be a .com ( unles you are building a local start-up, than use your country domain )
• 12 or less characters ( google-6, amazon-6, yahoo-5, bing-4 etc)
• no hyphens ( how would goo-gle.com look like? )
• it has to be available for registration ( paying thousands of euros/dollars for a domain is not an option )
• It has to be easy to remember and to spell ( imagine hkwrkly.com ?! - not an option )
• Optional variation of .net and .org can be handy to have

And here are some cool alternative tips for web 2.0 domains if your favorite domain is taken:

• It may have alternative domain endings if it is coherent with the brand ( example: visual.ly )
• you can skip letters if you feel like it ( example: flickr.com )
• you can search for creative endings in -r ( example: thumblr.com, theflowr.com )

And now let's bust some domain name myths:

• Not even the best domain name will bring you instant recognition
• Betting your SEO strategy on keyword based domain names is a bad idea
• Don't steal local domain names of established companies, they will get them sooner or later without paying you big bucks for them. If you feel the need try to be at least creative about it ( for example pep.si )

So now that we know what we are looking for it is time to start looking. First start off by defining your business, what will you do, what is your core business all about. The best way to do it, is to brake your business into meaningful keywords. Just start with the most obvious ones and work your way from there. I will show you how I did it for beezway.com:

I started off by making a list of business related keywords, you can do it in any spreadsheet application, if you want to be collaborative I recommend using Google Docs or Zoho Docs. My list contained words like business, work, job, enterprise etc. But those are the most common ones and I knew it would be very hard to find any domain containing those words and it is hard to come up with great ideas unless you are an english teacher, or is it. When searching for some words inspiration, there are a couple of handy and free tools you can use, my favorite is Thesaurus.com which will help you find synonyms and antonyms, here it is for "business":

Now I have many new words to work with and as you can see I went for "biz". But there were so many domains containing "biz-something" that I needed another twist on the subject. Because "biz" sounds a little bit like "bees" and because I like honey, well it was an easy choice, "beez" it is. Off course bees.com was already taken, so it was time to use the final weapon in my arsenal, it was time to bring two words together in a meaningful way. To do this I use domain discovery tools like bustaname.com ( my favorite ),  domainit.com, nametumbler.com ( also very nice ), namestation.com etc. By using those free services you are able to mix and remix your chosen keywords to find a free to register domain name.

Once you have found your super cool domain name with less than 12 characters, no hyphens, available in .com, .net and .org, and easy to remember ( eg. beezway.com ), there is a last step you should take to secure your future investment - check your local or global trademark authorities to make sure that no one registered your brand yet. This step may cost you serious money, but if you are serious about your start-up you should really do it. You can make free checks on the US patent and trademark office for the US and the European trade marks office. If you are lucky you will not find any record.

Finally you are ready to register your domain, so you should create an account with a domain name registration companies. I suggest you choose a good one and if you are registering a domain for yourself money should not be a question, so don't look just for the lowest price or you could have troubles later on when your domain is worth millions. I always opted for big established companies, my favorite so far is enom.com, which never disappointed me.

Top tip for lazy people:
If you don't have the time to create your own domain / brand, you can find thousands of domains which were once already registered and are now free for you to take, because someone didn't renew them, just use some cool service like deleted-domains.com or justdropped.com.

Still if you really want a top domain name and you are ready to pay a few thousands for it, just head for afternic.com or a similar escrow domain service.

And good luck!

If this post helped you in any way to create find or discover your next super cool domain name, please leave a comment.