How To Guarantee a .com Domain Name For Your Startup

Naming your company can take time and effort. You think you have an excellent name but afterward get frustrated and spend hours trying to find a domain that matches it.

Typically the brainstorming of the company name comes first – the tortured founder trying to find the perfect name. And that is important. But sometimes it is essential to choose an available domain name and then take the brand to market.

What if you reversed the process and came up with the URL before naming and branding the business? At TechRound we are constantly experimenting with different business ideas and know that securing a .com URL is important to rank well on Google.

We used to spend hours coming up with domain names and then individually putting them into godaddy to check if they were available. We decided to make this more systematic so that we could spend time building the businesses instead of coming up with names.

To make this easier we have built a spreadsheet that bulk-checks .com domain names to see their availability. If you want you could also check for .co.uk or .io domain names simultaneously.

Step 1 – Create A List Of Words Relevant To Your Business

We use the spreadsheet in a specific way, but you might find other ways to make it work. In this example let’s say you are creating a blog about finance. This is a simple example, but it will work for this situation. To start, I would look up words related to finance. You can either write down as many as you can or use a thesaurus. Recently we created a dog art website and used the same approach. we had list of words for dogs on one side and art on the other. Now back to the example.

Ok – let’s look at the list of words that we came up with.

Looking at this list of words there are some good options and some you might want to get rid of immediately. We’ll leave them all in for now.

2 – Make A Copy Of The Spreadsheet

We built an easy-to-use spreadsheet that you can add it to your google drive. It contains simple excel formulas that you could recreate yourself. It will ask you to make a copy of the spreadsheet and then this will add it to your google drive. You will be able to see the simple formula we used for the spreadsheet and might even have other ideas of where it can be used.

3 – Input Your Words

After step 1 you should have a list of words you can use for the URL.

When you open up the spreadsheet, you will see a list of example words that we have used for this exercise. Replace the words in columns B and C with the words that you have chosen. And then in cell ‘E3’ you can indicate what domain name you are interested in using. Some common endings include .com, .org, .co.uk, .net, .co. If you are creating a global brand, then we would suggest .com. If you’re a UK-based business, then you could choose .co.uk. This applies to other countries too.

I would start with one URL, but if you are thinking of going global or want to protect your domain name, then you could buy different endings.

4 – View Your Combinations

Once you’ve put in your words (maximum 15 in each column) you will get a list of 450 autogenerated domains in column G that looks like this:

There are extra sheets in the spreadsheet that are just calculations – these are ‘Combinations One’ and ‘Combination Two’ tabs. You can look at these sheets if you want and it will look like this:

5 – Bulk Check The Domains

The final step is to look through the list of domains that have been generated and check them through a bulk domain checker. We use GoDaddy bulk domain checker, but there are other options available. Before you register your domain make sure to take advantage of our GoDaddy discount code shown in step 8.

You can check up to 2,000 domains at once with GoDaddy if you log in to your account.

Copy the complete list of 450 domains in column G (if you used the maximum number of words) and paste them into the bulk checker.

6 – See What Is Available For Sale

From this list of 450 domains, I have found that 223 are available – a success! Taking a closer look, I can see that some of them are premium domains bought by someone else and they’re trying to sell them at a premium. If you have a specific domain in mind and have the money to buy it, you could sort the list by price from high to low. The most expensive domain on there is £52k and is for magazinecoin.com. Too steep for me!

Personally, I am happy with sorting from low to high in price and seeing what is available for £17.99 (or £4 with the referral code).

Luckily there are plenty of options available for £17.99.

7 – Decide Which Name To Use

After glancing through the available domains, I can see a number that would be good for a finance blog – www.capitaltabloid.com, www.bankingsheet.com, or even www.periodicalcapital.com. And that is just on the first page.

Look through the names and choose the ones you like. Create a short list and come back to them over the next couple of days to see what resonates.

8 – Buy The Domain

We have an affiliate link with GoDaddy and can get you a great deal on your domain – some of the domains are up to 77% off for the first year. Use our GoDaddy referral code to sign up now.

9 – Grow Your Business

Now that you’ve breezed past the naming part it is time to actually get to work and work on your business. Choosing a name is important but is also a way to avoid doing the work. Good luck!

How Else Can I Name My Company?

If you don’t like this direct-to-URL way of branding a product company, you could always work with a professional naming company. They might approach the brand differently but would also include this domain-checking process in generating their names. If you have a larger budget and are operating globally, this could be a good option.