How do you come up with a product name / domain?
Hey indiehackers,
do you have a method or know of any tools to come up with a product/domain name?
I've spent too much time on this in the past, and it's kinda annoying, because I'd rather spend that time on building the product.
ty
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I just look at my Product Categorie and then take a word that is in any combination to what my product does. A great example for this is the Fitnessapp named sweat, it is something that has to do with Fitness. So if you only hear Sweat you think of hard work, excercises and so on, perfect Fitnessapp name.
For more uniqunes choose a word that is not used that many times, so you have a chance to be ranked higher.
Now you probably have the problem, that the word is already taken on all toplevel domains, so just look if your word ends with letters that are also a domain ending. For Example the Company Linktree's domain is Linktr.ee. If thats not what you want to do you can also just place a usemydomain.com or mydomainapp.com. Or just use an not so popular Domain ending like .app/.xyz/.co
If you still not creative enough to find a name, get inspired on https://looka.com/business-name-generator or https://namelix.com/
Thanks
I have a few step process.
Let's use an example. You have a tool that uses AI to make music. You need a name.
Go for the literal. What does your tool do. Makes music. So call it MusicMaker. Check the .com.
Words surrounding your niche. What are words related to that niche? Music, Sound, Soundtrack, Instruments, beauty. Notes, Ears. Combine those works. SoundMaker. EarNotes.
Two Random Words. Pick two things you like. Fruit. the Moon. Combine them. Grapefruit Moon. Strawberry Moon. Moon Grass. Moon Butter.
Pick an animal mascot. Cat. MusicCat. NoteCat. MoonCat.
Blend Words. Music + Maker = Musaker. AI + Sound is AIhound. Be careful here people need to be able to spell and pronounce.
Think of how you want it to feel. Friendly feeling? Handshake. Exclusive? Club. MusicClub. HandshakeMusic
Then take all those ideas and plug them into the various domain websites out there.
It may not be type of answer you're looking for. But if you're having hard time picking the name, I'd suggest skipping branding stage, picking random name and focusing on the product itself. After you validate the idea it makes sense to come back to the naming topic.
If people really want your product, even .xyz domain won't stop them
not a full naming tip but I always like to start with .com filter on google domains.
Paul graham has an essay explaining why .com matters
http://paulgraham.com/name.html
It should be important to note that these thoughts may be valid for US market, but not necessarily for other markets. In Europe it may not be such a big thing whether company has .com or not
That essay is from 2015, a lot have changed since then, just look at linktr.ee and notion.so
Notion .so is actually a TLD controlled by the government of Somalia. This has caused them an outage in the past: https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/notion-domain-dns-problems. Some corporate networks and VPNs also automatically block anything using .so: https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/f6x9mk/why_the_so_domain/
If you're gonna be using Country Code TLD make sure to consider which country it is and factor that into your decisions. That country will have control of the nameserver for that TLD, which means they will have control of your domain.
There's also a risk in buying super cheap TLDs frequently used by spammers like .xyz. Some email hosting providers might decide to send your emails straight into spam because of your TLD.
Well VCbackME.com was originally VCvsME.com until I was told by a VC that they didn't think other VC's would like the name "vs" being too adversarial. So I changed it.
Coming up with domains name ideas is pretty easy for me. I just play around with the lexicon and see what sounds good. I've never paid for a domain, and can't imagine doing so for a startup - unless it's already making good money or has investors and it's an investment asset.
I feel your pain, I'm in the same process now. I tend to avoid anything that's too literal and opt for short, cool-sounding words.
I think you have to take a step back and think about what it is that you are trying to create and what your app will actually do. Honestly, I don't think its bad to dedicate a good amount of time coming up with a name. The more sophisticated the thing you are building, the more time you probably need to mull over what its name should actually be. The more specific your app is, the more specific I think the name should be. Just my two cents.
Tell me about!!! I usually brainstorm, and try to come up with something simple and memorable. Then either the domain, or social handles or all are taken 😞
I have become quite the pro, let me know if you need any help.
I am building a product to easily analyze data from database without even writing an sql script. Hence the name - easyDBase - easydbase.herokuapp.com haha..xD
I'm building a tool for your audience to ask you anything, So the name and domain is just "Ask Me Anything" and "https://askmeanything.cc" 🤣
I usually go to namelix and start generating names, then i look if the domain is available and if not i make small modifications to the name. That is how we ended up with hubalz.com, we were struggling to find a proper name for literal months but then it finally clicked while browsing namelix
I have a free newsletter simplifying crypto at theCoinCept.com. Can relate with you. Took me almost 2-3 weeks for the name.
Crypto Coins + Concepts = coincept
Ask Indiehackers :)
For real, I just straight up asked for naming suggestions, had a lot of fun and got some great tips (here is the post: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/help-me-re-name-my-indiehacking-project-5034d148dc)
I've used the websites below:
https://namechk.com
https://wordoid.com
https://leandomainsearch.com
As @oecmonocle says, just find one even temporarily and start asap. No time to spend your valuable time :) Good luck!
I've used https://namelix.com in the past. It claims to use AI to generate names based on some seed words. Every 1/10 there is an ok one in there. Really, a name isn't worth getting hung up on. Just start building and assessing product market fit. You can always change the name later.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
This comment was deleted a year ago.