Ask HN: Daily Available Startup Domain Names... Interested?

13 points by nbrochu 15 years ago | 13 comments

It may sound totally ridiculous but coming up with a name that has an available .com domain name is the part I despise the most about new projects. There is just something wrong with trying every single permutation at a domain registrar only to end up with a crappy, "settled for" name hours later. Naming tools kind of suck too in my opinion.

So, a month or two ago, I got fed up of this and decided to use my programming skills to tackle this problem. Using drop lists, algorithms and quite a few metrics, I finally managed to produce something that gives interesting and available .com domain names as results!

The daily quantity of both suitable and available domain names varies, but I generally get 20-40 without a problem.

To give you an idea, here is the list I generated yesterday:

arcticpack.com basetable.com bashtracker.com bulletstocks.com campusrally.com carbongenie.com chilltree.com codesmell.com crowdcome.com earthunit.com extrasmiles.com fiberoasis.com filmshout.com foxyflyer.com gatorhire.com geekimpact.com goodprog.com mailshaker.com metafollow.com ownerfind.com phonemama.com calltap.com racerapp.com rubycoach.com snappyapp.com sourcefully.com stripspots.com targeteyes.com topicbased.com writerslate.com

Not the best I've seen (there are good and bad days!) but it sure beats looking at the 86000 domains expiring everyday, or even worse, trying your hand at coming up with something that isn't already taken. All of them where available yesterday and could still be right now... As a bonus, the names generally also give startup ideas! ;)

I'm imagining I was not alone having [domain] naming issues and am simply wondering if this is useful and/or interesting to anybody else. I can easily do it everyday if I get a good response. The important thing for me is to keep it in the startup/hacker community. I don't want the domainers/squatters on these too. I would also like ideas on how to potentially monetize this a bit if you have any. I was thinking of making a daily newsletter with the names and maybe sell 1-5 at a very reasonable price like 30-50$ or not selling names but charging a small yearly fee to get on the newsletter.

Anyhow, I'm waiting for your comments and ideas. Bonus points if you register a name from the list!

rada 15 years ago |

Sounds exactly like Dan Rubin's mailer from justdropped.com. His is free, you pay when you buy a domain name (usually in the $60-$200 range, sometimes more). The email comes out daily, with about a couple dozen domains, quality very similar to your list.

My observation from being on that list for the last couple years: it seems like a great idea but nothing ever pans out. Just so you get an idea, a few examples of my targets: personal domain for a generic computer consultancy, budget around $300; publishing company e-reader, budget around $20k, friends' projects from yoga studio to nightclub to astronomy, budget around $100, etc. Criteria: relevant, easy to remember, easy to pronounce, no competitors in the same space... the usual.

Try it for yourself. Make a quick list of 10 real-world businesses. Then take a week's worth of your mailers, put yourself in a prospective owner's shoes, and try to match them up. I suspect you would see that it doesn't add much value. There are kinda sorta cool names on your list for sure, but nothing that a few friends over beers (or thesaurus.com) couldn't come up with in 15 minutes.

Sorry to be a downer... I very much agree that domain generators suck. A better offering would be killer.

Perhaps it's just not a "computer problem" (i.e. a repetitive task with well-defined parameters). I'd love to be wrong on this one.

nbrochu 15 years ago | |

I'm actually on Dan's newsletter too and though he seems to be doing quite good, I personally find his domains are overpriced for the quality. It feels to me like he is targeting the domainer market with the quality, but at prices that exclude bulk buyers like them.

I agree with your observation and realize I probably worded my post wrong. The idea is not for you to periodically watch the lists waiting for your perfect domain. That won't work. It is more to just casually browse it, and if one just screams at you, you get it at a reasonable price (< $50) or even at reg fee.

And about the quality of the names on my list, everything is relative. I try to focus more on a niche (startup/service/product/blog names) even though I have quite a few good names available in other markets too. If you are looking for something outside of what I'm listing, of course quality seems a little lower. Five names on my little sampler got registered in a few hours so I believe there is some sort of interest.

In my opinion, most domain name related problems truly cannot be solved with a programming approach. One that can, however, is extracting gems out of dropped and available domains. I'm not saying it's easy, but I plan on working on it!

rada 15 years ago | | |

His pricing appears to be fairly random. I recall seeing aftersixty.com which I thought was a potential goldmine, 60+ being a well-monied yet underserved community, and it was priced under $100. A couple months later, it was listed again, this time for over $1k if I remember. So he doesn't appear to use a pricing formula.

Anyway, best of luck with your project... hope to see a follow up post from you on here.

nbrochu 15 years ago |

Alright so I read the feedback and it seems there is at least a little bit of interest in this. Here is how I will proceed: I'll make a FREE daily newsletter you can sign up to using MailChimp (or some other good alternative... feel free to suggest) where I list the domains. I will most likely experiment with putting a small percentage of the names on the list for sale everyday and I guarantee prices will always be $50 and lower.

I will post a link to the signup form on this page and maybe also submit it as a new entry. Be on the lookout for it if you want in.

Oh and some more available names for you all :) Enjoy!

arcadehud.com backmaker.com barkmap.com beaminfo.com booktakers.com bubbleless.com cablezap.com clicksir.com clothi.com codecollect.com condovia.com connectmix.com coopsquad.com crowdlead.com discodeep.com duelpit.com echocoach.com flatside.com fluxplay.com gametrex.com gatespell.com hipstatus.com jamshell.com liveways.com mailslide.com marketsensor.com metastyles.com meterclicks.com patterndeck.com picacast.com pitchlove.com playsync.com presshack.com pushcamp.com reptable.com sheetstrip.com shieldset.com sleepmeter.com smartscaling.com springsites.com tagsmash.com talentlever.com torquefive.com travelgage.com wordables.com

juanito 15 years ago |

This is something that I would definitely subscribe to. The available names that you shared are pretty nice.

I do think that it would be hard to find people willing to pay for a list of available domain names, unless it were a very small amount, but even then you wouldn't likely have very many subscribers (and I think most would be domainers).

I think a way to monetize a free service/list like this would be to charge a fee for specific requests. Once you had established yourself as someone who could definitely come up with good names, I expect people would come to you, and you could charge to come up with a private list of available names for whatever their topic is.

antichaos 15 years ago |

I usually hunt for domain names _after_ an idea strikes my mind. So the signal noise ratio of your mailing list will probably be too low for my taste. Thanks for posting a sample of your findings, though!

nbrochu 15 years ago |

OK it has been a while but the newsletter is finally ready along with the website! I'll be surprised if anybody sees this comment but I did say I was going to post an update here.

You can subscribe and learn more at http://domainwhirl.com and can read the Show HN post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1761541

Enjoy!

callmeed 15 years ago |

It's a pretty good idea though I usually am able to find a decent name using bust a name.

I'd consider doing it woot/groupon style and just selling one a day. Based on your examples maybe categorize/tag them ("green" "travel" "hacky/geek" "mail" etc).

I personally wouldn't pay to be on a mailing list but I'd probably try and jump on a good one here and there.

imp 15 years ago |

Count me as interested. Whatever business model you end up with, it sounds like you can find decent names, which I would gladly pay a small premium for.

Since this post will fade away soon, you should set up a basic email list so that people here can at least follow what you plan to do.

skowmunk 15 years ago |

>>the names generally also give startup ideas! ;)

That was a good one!

The newsletter can work well as a brainstorming tool in coming up with names for ideas one may have.

It sure was tough to come up with names for some ideas that popped up a while ago.

patd 15 years ago |

I liked sourcefully.com and grabbed it to use as a place for my friend and I to deploy app ideas. Visit it in a couple of months, we may have something good on it :)

The list is really nice, I'm not sure if people would be willing to pay for this though.

harpastum 15 years ago |

I probably spend too much time picking up domain names and not enough creating the services to run on them already. That said, I'm working on getting codesmell.com :)

jleader 15 years ago |

I'm curious; what do you call people who are willing to pay for lists of potential domain names they could buy, if they're not "domainers"?