Hi! My name is Pierre, and I’m a domain junky.
I own close to a hundred domain names and I haven’t bought one in over a week!
*cue for clapping*

Finding a good domain name is a real challenge. You’ll need a lot of creative juice to come up with something that domain squatters haven’t put their hands on… yet!
So challenging it is, but not impossible. Here are some tips on the process I follow:

1. Lexical fields
Start your process by identifying a dozen keywords that identify to your product.
I suggest using a good thesaurus (like this one).
Alternatively, if you can’t find relevant keywords you can use a name generator tool. There are plenty of them, my favourite is Wordoid.

2. Keywords mashing
Throw your keywords into a domain making tool (I use Panabee) and see what comes out. You might get lucky on a .com but most likely this will send you down a path that you didn’t think of.
Make sure you also run your keywords into keywords mashing tools such as BustaName.

3. Creative juice
If you find yourself in a crowded space (all your keywords are already used and abused), my favourite tool to get the creative juice flowing is Domize. Make sure you use the advanced functions that will let you enter multiple lists in a query. For example, type [red,blue,green][light,lamp] to search for redlight, redlamp, bluelight… etc. It’s awesome!

4. Repeat the process until magic happens
As you go on you’ll come up with new keywords that you can look up in the thesaurus and run by Panabee and Domize.

5. The shortlist
By now you should have a shortlist of available relevant domains. The next step before buying them is to check that you’re not setting yourself up for trouble down the track (trademarks, social squatters etc.).
So the obvious first thing to do is a Google search for your domain. See what comes up (a competitor you didn’t know of? Some hidden meaning you were not aware of?).
Next make sure you check twitter for availability. Twitter is an important part of most businesses so making sure that your – candidate – brand name is available on twitter is a must do. Netflix learned it the hard way.

6. Buy it now!
Don’t wait too long once you’ve found the domain of your dream. Nothing worse than seeing it being snapped away by someone else… so don’t wait and spend the bucks! I recommend using Gandi or GoDaddy. For .com.au we use CrazyDomains.

Generic rules

Focus on the right extensions

.com
Finding a catchy .com has become very challenging but well worth the trouble as it is the default extension for most internet users. If you manage to get them to remember your brand name it is very likely that they will type it with a .com at the end.

.co
Increasingly popular and won’t be an issue if your are targeting a fairly geeky / nerdy market 🙂 Don’t expect “normal” people to type it right though. The cherry on the cake it that it will save you a letter on Twitter 🙂
Examples: t.co, angel.co, pygg.co etc.

Ignore all other extensions unless you can have them as part of your brand name. ie. youtu.be, pitch.it, about.me, with.me etc.

Beware of dodgy domain name services

Stick to the big players (GoDaddy, Gandi).
DO NOT check domain availability on more obscure domain providers. Some of them have dodgy processes in place where they monitor the domain searches and automatically buy the domain you are searching for and re-sale it back to you at a premium…

If your product is good it will work regardless of its domain name

Finally keep in mind that a great domain name can be a powerful asset but you shouldn’t invest too much energy in hunting down THE perfect domain for your product. Your time and money would certainly be better spent at actually building your product rather than naming it 🙂

The tools

Here are the tools that I use when in need for a domain hit:

https://domize.com/
+ The search speed
+ Very cool advanced commands

http://www.panabee.com/
+ Apple app store name checking
+ Creative name mixing
+ Shows you translations

http://wordoid.com/
+ Generates natural sounding names

http://www.bustaname.com/
+ Clever prefix and suffix
+ Includes synonyms

http://thesaurus.com/
+ The visual thesaurus is a great way to discover other lexical fields
+ Definition and synonyms all in one place

http://www.gandi.net/
+ A tad pricey but top notch service
+ Reliable and trustworthy

http://www.godaddy.com/
+ Cheap and dirty

http://www.crazydomains.com.au/
+ Cheap .com.au
+ Local company (Surry Hills)