Hello and happy new year again, so it's not about the services where you buy your domain.<p>But more about how you come up with the domain names.<p>- Do you like short names?
- Longer .com domains?<p>What do you think about before you buy the domain name?<p>Given the fact that you don't have a huge capital to buy any domain name.
Eight to twelve characters. Pronounceable in English. .com for any projects I care about getting traction. Not copyrighted or trademarked in the primary jurisdictions I care about (US).<p>Lower priority:
If it's mis-spellable can I grab variants on the name myself?
If I am grabbing a non .com/net/org is the registrar in a jurisdiction I have any enforcement rights in? Do they seem above board? Are they in danger of getting taken over by private equity goons who will quintuple the registration costs?
If it's a country .tld what happens if that country collapses? What happens if that country becomes hostile to my country?
I used to say you want a domain name that if someone hears it over the radio or in conversation it's memorable enough that they don't have to do cerebral gymnastics to use it to find your site. Less of an issue with QR codes and the demise of radio as an outreach.<p>Lately I've been grabbing names based on vaguely Dutch/native American place names where I live.<p>In 30+ years of dealing with this I’ve learned almost no one but marketing types and CEOs truly care about the domain name. Well, people will say they don't care but I can guarantee whoever owned "flicker.com" circa 2004 got a lot of traffic they didn't know what to do with, same with twitter.com before the guys got the money to buy the "e".