Whether you own a full-online business, online-offline hybrid business or brick-and-mortar business going marketing online, you ought to have a website with a great domain name.

You can’t simply slap any domain names to your web hosting account to set up a company website. Even good domain name is not enough – you need great domain name. Why?

Your website’s domain name = your brand online

I can’t believe the fact that people are still not taking a domain name seriously.

Your website’s domain name is your brand identity online. You wouldn’t go for UglyAndSloppyBrand.com for your state-of-the-art gadgets, would you, unless you want to go for catchy but risky anti-marketing campaign.

Your chosen domain name will stick to your business, whether yours is online, off line, or both. Changing your domain name later is like changing your brand name later – almost impossible, in term of time, cost and opportunity loss in building on a wrong brand name.

So, choose yours carefully and wisely.

New or old domain names?

Many recommend old domain names, as they are more easily ranked by the search engines. Moreover, your desired domain names are probably already registered by others.

The main drawback of old domain names is this: You need to do some background checks before deciding on acquiring one – Was it involved in illegal activities? Was it banned by the search engines? No worries, you can do so by visiting The WayBackMachine by Archive.org.

New domain names, in the other hand, are cheaper to register and you are allowed to start from scratch – this is the case with Noobpreneur.com.

In my opinion, websites built on newly registered domain names are more valuable than old ones. I don’t generally value websites built on old domain names with previous history and various owners higher than the ones built from scratch from brand new domain names.

Free resources to help you choose a great domain name for your business

First, you can refer to Noobpreneur.com for issues surrounding domain name for your business.

From my previous posts, you can learn what to look for in a domain name and where to look for it.

Here are the free domain name suggestion online tools – for new, unregistered, domain names – I recommend you to choose new domain names for your business:

1. AptDomain.name
   Thumbs-up: You can get domain name suggestion from multiple languages.
   Thumbs-down: Although highly customisable, the options are a bit confusing, especially for new user.

2. Whois.ws
   Thumbs-up: Simple, conventional, straightforward.
   Thumbs-down: The suggested domain name could be better – you have to search multiple times to look for the obvious name you want.

3. NameTumbler.com
   Thumbs-up: Probably the best so far (for me) – Great domain name suggestions, with easy to use options – surprisingly lots of domain names to choose.
   Thumbs-down: Not exploring multiple keywords combination (i.e. You have to manually look for the availability of UglyAndSloppyBrand.com and SloppyAndUglyBrand.com)

Please add to the list by leaving your comments below :)

Ivan Widjaya
Domain name search
Image by svilen001.

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