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Startup: Would you pay a small fee to locate a great domain name?

4 points by takeaction ↗ HN
I just had this idea since a lot of my friends seek my guidance when it comes to choosing a domain name for their venture.

$100 flat fee and I send you 5 to 10 quality domains related to your desired keywords, characters etc. Thoughts?

Thanks!

9 comments

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takeaction
I've come across a lot of people who find it stressful and time consuming finding the right name.
motoford
I think it would probably be worth something, not sure about $100. But I see the biggest problem is trust. I would be afraid you would send me the top 3-12 instead of the top 1-10 that you found.
snaveint
I think the issue you will face is agreeing on whether or not you have sent "quality" names.

I wouldn't pay for a service which is based on a flat fee unless there was some quality guarantee.

ohashi
'Quality' is the issue, I agree. Especially with domains and branding, beauty is often in the eye of the beholder. What you think may be awesome may not appeal to everyone (or anyone!)
kingofspain
I gave a similar thing a whirl some time back. The fee was around the same I think but the first few people to sign up got a big discount (I was one). The names that came back were a bit underwhelming. From what I can remember it was a bit [keyword]box.com, [keyword]hq.com, go[keyword].com etc etc. Stuff that implied not a lot of effort had been put into it.

Now, sometimes those domains work well, but I'd like a bit of variation and thought put into it. Not something I can unimaginatively test out myself in 2 minutes.

However, for $100, is it worth your time?

deepkut
Probably not, but maybe I would if I ever made profit on that domain. I think the upfront $100 cost is too much.
molsongolden
http://stylate.com/ has been doing a sort of similar thing for a few months now.

Between that and things like www.leandomainsearch.com I'm not really sure if an opportunity exists.

KoryFerbet
I believe there may be a service there, but it would require more than "here are five domains that I think are quality". You would need some sort of statistical analysis or metrics behind it. What are the advantages/disadvantages of choosing this domain over this one, what are the things that attract customers into being more likely to click on this domain vs that domain, etc...

Not to mention, that as things like Twitter get more and more popular domain names tend to get pushed more into shortened urls where domain name isn't shown.