Brand name, .com is taken (parked)

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kox33

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Hello. I need to come up with a brand name for my product. I like one name, let's say the name is Word1Word2 . There's only one problem, the .com is taken, there's nothing there and it redirects to another parked domain. Other than that, I saw no trace of Word1Word2 combination on Google, (except a nickname on some forum, but that's insignificant). I have no idea how much would I need to pay for the .com and I have little money, like $200 for everything (but even $30 would suffice if everything goes nice). I plan to just buy .net, so it would be word1word2.net and in case my product was successful, I would buy .com later and set a redirect to .net. Same for my product website itself, myproduct.com was taken, so I bought myproduct.net. What do you think, is it a good plan? There's another option, I could register word1-word2.com, but I don't like domains with - in them.

Btw. What about trademarks, is it like if I'm the first to use a name, then I automatically own it and can win in case someone wants to use that exact name in the future. For example if I start using the name, and at some point later someone decide to register the name as a trademark, could he win? I live in EU.
Also I saw something strange, there are 2 websites in the same niche, one named word3-word4.com, the other word3word4.com, same niche, almost same name and they somehow coexist. How is it possible?
 
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I don't see lot of .co domains. Now I'm also wondering about .io domains. There seems to be a trend with software oriented businesses to use .io domains, but they are so much more expensive to register, than .com or .net. If I register .io for my brand name, then I should also register .io for my product. I don't know if it's worth it.
 
If I was you, I would write the domain owner of the .com domain now.
Even if it is whois protected, you can contact him, just you won't see the email. He may sell you the domain for $30. But once you establish a brand name and a business around it, be sure that you won't get the .com domain for a cheap buck...
 
abdurrakib said:
to me .co extension looks more brandable than .net.
Click to expand...

Unless you're operating in an industry where the average consumer is fairly Internet-savvy, having a .co domain extension is a complete nightmare that I wouldn't recommend to my worst enemy. Due to the similarity between .com and .co, and the vast majority of people being used to .com's, it's virtually impossible to get people to remember that your TLD is .co and you'd end up sending tons of traffic away to the parked .com site (until it's no longer parked and you're sending it to some other business).

As for using a .net - I personally think it's fine however very far from ideal. My own plan of action in a situation like this (and I've been in this situation several times over) is something along the lines of:

1. Try very hard to brain storm another name that has the .com available. Sometimes when stuck I've found brand and domain 'competition' sites like Squadhelp and the likes helpful. While doing that you need to try your best to forget about your existing 'commitment' to that first name - we all have this, but in reality the 2nd and 3rd option that you come up with are often actually better, just don't seem so. Ask for other (unbiased) people's opinion by giving them several names to compare and you might be surprised as often your first and 'best' pick doesn't end up being the most popular one.

2. If not successful, try my best to secure the .com. If it's a name that's likely to be fairly unpopular, check the expiry date as well in hopes that it will just become available.

3. As the very last resort, go with the .net and as you said yourself - plan on acquiring the .com at a later date.
 
Thanks for your answers. Now I found out that the domain itself is parked on godaddy. When I click purchase the domain, I get this: http://postimg.org/image/bxzec6uj1/
I'm confused about the prices there, it says: "279zł (which is about $70) per domain, plus commission", What does it mean, does it have anything to do with what the actual domain price can be, does it mean that they will try to make the owner sell it to me for 70usd? and what about the second part: " when you register for 2 years or more, 1st year price 9.99zł, additional years 52.99zł" . I don't know if this has anything to do with buying this domain.

In case I want to buy it from the owner, should I contact him directly or use godaddy? Should I propose the price right away or should I ask him how much he wants for this domain?

The .com was registered on 2012, it seems unlikely that the owner will let it expire and unlikely he will want to sell it for $30.

Maybe I should just forget about .com and go with .io. Is .com really that important? It's pretty popular now and easily distinguishable from .com .

I'm also wondering about my product website, maybe there's no point to have a brand website and product website, if there's only one product (for now). Maybe I should create a subdomain, like myproduct.mybrand.tld This solves a problem, because myproduct.com is taken (some garbage website) and I have registered myproduct.net. Now if I go with .io for brand, then I should register .io for my product to avoid confusion (or if I acquire .com for brand, then I should acquire .com for product) , unless my product is on subdomain of my brand. There's also a killer domain like my.product available for sale, but it costs over $600 so it's way above my budget.
 
kox33 said:
Thanks for your answers. Now I found out that the domain itself is parked on godaddy. When I click purchase the domain, I get this: http://postimg.org/image/bxzec6uj1/
I'm confused about the prices there, it says: "279zł (which is about $70) per domain, plus commission", What does it mean, does it have anything to do with what the actual domain price can be, does it mean that they will try to make the owner sell it to me for 70usd? and what about the second part: " when you register for 2 years or more, 1st year price 9.99zł, additional years 52.99zł" . I don't know if this has anything to do with buying this domain.

In case I want to buy it from the owner, should I contact him directly or use godaddy? Should I propose the price right away or should I ask him how much he wants for this domain?

The .com was registered on 2012, it seems unlikely that the owner will let it expire and unlikely he will want to sell it for $30.

Maybe I should just forget about .com and go with .io. Is .com really that important? It's pretty popular now and easily distinguishable from .com .

I'm also wondering about my product website, maybe there's no point to have a brand website and product website, if there's only one product (for now). Maybe I should create a subdomain, like myproduct.mybrand.tld This solves a problem, because myproduct.com is taken (some garbage website) and I have registered myproduct.net. Now if I go with .io for brand, then I should register .io for my product to avoid confusion (or if I acquire .com for brand, then I should acquire .com for product) , unless my product is on subdomain of my brand. There's also a killer domain like my.product available for sale, but it costs over $600 so it's way above my budget.
Click to expand...

If you can "WHOis" search the owner and contact them yourself, then you will save money without paying the commission. As far as the importance of a .COM, that is a bit of a debate with thousands of new domain extensions now being released. My best suggestion depends on what you are using the site for, if it is more of a eCommerce site where you want to build trust for incoming new buyers, go with a .com, only because that is what most people are used to. But in a few years that really wont make much of a difference. As far as the search engines are concerned, there is no difference between any of the domain extension, or even sub-domains. And the new study's are showing that the new gTLD's are starting to out "Keyword" the .COM's on search results, but I think it will be a while before hard core .Com'mers come to grip with that.

Build a good site, a good brand name, a good SEO campaign and you will see results. Look at google, or ebay, or zillow, none of those names really represent what the sites offer.

Best of luck, and Regards,
 
Thanks. I will need a few days to think this over. Maybe I will come up with better name that isn't taken. In the meantime I will contact the owner and ask how much he would want for the domain. As a last resort I will buy .net and .io .
 
A good resource to check your brand names before you purchase is knowem.com. Try your desired brand name and it will show available as a domain and across all major social networks and web2.0s. If you are serious about branding you will want to secure the name across as many of these as possible.
 
kox33 said:
Hello. I need to come up with a brand name for my product. I like one name, let's say the name is Word1Word2 . There's only one problem, the .com is taken, there's nothing there and it redirects to another parked domain. Other than that, I saw no trace of Word1Word2 combination on Google, (except a nickname on some forum, but that's insignificant). I have no idea how much would I need to pay for the .com and I have little money, like $200 for everything (but even $30 would suffice if everything goes nice). I plan to just buy .net, so it would be word1word2.net and in case my product was successful, I would buy .com later and set a redirect to .net. Same for my product website itself, myproduct.com was taken, so I bought myproduct.net. What do you think, is it a good plan? There's another option, I could register word1-word2.com, but I don't like domains with - in them.

Btw. What about trademarks, is it like if I'm the first to use a name, then I automatically own it and can win in case someone wants to use that exact name in the future. For example if I start using the name, and at some point later someone decide to register the name as a trademark, could he win? I live in EU.
Also I saw something strange, there are 2 websites in the same niche, one named word3-word4.com, the other word3word4.com, same niche, almost same name and they somehow coexist. How is it possible?
Click to expand...

take a .org or .net or add a 1 or something
 
@refexpert Thanks, it saves some time. Of course I'm looking only for brand names that haven't been in use at all and I check social accounts, but this tool will save me some time.

I'm still thinking about previous name, I hadn't come up with anything better yet. I think I'm gonna contact the owner. Have you got any tips on buying domains? Negotiatiation etc. I searched for it on bhw, but I got nothing related, maybe I was using wrong keywords.
And how to make a deal without getting screwed over? I should use something like escrow, right? The problem is the initial fee is $25 which is rather a large part of domain's worth.
 
kox33 said:
@refexpert Thanks, it saves some time. Of course I'm looking only for brand names that haven't been in use at all and I check social accounts, but this tool will save me some time.

I'm still thinking about previous name, I hadn't come up with anything better yet. I think I'm gonna contact the owner. Have you got any tips on buying domains? Negotiatiation etc. I searched for it on bhw, but I got nothing related, maybe I was using wrong keywords.
And how to make a deal without getting screwed over? I should use something like escrow, right? The problem is the initial fee is $25 which is rather a large part of domain's worth.
Click to expand...

You could try using a domain buying service, but I've never tried one myself. I've always dealth with the seller directly when I've had to acquire an owned domain name. Either I pay after the domain is pushed to my account or I pay half upfront and half after (the latter one being far shittier an option).

And yeah, if the sum is big enough, you'll want to use escrow.

Though I gotta ask, can you add a word to the domain? I usually manage to solve my domain problems by adding a word that suits it (doesn't work for long domains naturally). For example my Finnish ad agency's .com name was already taken, but I simply added a word (in this case agency) to it. Still sounds good.
 
How about .me or .io. It's widely being used nowadays, especially in the Tech Startup world.

You could also try adding a word as a prefix to your brand name, like what Pocket (app) does. No way they were getting pocket.com, so they went with getpocket.com.
 
I'd rather come up with a new name than add a word, I like this name because it's pretty short and one word in it is pretty rarely used. I'm trying to replace the other word, but I can't come up with synoymyms, I looked at thesaurus and it seems the word cannot be replaced that easily.
I actually love .io and even would like to have it as main extension, but still .com would be needed as a redirect. And that's what I'm going to do, if I can't acquire .com now and can't come up with better name, then I'm going to register net and io, and later if business was successful, I would buy the .com. This brings me to another question. The owner of a name is the person who first starts using it, right? If I first start using the name, and then at some point the .com domain owner wanted to use that name too, would he be able to, because he registered .com first, or he wouldn't, because I was the first to start using this name?
 
^ That could turn into an ugly legal battle down the line. I mean, if he ends up wanting to use it too, could be lawsuits involved if it becomes such a successful business.
 
I would not second this opinion. .COM is, and always will be, the king of the internet. It is also much easier to rank a .com domain than any other extension (speaking from personal experience).
Do your best to get the .com name, or buy another .com domain. Don't fall for a hype with new extensions...

The Nix said:
How about .me or .io. It's widely being used nowadays, especially in the Tech Startup world.

You could also try adding a word as a prefix to your brand name, like what Pocket (app) does. No way they were getting pocket.com, so they went with getpocket.com.
Click to expand...
 
^^ I have very little experience, but I think it's fine to have a domain name other .com if it's relevant to service provided and you own the .com too. Look at envato for example. Internet is just around for like what, 20 years, a lot an change, even in 10 years, especially since so much .coms are already taken.
Btw. I did a reverse whois on the guy (his email) and he owns 120+ domains. Considering that he bought the domain on May 2012, what could be a fair price for this domain?
Edit: What do you think of prefixing domain with 'the'? It is what facebook did initially, isn't it? But then how do I call my brand, with the or w/o the?
 
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I tried to come up with some other names, but still I like this one the best. So I figured out I will do what fiverr did, just double the last letter.
 
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