Domain name

No it does not have to be .com it is your choice.

Company with chosen name – I would guess it depends what they do and whether their name is registered

I would avoid any confusion with existing companies. It’s a two way street if you use the same name. Your customers may land up there, or theirs at your site. Even though they may not have an active web presence they may already have registered the domains so check.

I’d advise going with a short memorable name that is descriptive of what the site is about. It’s not a hard and fast rule but it helps to get noticed and searched. The only reason to get a dot.com is that it is the first choice.

If you are planning a local business then I would say to use your own country domain. If you are just trying to get the name you insist on I would say it may work against you if you register some far off country domain just to get the name.

Think of what the buyer would expect to find the name of your site as and register that. Your domain is your calling card to customers. You can use a catchy domain but have your name on your site. No rules against that as long as it isn’t confusing to the visitor.

Jo

I would just keep coming up with various options that aren’t registered and then choose between them.

I couldn’t believe no one had registered StockyImage. There is a StockyImages.com though. I wanted PixelPerfect but that was taken. It took me half a day of trying variations and domain names till I decided on mine.

Personally I am against very long domains. I know people like them but people have a short attention span. So StockyImage.com is far easier to remember and to verbally repeat than photography.jorodrigues.com

Some people use REALLY long domain names. It just leads to more and more likelihood of incorrect spelling.

I also STRONGLY recommend against using H@©K3R type names. It’s too hard for people to remember correctly. Similarly I avoid using non numerical or alpha characters. People will forget that it is My-Site.com and not MySite.com

Domain names these days (with most taken on dot.com) is about catchy or memorable than the actual names. If you can come up with a nice catchy one it will work in your favour over a long one with your name in it unless you are famous of course 🙂

Jo

@jorodrigues wrote:

I couldn’t believe no one had registered StockyImage. There is a StockyImages.com though.
Jo

That’s like my experience too, Jo. I went looking for something like naturestock.com or naturephotos.com, but of course both were taken, as were others I had in mind. But by playing around, I discovered bestnaturestock.com was available, so I grabbed it.

Sometimes, you just luck out.

another factor to remember is that most people will find you thru your images, not your domain, unless you plan to do a lot of print & tv advertising. domain names themselves are less important than they were 10 years ago – consider pond5, dreamstime. eg

@cascoly wrote:

another factor to remember is that most people will find you thru your images, not your domain, unless you plan to do a lot of print & tv advertising. domain names themselves are less important than they were 10 years ago – consider pond5, dreamstime. eg

Examples are names that have nothing to do with the business, but we can find many people associating them with a particular site: Google? Yahoo? Bing? Amazom? Zoosk?

Sure having the name stock or photo or what you do, in the name makes sense, but it’s not absolutely necessary.

Also if checking for .com, .net and .org registration, WHOIS.COM is a pretty reliable source.

Also consider hyphens in a name. It used to be a debate if they were searched, ignored or a buried, not to being found at all. That’s been resolved. They should be about the same as an all character name. One site claims they have an advantage.