How I Nabbed The .Com for My Bootstrapped Startup Without Spending a Million Bucks

Have you read those “here’s how we got the .com” sagas?

Like the one Jason Fried recently published about buying hey.com. Or the classic tale of how Noah Kagan spent over ONE MILLION FREAKIN DOLLARS on sumo.com.

While these tales are impressive, I did NOT want to be one of those stories!

When I was doing the name research for my new startup, I wanted to make sure I could nab the .com right from launch day, without having to spend a million bucks in the process.

I did that by using a counterintuitive process that I’ve never seen anyone talk about. And you can use the same process to make sure you never get stuck bidding for an expensive .com after you’ve launched.

Most people go about naming their startup absolutely BACKWARDS.

Here’s the usual course of events: you come up with a ton of names, do a bunch of research, then narrow it down to a winner that you’ve fallen in love with.

THEN you start searching for domains based on the name you’ve chosen (can you get name.io? name.co? or maybe one of those domains where the extension becomes part of the part.ofthe.name?)

This is exactly how you fall into the trap of spending six figures (or more!) on the .com of your dreams.

But there IS another way.

Start with the .com, NOT the brand.

Here’s the step-by-step process to to grab a branded, (sort of) affordable .com right from launch day.

Step 1: Set Your Budget

OK, I know what you’re thinking: well this article is dumb, because no good .com’s are still available.

You would be right about that in the sense that no good .com’s are unregistered. But there are plenty of excellent .com’s that are available for sale.

The cheapest you can go for a decent .com is about $250. I set my budget at $2,000. I haven’t raised money for my new startup, but I am funding it with my own profits from my other business, MeetEdgar. (Which is exactly how I bootstrapped MeetEdgar as well.) I believe that a great, memorable .com brand is well worth a few thousand.

My $2,000 budget was plenty to have a lot of excellent domains to choose from (and remember, you may be able to negotiate below “sticker price”). I searched for domains with a published price of $2,000 or less so that I knew for certain I’d be able to get the domain for that price.

Step 2: Brainstorm Your “Branded” Words

OK, before we get here we have to take a little detour to what I personally believe makes a great startup name.

Here are some current naming trends that I think absolutely suck:

• Common object/word name. This one is SO POPULAR right now. Examples include Clubhouse (wait, do you mean the voice chat app or the project management tool?) Spoke, Blush, Finder (how the hell is anyone going to be able to “find” finder??) and about a million others because I just grabbed those from a recent producthunt search. They are hard (or impossible) to google, there are already a bunch of other things with the same name, and the .com is usually ridonkulously expensive. NO THANK YOU.
• Common sounds to make up a new word: This is better than the above because you can get the .com, so this is a path I initially went down myself. BUT the problem is these names are often notoriously difficult to remember. I recently tried out Sunsama which I thought was freaking amazing, but when I tried to tell someone else about it I found out I had no idea what the name was. Satsuma? Sumsama? Samsuna? The familiar sounds make it easy to spell, but don’t create an “anchor” of exactly what it is in your mind. Other examples of this type of name: Besedky, Elocance, Ameeolio (which looks like a really amazing project by the way, but has a very difficult name).

Now I’m not saying YOUR STARTUP WILL DEFINITELY FAIL if you use one of these kinds of names. I think many startups have and will succeed even with difficult names. But why not try to avoid these problems from the get go?

So what should you do instead? My preference, as you can guess, is exactly what I did with Paperbell — a combination of real words. These kinds of names are easy to spell, easy to remember, and easy to find because you can come up with one that’s actually unique. Other examples of this kind of name: Helpscout, RightMessage, ConvertKit.

Using real words will also give you a starting point in your name search. You may not end up using an “only real words” name — slightly modifying a short real word, like Trello or Pinterest, can also be a great option.

These “branded” words can have something to do with what your startup does, or can be more random. I would advise coming up with a ton and then playing around.

Step 2: Use Your Words To Search For Domains For Sale

There are endless domain name generators out there, here’s a great list to start with. I also found some of the larger domain marketplaces and sellers and used their searches. There’s no quick and easy way to do this, it’s just a ton of brainstorming and playing around.

Step 3: Save Your Top Contenders

For this step I just used a big, messy google doc which worked fine. I saved everything that I sort of kind of liked, and was for sale for $2k or less. Now you have a starting point of startup names where you know you can grab the .com for a price you can afford. Nice!

Step 4: NOW Do All Your Name Research

See how we’re doing this at the end, not the beginning? This is where you search to see what other businesses or projects are using this name, talk to people about the name and see if they remember it, play with what kind of images or symbols would be associated with the name.

This way you can “fall in love” with a name that you know you can buy, instead of falling in love with hey.com ;)

(If you’re curious, I ended up buying Paperbell.com for $1,795 from HugeDomains. I found they have a ton of great .com’s available for less than $1k.)

By the way, my new startup with the best name ever, Paperbell, just launched! Check it out if you could use an easy way to sell coaching services online.