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Ask HN: Literal domain names

2 points by peteforde ↗ HN
We are in the process of naming our new company, and it's been frustrating. All of the usual tropes apply: names aren't cool until they are associated with success vs. the only people who say names aren't important are people who weren't able to secure a good name.

Of course, .com availability is a huge part of the equation. Luckily, we're not limiting ourselves to available domains; we're frugal but in my mind ten or twenty grand on a domain that helps with brand establishment and potential leverage with investors seems like a defensible expense in the grand scheme of things.

As it happens, we have the opportunity to buy the literal domain for our product category for $15k. For hopefully obvious reasons, I'm dodging mentioning the specific domain here.

My question to all of you is whether having a literal domain name is great, neutral, or negative?

Obviously there's a history of start-ups like pets.com being huge flameouts, but there are also newer companies like diapers.com and soap.com that are doing really well.

Some people love it and other people think it's boring, like we lack creativity. Let's say you're selling eggs, and you have the ability to register eggs.com or omeletto.com - which is the basis of a stronger brand?

I know naming shouldn't consume this many CPU cycles, but it's kind of driving us mental.

3 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 18.5 ms ] thread
noahc
There's a pretty good article by Seth Godin about this...

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/10/the_new_rule...

One thing to think about is how specific is it? recipes.com should be about recipes. yumit.com could be about anything that is yummy. "Hey, do you know any good vegan potluck ideas?"..."No, Just Yumit!"

Now, if you pivot and end up building something like a cat finder for eskimos...

"Hurry up, man! It's cold out here looking at all these cats free to a good home! You can just yumit when we get home"

It still works!

mikewilt
Is your company profitable now? Are you selling your product now? If not, you're just gonna burn an extra $15K out of the gate. I can think of MANY better uses for $15K than on a domain. Can't you?

I am a perfectionist so in theory I love the idea of getting the perfect domain name. In practice, I would urge you to register an original domain name (unless money is no object for you). The perfect domain is nice, but not essential. Do you really need pizza.com (sold $2.6 million in 2008) to sell pizza?

Two final comments:

- You will have leverage with investors when you're making money.

- Helpful guidelines for choosing a domain: see http://davidcummings.org/2010/05/29/the-domain-name-challeng... and http://davidcummings.org/2010/08/07/more-domain-name-searchi...

byoung2
As it happens, I work for a company that owns a portfolio of a few hundred thousand domain names, many of them single word categories. Some of the names do bring in a ton of traffic on their own, but the stickyness is up to you to create. $15,000 is way too much in my opinion. You could use that to make a much better app to retain the visitors who do find you with a quirky domain name.