I just spent thirty minutes playing with blog name generators, trying to come up with some cool (and available) domain ideas. I was not impressed. The reason I did this is because I wanted to be able to suggest one my readers could use if they end up following my blogging guide. I figured the algorithms or A.I. or whatever powers these blog title generator thingies would’ve been pretty good by now. I figured wrong. If you’re starting a new blog, read on for a better way to find a winning blog name.
NEXT: How I Make Money Blogging From Places Like This
First, let me point out why blog name generators are worthless. Maybe even harmful. Say you wanted to create a blog like mine. So you go and you Google “blog name generator.” You click on one of the top results. It tells you to enter a keyword. So you type in “millionaire” and hit search. It spits out a bunch of ideas. Millionaire Backpack, Millionaire Outpost, Millionaire Nifty, Millionaire Boomerang, and so on.
Ninety-nine percent of them make no sense for the direction you wanna take your blog. They’re just tacking on random words—to “millionaire,” in this case—to create some dot coms that are actually open. Depending on the blog name generator, it may even suggest non-dot coms: dot net, dot info, dot blog, etc. Question. When’s the last time you visited a dot info site? Exactly. I would strongly recommend you stick with a dot com.
But hey, good news, Millionaire Backpack dot com’s not taken, and maybe that could work. You could play up the whole digital nomad thing, right? “My quest to make seven figures traveling the world, working out of my backpack.” Well, here’s the problem. It’s like a millionty characters long. So long you could jump rope with it. Nother question. Of all the websites you use on the regular, what’s the average domain length?
- UFC.com
- TMZ.com
- ESPN.com
- Apple.com
- Google.com
- Twitter.com
- Amazon.com
- YouTube.com
- Facebook.com
- Wikipedia.com
- Instagram.com
You see what I’m getting at. Real brands are short and sweet. In most cases, one word; occasionally two. Their domains are almost always ten characters or less. Granted, your mommy blog or travel blog or personal finance blog isn’t going to be a billion dollar company. You can make some mistakes. You don’t have to be perfect. You can get away with a less-than-ideal blog name. But I cringe when I see these three-word, eighteen-character domains being used.
People aren’t gonna remember that. No big media company’s gonna wanna buy you out for ten million bucks one day with a domain like that. So what’s the solution? Especially when you don’t have six figures to buy the perfect one-word domain from some nincompoop who was smart enough to register it fifteen years ago? I have two workarounds. Both are hiding in plain sight, right here on this page.
The first is to use an acronym. UFC: Ultimate Fighting Championship. Find a group of letters—that look good together—that stand for your tagline or mission or whatever. Just make sure it doesn’t already stand for something else. The second strategy is to come up with an intentional misspelling, as long as it looks and reads the right way. Obviously, that’s what I’ve done here, using Millyuns instead of Millions.
Years later, I don’t regret my decision at all. One word. Dot com. Eight characters. I could be wrong, but I don’t think anyone’s confused as to how you say it. And it’s a nice little brand. Super sellable one day, if I decide to go that route. For now, I’m content talking about what I love and printing money though. Anyways. Hope that saves you some domain remorse.
