Contest participants can enter name ideas, chat in the discussion forum and cast their votes to select the best names. You control the contest process using the Contest Management Dashboard.  To get better engagement, add photos, videos, logos, use social media integration with Facebook and Twitter. You can also add custom Contest Terms, offer prizes etc.

With NameContests.com, anyone can host a contest for finding personal names for pets or babies or brand names for businesses, services or products. Go to www.namecontests.com and try it out today. It’s completely free!

Namestation is more than just a website to find a great domain. Users can create a profile and view other user profiles, harnessing the growing popularity of going ‘social’. Namestation members can contribute domain name ideas, for fun, or on a more serious basis. For example, some members are titled Naming consultants, or Naming professionals. But any member can create a useful domain name that other users may find appealing.

These contributed name ideas are the basis for Namestation’s Hand-Picked Domains feature and nearly 30,000 domains have already been created. Members can submit domain name ideas as part of a naming contest. Once a winning name is chosen, the rest of the name ideas are available for use as a Hand-Picked Domain.

Users can search within the Hand-Picked Domains with keywords to help narrow down all the choices. And, what’s more, within the Hand-Picked Domain list, users can view a brief description of the contest, like “A catchy.com domain that has to do with: parking space…”.

Choosing a domain doesn’t get any simpler than that! Plus, registering with Namestation and taking advantage of not only the domain name generator tools, but also the knowledge and creativity of the Namestation community will ensure the best possible domain name choice.

Create domain names using the Dictionary Domains search allows users to search for names using the extensive power of the dictionary. For a basic search, simply click the Dictionary Domains tab from the menu, enter a keyword and then choose an extension like .com or .net. Your keyword can be a word you would actually like to use in your domain, like “bubble”, or merely related, like “pop”. Once you click generate names, a list will display endless combinations of possible domain names that are a combination of your keyword and another word, like “bubbleach” for example.
You can customize your Dictionary Domain search further with features like Alliterations and Related Words. Want your domain to have a playful tone or memorable pronunciation? Alliterations produce names like “BubbleBuddy” and “PopPoem”, to use our previous keyword examples. Using the Related Words feature can expand your options further by creating domains using words similar to your keyword.

If you haven’t found the perfect domain name yet, the other Dictionary Domain features will narrow down your choices. Word Lookup will locate your keyword in a massive list of alphabetical choices, allowing you to use the power of the dictionary in a matter of minutes. But if you are interested in using a name in another language, use the Translations feature and access possible domain names in more than 20 different languages.

Namestation’s Dictionary Domain tool is just one aspect of the groundbreaking domain name generator. After you experience the many features of the domain name generator, you will surely have chosen the ideal name.

There are a number of things you should consider when searching for the right domain name for your site. The most important is to make sure that it’s easy to memorize. The best way to do that is to choose a domain name that relates precisely to the purpose and content of your site. For instance, say you are thinking of starting a site to serve as a fashion retail store. If the sole purpose of the online store will be to sell shoes only, it will be a good idea to incorporate something shoe related into the domain name.

The primary benefit of this will be to make it super easy for your existing and potential customers to reach your site by simply typing an easily memorable URL into their browsers. In addition, a catchy and unique domain name will make it easier to market your business. For instance, if one of your customers wants to refer friends to your site, it will be much easier to provide the site’s URL if it’s clever and sticks in the mind. In that way alone, you’ll attract more traffic to your site.

Another important issue to consider when trying to settle on a domain name is to make it as short as possible. Having excessively long domain names will work against you because customers will find it difficult to refer others to your site. In addition, a long domain name will increase the chances that someone types it in incorrectly, which may result in their landing on a site that has nothing to do with yours.

In either case, once you have settled on a domain name that works for you, you may find that another site has already registered that particular name and it will not be available. That will be a great time to turn to domain name generators. More about that in a moment.

There may come a time when you need to start a new site for purposes other than drawing customer traffic. For instance, you may want to start a second site strictly for search engine optimization purposes. Since those kinds of sites are usually launched only for technical purposes and not meant for general public use, you won’t need to focus so much on picking something short, catchy and memorable. However, you’ll still need to come up with a unique domain name. In such cases, you can use one or more of the cool online random domain name generators to help find the ideal name for your site.

Available domain generators

Visit http://www.namestation.com/domain-search where you can generate short available domain names. Domain name generators are very simple and easy to use. Some allow you to enter a phrase or a word that you would like included in the name. They’ll then return a number of domain names that match your criteria. Higher quality generators will even search the registries before suggesting unique names, so that you can then find names that are not in use and register them immediately.

Other random domain name generators allow you to enter the domain name that ideally you would like to own. The tools will then come up with a list of available domain names that are similar to the one that you’ve entered. If the one you want has already been registered to another party, you can then choose one of the newly generated alternatives.

As you can see, it’s quite easy to find a good and effective domain name for your site by using generators. The great thing is that most of them are web based and easy to use, and reduce the stress that is normally associated with creataing and registering a domain name. When starting a new site, you’ll want to ensure that all technical issues, such as hosting and domain name registration, are resolved within the shortest time possible. Without domain name generators, you will have to come up with a domain name on your own, and then check to see whether or not it already exists. If you consistently come up with names that are already in use, you’ll find yourself spending far too much of your time trying to do what an automated domain name generator can do for you in a snap. You’ll be able to find the perfect name within a matter of minutes, leaving you more time to focus on more important things, such as getting content for your site. That most of these tools offer such convenience without being costly is truly astonishing. In fact, the majority of them are free to use, so you won’t need to worry about busting your budget. Domain name generators deliver a greatly simplified process.

Hereyou’ll find a list of over 30,000 unused domain names, available for registration right now.

It may only be one word, but the right domain name can be a huge asset to your business. It is the signature by which potential customers all over the Web will come to know and recognize your enterprise. A good domain name can bring in customers and a bad name can drive them away, so choosing the right name is crucial. Here are five easy steps for doing just that.

Five Easy Steps to Finding a Great Business Domain Name

First, define your company. What do you offer? Who are your target customers, and where are they? How do you stand out from your competitors? Do you occupy a unique niche within your industry? Thinking about these things will help you come up with a name that fits.

Second, write down your ideas. Make a list of keywords. Jot down some images that you would like your name to bring to mind, and some thoughts that you would like it to convey. Remember that you’ll have to be creative, because millions of domain names have already been taken and thousands more are added to the Internet each day. But there are still myriad possibilities out there for names that are distinctive and easy to recall, names that won’t be drowned out by a sea of ordinary names when your potential customers are browsing the web.

Third, put your ideas together and come up with some candidates for your domain name. Sometimes two or three words that are ho-hum on their own can be combined or melded into one another to make something that sounds just right. A simple phrase might do the trick. If your business is selling widgets, why not call it WorldOfWidgets.com? If you’re stumped, or even if you’d just like some other ideas to add to the mix, a domain name generator like http://www.namestation.com can be very helpful. It can generate random, memorable and pronounceable names, or names based around your chosen keywords. It can blend words in all sorts of ways and add alliteration. And it can check to see if your chosen name is in fact available, and suggest alternatives if it is not.

Fourth, brainstorm. Take your short list of potential names and run it by your friends, family and colleagues. They will bring fresh perspectives to bear on your choices, and may come up with good ideas you hadn’t thought of. It will be easier to make a confident final choice after weighing their ratings and opinions of the potential names you’ve settled upon.

Finally, select the best domain name from your list of candidates and get it registered. It may be a good idea to buy multiple extensions of your domain name, like .net and .org, to help protect your brand, and to make sure that anyone who comes across your chosen domain name will be drawn to your company alone. It’s also smart to check that your chosen domain name and any associated logo don’t infringe on any copyrights or trademarks.

By NameStation Startup Name Generator

NameStation has developed an innovative domain name generator full of priceless features that make choosing a bespoke domain easy and even fun. The Dictionary Domains Search allows users to search for names using the extensive power of the dictionary. For a basic search, simply click the Dictionary Domains tab from the menu, enter a keyword and then choose an extension like .com or .net. Your keyword can be a word you would actually like to use in your domain, like “bubble”, or merely related, like “pop”. Once you click generate names, a list will display endless combinations of possible domain names that are a combination of your keyword and another word, like “bubbleach” for example.

You can customize your Dictionary Domain search further with features like Alliterations and Related Words. Want your domain to have a playful tone or memorable pronunciation? Alliterations produce names like “BubbleBuddy” and “PopPoem”, to use our previous keyword examples. Using the Related Words feature can expand your options further by creating domains using words similar to your keyword.

If you haven’t found the perfect domain name yet, the other Dictionary Domain features will narrow down your choices. Word Lookup will locate your keyword in a massive list of alphabetical choices, allowing you to use the power of the dictionary in a matter of minutes. But if you are interested in using a name in another language, use the Translations feature and access possible domain names in more than 20 different languages.

Namestation’s Dictionary Domain tool is just one aspect of the groundbreaking domain name generator. If you haven’t found your perfect domain name with the Dictionary Domain feature, then visit namestation.com. After you experience the many features of the domain name generator, you will surely have chosen the ideal name.

Selecting a good name for your online company is one of the most important business decisions you can make. The right name can make a significant difference to your bottom line and to the ongoing success of your business. With so many millions of domain names out there, it may seem as if all the best ones have been taken, but time spent thinking up effective domain name ideas is still time well spent.

Before you start, define your business clearly. What do you make? What do you do? How do you stand out from the competition? What is it about your business that you want your domain to communicate to your customers?

Whatever name you choose, you want it to be easy to remember. That way, it’ll be easier for potential and repeat customers to keep it in mind when they’re in the market for your products or services, and it will generate easy traffic for your site.

Branding is important. You want a name that is associated with your unique brand, a name that will draw web-browsing customers to your company and not to those of your competitors.

Keywords can help draw in customers, too. Incorporating the right keyword into your domain name will result in better search engine results. If you service a particular geographical area, tossing a brief geographical reference into your name can help pull in local customers.

Your business name should sound good to the ear. If you want your customers to spread good word of mouth about you, it helps if your name trips easily off their tongues. Alliteration can help in this regard, and so can borrowing a word from another language. If you have foreign or multi-ethnic customers, however, be cautious, since a name that sounds right in English can sound ridiculous in some foreign languages, and may even have unfortunate connotations.

With so many domain names already taken, you’ll want to be creative. But sometimes a simple phrase can yield a name that sounds good and evokes just the right image in the minds of your customers. For instance, if you want to get across the idea that your shoe store offers great variety, why not make it SeaOfShoes.com? The right metaphor can work wonders.

Beware of any copyright or trademark infringement. Besides checking to see if your chosen business domain name is available, go the extra mile to make sure that you won’t receive any cease and desist letters from hostile lawyers.

A good domain name generator like NameStation can help tremendously when you’re trying to come up with good name ideas. It can generate a lot of possible names for you very quickly, based on the criteria that you select. It can evaluate your name ideas and spur your creativity in coming up with better ones. It can check out available domains and suggest alternatives and, if a particular name is already taken, it will suggest variations. And it can put the power of crowdsourcing to work for you by letting you run naming contests, either private ones with your friends or public ones with lots of potential customers. Their feedback and fresh perspectives can help you choose a business domain name that’s just right for you.

One of the most important assets your business needs to start with is a domain name that is memorable, brandable, and pronounceable.

A name that’s easy to remember is easy to type into a search engine and will help to draw traffic to your site. It will also leave a lasting association with your products and services in the minds of your customers. A brandable name will set you apart from your competitors and focus your customers’ minds on what you do best. It will serve as your unique signature on the Internet and will draw potential customers toward your company, and away from competitors with more ho-hum names. A name that trips easily off the tongue sticks better in peoples minds, and is easier for them to share with others when they want to give your business some good word of mouth.

There are over 200 million registered domain names out there, with more added every minute of the day. It may seem as if all the good names are long gone, but great possibilities still remain to be created. Nonetheless, it can take a lot of time and effort to come up with a fresh name that stands out from the crowd. If you’re having trouble coming up with good domain name suggestions on your own, or even if you just want to be exposed to some other ideas, you might find invaluable time-saving help from a domain name suggestions generator.

Not only can NameStation produce a wealth of domain name suggestions for you, it can help you evaluate and elaborate on those suggestions and even to use crowdsourcing to come up with even more. It puts no fewer than 17 different name generator interfaces at your service, all of them friendly and easy to use. There is a random name generator that can turn out names not just in English, but in Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and dozens of other languages, even some imaginary languages like Sindarin (the language used by the elves in the Lord of the Rings trilogy). There are 173 lists of keywords for all manner of business niches that you can consult. There is a suffix generator that will add popular endings to randomly generated names or to names of your choice. You can swap words around, toss in plural forms, and try all kinds of other variations. You can combine and merge words in all sorts of ways. They can be blended together to produce something new and catchy, or words with overlapping parts can be joined together. You can add alliteration in order to make your names sound better. You can look up words in dictionaries and find their etymology. Names can be translated to and from different languages. Check any name you come up with for its availability in the 43 Top Level Domains section.

If all of those possibilities aren’t enough for you, NameStation offers the opportunity to brainstorm and put crowdsourcing to work for you by holding naming contests. You can hold private contests with your friends, or public contests open to hundreds or thousands of contestants.

Finally, when you’ve picked out the best domain name from all of those suggestions, you can use NameStation’s handy links to registration providers that will get that name registered for you.

While a handle for Twitter can be created quite easily, choosing a domain name for a website can be a more difficult process. In the past, a brick and mortar business existed long before its web presence was created. And, once a website was needed, a business owner could usually just use the current business name.

But presently, this is much harder to do: many common domain names are already taken! In addition, many businesses exist exclusively online, or their domain name will be the determining factor when choosing the business name. This means that choosing the right domain name for your business name or product is more important than ever. And because
simple and straightforward names are already in use, finding your domain name can be a challenge.

Namestation is a one of a kind website that will make lemonade out of these domain name lemons! With the use of Namestation’s domain name generators, finding a one-of-a-kind domain doesn’t even feel like a challenge; in fact, it is fun. Once you sign up for a free account, you can access name generators that help you access a seemingly endless supply of valuable domains. But if you don’t feel like searching for your own domain, start a contest and see what other users come up with.

Start using Namestation today to find the perfect fit!

Finding good available domain names is becoming increasingly difficult. Each day, over 100K new .com domain names are purchased and as of today, nearly 200 million domains have been registered. If you have an online business, there is a good chance you must have experienced the frustration of endless domain checking, only to find out that all the good ones are taken. Don’t give up though, there are still good available domains out there! Finding them just requires a bit of creative thinking and a bit of time.

Save time using a domain name generator

You could save a lot of time with the help of a good domain research tool. Choosing a suitable, relevant and memorable name is naturally a creative process, but there are a lot of technical tasks that can be automated by specialized domain search software.  This domain name search tool helps you generate an almost infinite combinations of words, create random pronounceable names, search for dictionary words, alliterations, overlapping words and so on. You can generate 1000-s of relevant, available domain name ideas in a few minutes. Mastering those research tools fully may take some learning time, but it will still be totally worth it – on average, people tend to spend days coming up with that perfect name.

If you don’t have the time to learn how the name generators work, there is an even simpler alternative.

Holding a Domain Name Contest

No time to search for domains? Starting a domain name contest at NameStation is the easiest way to get great name suggestions.

Simply describe what you need, enter a couple of names you like as examples and publish your Contest. You can hold a private Name Contest with your friends, or a crowdsourced Contest to get help from NameStation’s community. These are experienced naming specialists who are using advanced domain research techniques daily. NameStation has a built-in Talent Points and rewards system which keeps the contestants motivated. You can also share your contest on Facebook or Twitter to get more participants.

When you have received enough entries, you can rate them and invite your friends to vote. You can also give feedback to keep the contest going in the right direction. If there is an idea you’d like to develop further, you can ask the contestants to suggest alternative name variations.

NameStation instantly checks the availability of domain names, when entries are posted to Contests. If a domain is not available, it suggests a number of alternatives to choose from. You can even hear the pronunciation of the names created, check trademark availability and check the name background.

Start a Domain Name Contest 

Good luck with your domain search!

Getting down to business

Let´s take the first name on the list – Pinterest. It is a combination of two different words – pin and interest. The domain search tool to use on NameStation to obtain such results most effectively is Combine Lists. It blends two conceptual word lists with the possibility to choose whether you want the whole word to appear in the name or just a part of it.

For example, when looking for a name for a fitness blog, you may combine the lists like Health and Dynamic, Positive and Sport, Your Contest Keywords and Health, etc. It all depends on the concepts that you need to be reflected in the name of your company.

To create business names that include a particular word or a part of this word, choose Append Lists. This feature allows you to combine the word with any of the predetermined conceptual word lists. You can also choose if you want the word to appear at the beginning or at the end of the name.

Even more web 2.0-ish – looking further from compounds

If you don’t need your name to resemble a compound, you should also try the Substitutions Search or Random Name Generator to coin new words such as Zynga or Meebo.

The Random Name Generator is the easiest way to create names that essentially have no meaning; consequently, they won’t evoke any associations with your field of business. Such names could be very distinctive and in addition they enable you to build up the meaning of your brand from scratch.

For a wider selection of name alternatives, you could also use the Random Name feature in different languages, such as French, Latin or even Afrikaans.

Substitutions Search differs from the Random Name Generator in terms of letting you determine some parts of the name you would like your company to have. You just need to follow the key, presented on the right-hand side of the search feature.

For example, if you want to find a name, comprising of 6 letters so that the 1st, 4th and 6th letter are consonants and the rest are vowels, you can create a suitable name pattern with the help of the key. Having done that, you only need to press Search and NameStation will generate names according to your criteria. In case of the previous example, the pattern would be !**!*!.

Some examples of name patterns:

• R?!*** – 6 letters, begins with R, 2nd letter is a vowel and 3rd a consonant
• !?!?graph – ends with graph, preceded by the combination of consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV)
• Tan****! – 8 letters, begins with tan and finishes with a consonant; in between are 4 random letters
• ?!??!? – 6 letters, begins with a vowel, followed by a consonant, 2 vowels and another consonant and a vowel.

To be honest, there is no clear definition what makes a domain name web 2.0. The most common criteria you may often hear is that the name should be trendy, cutting-edge and unique. Sounds ambiguous, doesn’t it? It should, because the term itself is rather intuitive and abstract; therefore, most interpretations have at least a tinge of truth in them. Nevertheless, some domain names just seem more web 2.0-ish than others.

Web 2.0 itself refers to websites that enable users to communicate with each other and generate content as opposed to web 1.0, which consists of sites that are plain information providers targeting passive readers. Web 2.0 sites include, for example, social networks, wikis, blogs and other content sharing websites. Facebook and Twitter would be the most obvious examples. Web 2.0 domain names, however, are only related to web 2.0 as much as the fact that such domain names established their popularity together with the development of web 2.0 itself. While a huge number of web 2.0 sites have a name that could be characterized as web 2.0-ish, it is not a must.

Main characteristics of web 2.0 domains

Like I said before, no one has actually established the specific characteristics of a web 2.0 name. However, everyone seems to agree that when the name does not exist as a real word, it is somehow related to web 2.0. Names such as computers.com, plasticbottle.com or coffeeandtea.com obviously do not belong to the group, but domains that look further from the plain dictionary-style could already be called web 2.0-ish.

Typical Examples:

Flickr, Google – misspelled words (flicker, googol)
Facebook, YouTube – while they are simple compounds consisting of two nouns, they had no use before the websites were established
Instagram, Pinterest – combinations of two recognizable parts of real words (instant + telegram, pinboard + interest)

Naturally, these three groups do not encompass all the possible methods of creating web 2.0 domain names. Sometimes the name could be made up from scratch (such as badoo.com) or be a real word with a metaphorical application. For example, amazon.com has essentially nothing to do with the river but the size of the Amazon is used to refer to the sales potential of the online store, which initially focused only on books. All in all, the possibilities are unlimited; you just need a bit of creativity. And of course luck.

Having clarified the essence of web 2.0 names, it would be appropriate to post an article about the simplest methods on how to generate web 2.0 domain names with the help of NameStation. Keep yourself posted!

Click here to find short web 2.0 domain names

 Go to Keyword domains search

1. web – online, page, site, home, dot, point, channel, link, click, source, gate, world
2. cloud – stratus, nebula, cirrus, air, grid, mesh, space, ether, sky, serve, virtual, stack, thin, agile, open
3. tech – vac, tron, matic, gadget, logic, sys, digi, robo, auto, mill, motor, rocket, rational, kit, suite, unit
4. business – focus, vision, solutions, alliance, advisor, commerce, office, suite, team
5. deal – save, bargain, budget, cent, dime, discount, drop, less, offers, penny, promo, sale, value, wallet
6. studio – atelier, gallery, lot, scene, location, floor, workshop, forge
7. social – club, group, circle, buddy, connect, crowd, folk, forum, guild, lodge, mate, meet, member, mix, nation, network, nexus, pal, people, public, quorum, set, summit, team, tribe, world
8. design – adapt, create, custom, illustrate, model, shape, form, figure, pattern, make, build, frame, style, variety, class, prototype
9. my – self, ego, own, id, take, be, personal, private, secret, inner
10. shop – boutique, store, market, bazaar, browse, outlet, retail, commerce, vendor, mart, order, merchant, purchase, buyer
11. photo – pic, picture, scene, screen, shoot, shot, snap, studio, film, focus, flash, frame, image, lens
12. game – arcade, compte, contest, goal, mark, player, score, team, trophy
13. buy – cart, catalog, purchase, outlet, store, seller, trade, sale
14. media – connect, interactive, link, report, scoop, public, story, bulletin, broadcast, message, topic
15. smart – brilliant, bright, clever, creative, fox, guide, genius, insight, inspire, intellect, master, mind, prodicy, sharp, specialist, talent, wise, virtuoso
16. host – online, site, server, home, domain, digital, website, access, gate, route, avenue, channel, station, click
17. net – grid, signal, relay, comm, contact, mesh, wire, connect, zone, maze, node, transmit, transfer, pipe, send, scan, post, traffic, uplink, tube, cirquit
18. ad – promo, advert, sell, hype, target, push, drive, boost, campaign, press, force, promote, reach, agency, market, info, target, contact, deliver
19. green – fresh, foliage, leaf, sustainable, preserve, sustain, viable, future, vision
20. go – run, move, travel, jump, act, walk, drive, step, ride, start, launch, begin, enter, embark, kickoff, fire, spring, init
21. pro – expert, ace, maven, analyst, strategist, master, guru, wizard, hotshot, genius
22. app – use, work, utility, device, gizmo, kit, tool, run
23. trip – getaway, leave, leisure, travel, hike, expedition, explore, tour, holiday, journey, passport, sights, takeoff, trail, vacation, wander
24. easy – accessible, bare, basic, breeze, convenient, fot, handy, plain, pure, ready, simple, smooth
25. data – input, format, record, info, stats, table, file, stack, archive, list, storage, save, log, book, track, ledger

Find Domain Name Ideas

You simply have to think of one single keyword to start with. Click Search and receive more than 100 domain name ideas in a few seconds. Randomainer also gives you a list of alternative keyword suggestions, so that you can continuously elaborate and refine your search. Finding a number of suitable candidates for your perfect domain name should take no more than a few minutes. Creating brand name ideas is a breeze, this tool can save you hours.

Try it out, it’s free.

Suppose you are planning to start a small business and your business requires you to have an online entity. The first thing that you have to do in this case is finding the right name for your website. Finding the right website name is absolutely imperative for the success of your business online because if your client finds it to cumbersome to visit your website due to any given reason then he/ she might prefer to stay away which in turn would be disastrous for your online enterprise.

Without a proper name no individual in this world has an identity and the same applies to your business to. Without a proper name your business will be passed off as an amateur one which is just looking to make a quick buck and is more interested in cost cutting. In addition to all this when you start giving your business cards to your clients would it look nice to have a shoddy name printed at the bottom? For example when you want to shop online the instant name that comes to mind is ebay and this is because you have visited the site before and the name is easy to remember and spell and it is not complicated so you will visit it again. A few simple guidelines to follow in general are that your name should be easy to spell and it should be as short as possible. The most important thing is that your domain name should be easy to remember.

Some of the many different ways in which you can generate website name ideas are:

1. Random name generators: in this method the automated software will just generate random names. You can specify a suffix or a prefix if required and you can also specify the length of the name that you wish to obtain. The random name generator will create random names that can be pronounced in different languages and not any arbitrary name.

2. Substitutions: By taking normal names from the English dictionary and replacing few characters from it, you can generate a new name altogether.

3. Mix and append: Take two names at a time and append them together to get a new name. For example: fantastic + fabulous = fantabulous; or gigantic + enormous = ginormous; or fun + frolic = folic.

4. Adding extra characters: Using a name which is part of the English vocabulary you can add an extra letter somewhere in the entire word to create a new word/ name that might be used as a name for your website.

5. Playing with Proper nouns: Proper nouns have a specific spelling mentioned in the vocabulary. You can twist and turn them around to create a new name altogether. For example instead of using the word “cool” you can use “kool” which sounds the same.

6. Naming contests: Another innovative website name idea is by holding naming contests online. You can suggest a few guidelines to mention what you are looking for and then hold a contest in which users around the world can register for free and submit their entries. In this method you will find a wide range of names as people from wide genres of society will participate and give you their ideas. Of course there will be a prize money or something that has to be given barring which people will not take interest in the contest.

Finding a potential name for your website is the cornerstone for the success of your enterprise and it is a more time consuming process than you actually think.

It was Shakespeare who famously said “What’s in name? A rose by any another name would smell just as sweet”.  Well we can’t blame him. Back then there was probably a single rose seller and not thousands, wanting to make an impact in the rose selling business.

Given the current competitive business scenario the name is everything. With the popularity of internet marketing, it is not enough to move your business online, but it is crucial to find the best domain name for your online presence.

The Importance of the Right Domain Name

Domain names are important because they can be a crucial differentiator between a profitable business and one that goes under.  Whether it is the name for a start up business or the name for a new product to be launched by an established company, it is necessary to devote time and energy to research the various name options and finalize one that will satisfy certain parameters. Finding the right domain name is not easy, but there are unique tools and strategies at your disposal to make the process simpler for you.

A good domain name is short and usually below 20 characters. One word domain names are the best and as the number of words increase, the effectiveness falls rapidly. It is necessary to keep the domain name free from aspects such as hyphens and numbers, foreign words or words that tend to be misspelled. But the fact of the matter is as the internet business has been around for the longest time, you may find that all domain names fulfilling these characteristics have been taken. No need to worry though.

Finding Available Domains

This is where specialized domain name suggestion services can help you tremendously. Check out NameStation to create new domain names by a combination of etymology, semantics or language that contain all above mentioned characteristics. They have preset custom word lists that can help you identify niche domain names that can be very powerful.  Name generators offer names in different languages, automatic name suggestion tools are particularly useful for domain professionals in suggesting the best options for their clients.

The Advantage for Name Seekers

NameStation has initiated a new process in the naming business called Social Naming – a platform to interact, research, collaborate and finally decide on the best available domain name for your business. If your company is coming up with a new product, you can enlist the help of your customers to choose a name for the same. NameStation’s public naming contests allow people to send you their name suggestions.  You can imagine the advantages of such a move:

• It helps you develop stronger relations with your customers as they are happy that you want their suggestions.
• As it is online, the customer base you are reaching is wider than possible through any other channel
• You will receive thousands of name suggestions, a few of which may be good and available.

The Advantage for Professional Name Givers

If you are agency that offers name services to clients including domain names, business names or any other names, NameStation offers a platform to enhance your reputation over a period of time. We have a credit point system to appreciate your efforts. You will receive a certain number of points each time your name suggestion is accepted by a client. These points can be redeemed for cash or you can opt for upgrade features on your membership. Simply give them the details of your business/ product/ service/ blog and your target audience and we will come up with a range of the best available domain names for you. With the right tools you can still find the best available domain names that will help your business/ blog/ brand soar online.

Whenever starting a new business, one of the main aspects to consider besides the idea itself is what it should be called. The power of a good name should not be underestimated. Choosing the right name can enhance the success of your company; on the other hand, making the wrong choice may sometimes be costly or doom the venture to failure. For example, Chevy Nova by General Motors’ was unsuccessful in Latin America because the company failed to notice the fact that “Nova” in Spanish stands for “it doesn’t go”.

In general, it is not hard to come up with a name for your business; however, when taking into account a number of characteristics that a good name needs, the name-search could become rather excruciating. To make matters worse, there is no consensus on the features of a good name. Some believe that the best names are informative so that the customers immediately know what your business is about. Others favour newly coined names (like Kodak, Intel, Nike) over already existing words, claiming that the former are more memorable. Finally there are those who for attention-grabbing purposes insist on a name beginning with a plosive letter (like B, C, D, G, K, P and T).

When looking for a name, one of the most important aspects to consider is checking whether there are any available and relevant domain names in accordance with the name you chose for your business. Moreover, since there are already about 200 million registered domain names, the process of finding a good name could potentially turn out to be more time-consuming than initially thought.

Creating Name Ideas

The website name generator NameStation helps to make this process easier for you. It offers a great number of opportunities to coin and combine words, so that you will never feel that your creativity has reached a dead end. Within seconds, you can generate hundreds of domain name suggestions. In addition there are several applications to help you with that, such as creating compound words with preset wordlists or words that you prefer to feature in the name of your future business. Among other possibilities, the system also offers word-substitutions, alliterative word combinations and translations to and from English. Furthermore, when creating new names the system automatically checks domain name availability.

Social Naming Contests

NameStation is a social naming service, allowing you to create public naming contests to find a name for your business. Holding a name contest with NameStation enables you to benefit from a global brainstorming event in essence, since the contests are open to suggestions from participants from all over the world. Everyone is free to contribute ideas to their own liking, with or without using the help of the system. You may choose to hide the responses from the participants to avoid distraction. Furthermore, you can easily interact with the participants through comments asking them for reasons behind their name suggestions if they have not added those from the start. It is also possible to connect with Facebook and ask your friends to contribute their ideas to the name-search.

Available Domain Names

In general, it is advisable that the .com extension of a domain name is available. With an urge to reach the market fast, some entrepreneurs often opt for the .net version if the .com is not available anymore, later regretting the decision. Consequently, when searching for the website, potential customers accidentally flock to the .com version, possibly never reaching their actual desired destination – that is your website.

After finding a suitable name, test it on a sample of potential customers to avoid mishaps like the Chevy Nova case and to find out whether the name is relevant, memorable and likeable. A good domain name is the corner stone of your online brand and when searching for it, remember to consider the long-term perspective. Contemplate future options for your business in order not to discover after a year that you are trapped in your domain name. When you feel it is a looming possibility, you can always start a new name contest at NameStation.

Try it out: www.namestation.com

There are a number of unique ways to find available domains with fast bulk domain check:

• Name generator that produces names in different languages
• Over 150 preset wordlists for creating compound words
• Custom wordlists for finding niche domains for specific needs
• Smart wordlists for domains with dictionary words
• 40 Top-Level-Domains
• Name research and translations etc.

The Conceptual Wordlists  contain words related to concepts – e.g. fast, secure, unique, dynamic, smart, strong, positive, dynamic, simple, useful. For instance, if you’re looking a name for an anti-virus product, you would use words that are related with security and strength – Castle, Vault, Lock, Wall, Guard etc.

Domain Name Contests can be created to get name ideas for a specific purpose. Contests can be shared with friends or a private team, responses can be rated.

Social Naming. Connect your Facebook account to interact with your friends and participate in their Shared Contests. Share private Contest links  in Facebook and Twitter. Your friends can help with names for anything – when you get a new pet, need a new screen name, role-play character name, start a band or discover a new planet.

How difficult can it be, right? Well, seeing that you’ve reached this page, it can be assumed that you are by now aware that its not a trivial quest. In fact, by now you have probably spent a lot of time on domain search sites, become frustrated by the fact that most even remotely sensible names are taken, felt hopelessly lost, googled something like “get a domain name” and landed on this page. So welcome, let’s see what can be done.

There are over 80 million .com domains already registered. There are only 13 million .net domains, so if you don’t care that someone already holds the .com name, the .net is the first alternative to consider. If your service is location-specific, you may have better luck with additional extensions like .us, .eu, country-specific domains.

The .com domain though is the cornerstone of establishing an online identity. With a .com you can be certain that the name you’ve chosen is absolutely unique in the whole world. This is a crucial requirement, if you’re planning to invest in building a brand – otherwise you could end up advertising your competitors. Finding a good .com domain takes persistence and patience. If you have the time, you can look up names one-by-one, until you hit the perfect one. You can hire a marketing agency to do it for you or buy an expensive domain from a domain name aftermarket. You can also use automated domain name availability checking tools that do quick mass lookups. Lets take a closer look at one of such tools – in fact its over 10 different domain search tools combined onto one website – NameStation.com.

NameStation is one of the fastest bulk domain lookup tools on the web today. First, you can try your luck with the random name generator tool, which creates 20 pronounceable names each time you press the Search button. There are different base languages to choose from, so if you get tired of English names, why not try Latin, Sindarin or even Klingon? The names are still totally random, but they sound a bit different. Sindarin by the way is the language of elves in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, created by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Now, if you need your name to reflect what your business actually does, you need to include a meaningful keyword. On NameStation, this keyword can then be combined with random nouns, adjectives, verbs and preset wordlists with the most popular prefixes and affixes that usually appear in the website names. You can go even deeper by researching semantic relations to any given keyword with the Dictionary Domains search. At first it may seem as a bit complex but that’s because it is a highly powerful in-depth research tool. Dictionary Domains search also recommends synonyms, related words, popular affixes and prefixes. All you have to do is click on each one of these to get 100 new domain name ideas.

You can most likely find 4-5 potential candidates after working 15 minutes on NameStation. Each candidate can be saved to your Favorites and registered at your preferred registrar. Domain registration is simple, just click the “register at …” link at NameStation and follow the instructions on the registrar page.

There is a lot more to explore at NameStation. For domain industry professionals there are other specialized tools like multiple domain extensions check and bulk domain search. If you create a free NameStation account then over time you can save and customize your keyword lists that help you find available domains any time any time you’re hit with a spark of inspiration for a new online venture.

Best of luck finding a new domain name! If you have any useful tips that may benefit fellow domain seekers then please post them as  comments.

(PRWEB) March 22, 2010 — NameStation.com, an advanced domain name search website, launched several search methods that help save time and resources when looking for available domains. With just a few clicks users can easily generate hundreds of random name suggestions, search for niche keywords or combine their business-specific terms with preset wordlists.

“Finding a suitable domain name is crucial for everyone who is about to start developin an online identity. The quest for good available domains is not easy, it may take significant time and effort,” said Tauno Novek, CEO or NameStation. “The goal of NameStation is to minimize that effort by suggesting hundreds of ideas for available domain names. Since each product or brand has to be unique and memorable, we have recently added several innovative search methods for finding names with custom keywords, wordlists and semantic analysis.”

Want to create unique random names that are based on different languages and have available .com or .net domain names? Prefer to digg deeper and take advantage of the more sophisticated research tools like wordlist searches, dictionary domains search; or use the bulk search tools to check up to 100 domain names at a time? With the newly added capabilities, NameStation.com is one of the most versatile free domain search engines on the Internet today.

Some of the key features of NameStation are:

• Random Domain Name Generator that creates phonetic names based on various language rules. Besides names that are pronounceable in English, users can choose from over 30 other languages – Italian, Spanish, Latin, German, Russian and fictional languages like Klingon and Sindarin.
• Domain suggestions with word lists – preset keyword themes can be used to produce relevant names. Themes like Technology, Search, Social, Banking & Finance, Business and Services, Sports & Shopping contain lists of words that people would otherwise have to create and check manually.
• Dictionary domains search finds synonyms and contextual relations for the entered keyword. Since most dictionary domains in the .com and .net Top Level Domains are taken, we have added a simple way of appending a prefix of suffix to the search criteria by just clicking on the recommended words.
• The domain name brainstorming tool is perhaps one of the most useful of the advanced search features. Enter a list of keywords that are then combined with random affixes to produce new unique name ideas.
• Bulk domain search can be used to look up the availability of up to 100 words or phrases simultaneously. Words can be imported from other keyword research tools like Google Keyword tool or Wordtracker.
• Search multiple Top Level Domains (TLD-s) simultaneously. Besides .com and .net NameStation supports searching for over 30 domain extensions, including .mobi, .tv. .info, .eu, .co.uk and so on.

NameStation.com domain search is free to use. Users who register gain the additional benefits of saving name ideas to their Favorites list and securely maintain their custom wordlists that can be accessed anywhere. Feedback to the new features is most welcome at our blog (http://blog.NameStation.com).

NameStation.com

Marketing and advertising is the name of the business. No matter how good your product or service is and the benefits consumers can reap from them, it can easily be overshadowed by competitors by simply having better domain names. So if you’re  in the process of coming up with all the business and domain names, one should be the one to beat them.

The online domain name generator at NameStation.com allows you to gain an advantage in the name hunting and registration game. Stay a step ahead by keeping a close, real-time watch on relevant names that can help you become a stronger player with internet-based marketing and business.

You will find that many of the business names and even domain names you can look up from this website are short, catchy and with the most common extensions that most customers and clients can familiarize themselves with. You don’t have to figure this all out on your own. NameStation is your one-stop shop that will make checking domain names availability steps a breeze for you.

Know, however, that the best domain names are most likely taken by another which may or may not be a direct competitor. But don’t feel let down because NameStation will not give up on you. Experimenting with various domain creation tools or adding a few letters as affixes can make a difference different such as adding “my”, numbers or even special characters.

Processing domain registration online is simple as well. At NameStation you get no less than the top 30 hosting companies including corresponding prices for the domain name, hosting, information on disk space, bandwidth and links. And mind you, the prices are competitive and you could find one registrant that would fit your budget.

Give your product or service the marketing push it needs to make it a successful venture and start your domain search at NameStation.com – the free domain name generator and brainstorming tool.

Create Pet Name Ideas

The Pet Name Ideas generator at NameStation.com uses a random generator to come up with hundreds of unique pet name ideas. Each search produces 100 suggestions that sometimes are quite unconventional, but if you spend a while filtering out the good ones, then eventually that perfect name can be found.

Sample results:

Abraldon, Alexa, Arley, Basil, Biron, Brigher, Brookson, Bryankee, Calviney, Chanus, Cobbie, Cyrich, Dethon, Doritz, Ezerield, Gelory, Horacio, Jaeon, Jonardie, Kenda, Konson, Korey, Leftyba, Levon, Lonna, Marti, Morie, Morry, Nialle, Nobiero, Obidi, Orvil, Osbern, Osbond, Padrick, Pardenos, Phonid, Porty, Quint, Rethin, Rolari, Rudolfo, Stericio, Thade, Tiandr, Tituson, Tobin, Wilber

NameStation.com pet names

Thank you for your replies, your feedback helps us to improve our Screen Name Generator.

Staying ahead of the game

The NameStation domain name searchallows you to beat other competitors to the name hunting and registration game. Stay a step ahead by keeping a close, real-time watch on relevant names that can help you become a strong player with internet-based marketing and business. You will find that many of the business names and even domain names you can look up from this website are short, catchy and with the most common extensions that most customers and clients can familiarize themselves with. You don’t have to figure this all out on your own. NameStation is your one-stop shop that will make all these steps a breeze for you.

Know, however, that the best domain names are most likely taken by another which may or may not be a direct competitor. Adding a few letters can make it different such as adding “my”, numbers or even special characters. Some memorable websites can become hits such as ebay, Google, Yahoo! and more.

Some business owners have to keep toggling from one business registrar to another in order to process domain registration online. At NameStation you get no less than the top 30 hosting companies including corresponding prices for the domain name, hosting, information on disk space, bandwidth and links. And mind you, the prices are competitive and you could find one registrant that would fit your budget.

Why struggle with all the hassles of researching each and every piece of information you need when an automated website can do it for you? You are racing against time and thousands of other competitors who want a share of the profit that their business names and domain names can provide them. Go ahead and give your product or service the marketing push it needs to make it a successful venture.

Visit www.NameStation.com for further information.

The first thing you have to do is come up with a good domain name for registration. Don’t even think about a one-word domain name; they’re all gone at this point. Instead, come up with dual-word combos. If you’re putting together a professional site, try your name before anything else.

Don’t get fancy with spelling when selecting your domain name registration, or use 2s and 8s to represent their sounds. You can try the number 1; that sometimes works. You can also try the names of products you offer, or a description of your site content offerings: Romanceforgirls, popcornpalace, fluffykittens. Memorable is always better; short and memorable is best, but very difficult to accomplish.

Come up with a couple of dozen names that will do for your site, and test them on a registry. Don’t buy a domain name for which the .com extension is gone, but you have access to the .net or .info. These domain names are not by any means as valuable as the .com. If you pick up the .com, though, and you expect the site to be lucrative or have a lot of competition, it’s not a bad idea to pick up the other extensions as well. Domain name registration is NOT expensive, and if you register in bulk you can get an even better price.

This doesn’t mean you should avoid anything but .com. If you have a business in the United Kingdom, you have access to the .uk domain name set, which UK customers are likely to look at before anything else for UK-specific businesses.

If you anticipate most of your business will come from British customers who are aware your business is in Britain, the .uk extension may be a better choice than the .com; and if your customers are unhappy with Internic’s control of Internet domain registration or they are very pro-Britain, the .uk extension is certainly a better choice.

If you’re fortunate enough to find both extensions for your domain open, and if you run a British company, it doesn’t cost much to buy them both, and you definitely should.

Tips for Domain Name Registration

Have a website ready to plunk into your domain as soon as you buy it, and submit it immediately to the search engines. The search engines take time to index new sites and your domain name registration is only as valuable as the search engines make it.

You can also have more than one domain name pointing at a single site. If you’ve bought multiple extensions for your domain name (as in the previously-suggested .com/.uk combination), you can set up your site under one domain name and then direct traffic from the others to the main site. This is called web traffic forwarding and has been around for years. It may be as simple as parking your domain name on a server and putting a line of code on the page, or as complex as going through another website to use their online web forwarding services.

When you do register a domain and start building traffic to it, go out and renew for multiple years before your renewal is due. It is surprisingly easy to forget to register your domain name on time, and if someone else sneaks in and registers it, you’ve just lost a ton of work on that domain.

By making your domain name memorable, you will help other webmasters remember your site easily when building anchor texts in their links- a crucial component of SEO.

Final tip: don’t just think about price when looking for a domain registration company- also think about quality of service. While you shouldn’t be paying over the odds, it really is better to be safe than sorry and go with the more established registrars. Then you can have peace of mind that should any problems arise, you will be well looked after.

You need to come up with a business name that would help people identify you, what you do and what it means to them as a consumer. In other words, you need a name that is meaningful, brandable, short and easy to remember.

Brilliant Ideas Online

The reason why you would want to come up with a good domain and/or business name is plain and simple. You would need something that would be interesting and eye-catching enough for internet surfers to take a second, longer look at your business once they see it. This is going to be the key to open doors for you as business owner to potential customers or clients.

Here is where NameStation.com can help you tremendously. NameStation is a domain name generator which helps you choose from a wide range of unique company ideas for startup names and other name ideas. Think of names of babies (boy or girl), pets, bands, produc ts of for instance, screen names and roleplay names. Regardless of whatever part of the world you’re from or which language you use, NameStation has it figured out for you. For baby names alone, parents can get a load of names instantly that have been arranged using clever mathematics to come up with a totally special name that matches language semantics. Examples are Carly, Antonnie, Angel, Milli, Krissi and more. There are over 20 language rules to choose from for name creation, including English, Latin, French, Italian, Russian and other Scandinavian, European, African, Asian languages. Even artificial languages like Klingon from Star Trek and Tolkien’s elven language Sindarin can be tried to produce some more interesting names using semantics specific to them.

Available Domain Names

After a business owner or individual has figured out the best business names to use, the next key step is to create domain names. And you need to do this quickly. There are lots of business startups out there who are raring to start their own websites and register their chosen domain names. You don’t have monopoly to great, catchy business names and domain names unless you registered it first.

You can do all this in NameStation with a few mouse clicks. You can easily check what are the available domain names right this minute or run a domain search and get results in a few seconds. On the homepage, you will find several suggestions on available domain names. This comes with columns that would tell you if the generated names are free and available for you to use. If a domain is taken, you can hit the analyze link to see more details about the domain name to find out its current status and who owns it. Get similar suggestions by clicking alternatives right across the domain name you have initially wanted to register. Know that this website can spell magic for you. It is affiliated with some of the most reliable search engines and domain registrars over the internet.

Free Registration

Another good deal one is sure to receive from the domain name search tool NameStation, is free registration. Choose a login name, password, email address and pronto, you can get personalized service at the tips of your finger. Bookmark domain names you’re interested in so you could easily pull them up when you need to go back to them. And when you’re ready, go through with the domain name registration through NameStation too.

For further information, please visit www.NameStation.com

Screen Name Generator

Create cool names that your friends aren’t going to believe! ASCII has many special characters in it that many people don’t know about. This recipe also has many tips that are going to help you think of a cool display name!

There are two ways you can create cool display names. One way of accessing other symbols is by experimenting. To experiment you can use this technique:

1. Press Alt+a number combination (Try all sorts of combinations, I find that there are a lot of combinations in the 0160 range that can be used)
Make sure that you don’t release the alt button in between!
As soon as you let go of the Alt button you can see your character symbol there.

Here are a few examples

Press Alt+0153 to get a ™ symbol
Press Alt+0169 to get a © symbol
Press Alt+0164 to get a ¤ symbol
Press Alt+0166 to get a ¦ symbol
And so on…

If you want a list of more of the symbols then use the list of symbols (Windows Character Map) in Microsoft Word

To access this:
1. Open Microsoft Word
2. Click on Insert on the menu bar
3. Then click on Symbols…

Then a box will pop up with all the symbols. Just double click on a symbol to paste it in the document. Then just copy and paste the symbol from your document.

Now all you need is a little creativity to put all these symbols together.

Most people either make a pattern out of these symbols around their name or make their name out of symbols.

Here are some examples I could come up with:

® | $ |-| Σ Я ž ™- Notice that this name is created completely using symbols, and I have spaced the symbols so that it is a bit easier to read.

[¸,ø¤º°`¦°º¤ø,¸ |The Risherz| ¸,ø¤º°`¦°º¤ø,¸]© ²ºº5 – Just a few symbols that I put together and repeated the same on the other side.

That’s all there is to it!

To change you display name in msn just

1. Click on Tools
2. Click on Options…
3. Type in your display name or use Copy and Paste in the text box under
“Type your name as you want others to see it:”

Now when your friends sign onto MSN Messenger they are going to see your extremely cool display name!

Randomainer.com domain search

Randomainer.com is a  random domain name generator that combines several search methods to come up with new unused domains. Just enter the keyword that interests you, Randomainer will find its semantic relations and use the parts of those words to create new names. Advanced domain search lets you specify the keywords that should be contained in the names that are generated.

The domain search engine can be used to search for available domain names for startup businesses, personal and private domains, professionals and corporatsions etc. Domain name availability can be verified with GoDaddy.

Visit www.randomainer.com to find out more.

Create a screen name

A screen name must start with a letter and may be any combination of letters and numbers up to a total of 16 characters.

Some screen names are restricted due to security reasons or duplication. AOL reserves the right to delete any screen name it deems to be vulgar or sexually explicit. If someone has already chosen the screen name you desire, it will not be possible for you to use it. This is so every AOL member will have a unique email address with no duplications. If the screen name you select is already in use, delete the screen name you typed in and try again. There is no limit on how many times you can try different names.

Note: To create a screen name, you need to be signed on with a master screen name. A master screen name is the first screen name you created for this account and any screen name you have assigned master screen name status with Parental Controls.

To create a screen name:
1. Find an available Screen name. Use SpinXO.com
2. Go to http://names.aol.com.
3. In the Screen Name: box, type your master screen name.
4. In the Password: box, type your AOL password.
5. Click the Sign On button.
6. Click the Create link.
7. In the Answer: box, type the answer to your Account Security Question.
8. Follow the onscreen instructions to select the new screen name, the password, and the Parental Controls settings.

Note: If you choose either Mature Teens, Young Teens or Kids Only for the Age Category, you will also be prompted to choose whether or not to turn on Activity Reports.

In many cases this has nothing to do with the diction of the receptionist. Out of context, the company name simply makes no sense to the ear.

Years ago I had an extreme version of this experience when a gardening columnist I was interviewing said something interesting about “squash vine borers.” Listening, I could not form words out of those sounds. I had to ask her to repeat the phrase three times. I still wasn’t sure I’d gotten it right and emailed her to check, only to learn that what I’d finally heard as “bores” should have been “borers.”

Two names submitted in our first Named At Last naming contest, for a web design/search engine optimization company, exemplify this problem. Each contains the kernel of an appealing visual image, but out loud they don’t work:

Ducks Tech Web
Agile Impala

In the first name, the consonants smudge into one another, and in the second example, the vowels blend together when they shouldn’t. Corral a colleague who hasn’t read this newsletter, and test this by saying each name naturally, without exaggerating the space between the words. Ask them to spell what you just said. Most of the time, the colleague will look stunned, unable to echo the sounds, much less spell words.

Use “the receptionist test” on any name you’re considering for a company or product. Even if you primarily sell through the written word, there will be times when you need to call a business partner and have the name create understanding rather than confusion.

Brandable and memorable business names that are pronounceable in the English language and have an available website domain can be found with www.makewords.com name suggestions tool.

My colleague held emergency brainstorming sessions with his cronies, registered a new domain, announced the name change, only to receive a barrage of criticism from British and Australian colleagues that for them, the new name had negative and even somewhat obscene connotations. He changed the company name and corresponding URL again.

The moral of the story: Names matter. In your inventor’s zeal for getting the technical stuff right, don’t leave a blank for the company name and then pick one at the last minute. Take the time to choose a business name that has these characteristics:

• Suggests the content or subject area of your business
• Has pizzazz
• Makes a positive impression on your target market
• Can be easily spelled and pronounced
• If the company will mainly do business online, corresponds to an available domain
• Is legally available for use

Tips for Brainstorming Names

A comprehensive, free guide to brainstorming a winning company name can be found at http://www.yudkin.com/generate.htm. Another series of steps to follow are these:

1. Find 8-10 company names that you like – not necessarily in your own industry.

2. Analyze the type or formation of these names. For instance:

• Google, Yahoo – short, sounds humorous
• Dr. Pepper, Green Giant – based on a fictitious character
• Done Yesterday, Call Caren! – describes a result or says what to do
• Speedy Muffler, One Stop Frame Shop – states the competitive advantage
• A Quiet Touch, Tranquility Day Spa – emphasizes a feeling
• Queen of Clean, A Hire Authority – catchy, uses a meaningful rhyme or pun
• Riviera Diamonds, Niagara Well Services – evocative geographical reference

3. Use the patterns of the names you like to think up new names that fit your line of work, target audience, competitive strengths and personal preferences. Always brainstorm dozens of possibilities, not just a few.

4. Run your candidates through the criteria listed above. Get feedback from trusted friends, clients and colleagues. Select your top choice from those remaining.

Domain Names

To find available domain names go to the domain name search tool at NameStation.com

Read some knowledgeable recommendations about how to start your domain name search:

http://www.typedhype.com/index.cfm/2006/10/12/How-To-Create-A-Memorable-Domain-Name

Yes, your business – no matter how small a start-up – should have a written business plan. But that’s another story for another day. For now, let’s look at the most important reason to pick just the right name for your business.

If there’s one idea you want to carry with you always, particularly as you evaluate possible names for your business, it’s this: Perception is reality!.

How would-be customers will think about your business starts with the impression its name creates in their mind. So think long and hard. Next, they’ll be impressed – or not – by how that name is presented graphically – colors, type style, any accompanying art, perhaps a “tag line” or “positioning statement” that describes or amplifies some unique aspect of your business.

How and where you use that name also creates an impression, including on business cards, letterhead, envelopes, labels. Even bags and boxes, billboards, store windows, including on the sides of your fleet of delivery trucks.

As you can see, the name of your business will have many faces and wear many hats, so creating the final graphics package – unless you’re a graphics pro – isn’t something you want to do while sitting at your kitchen table. Invest the few hundred dollars it takes to have a professional graphic design firm put together several versions for you to review and choose from. It’s truly a wise investment.

The image or perception you create for your company name – whether deliberately or through neglect – is how both existing and potential customers will think of your company each time they see or hear its name. And creating that perception, the perceived reality of your business, begins with whatever name you give it.

Give some thought, too, to registering that name in its final design presentation – the whole thing is called a “logo” – as a trademark. Yes, it will cost you several hundred dollars more, but once it’s registered, no one else will be able to use your name for their business. That simple act of registration can save you untold head aches, plus thousands of dollars, down the road.

Another thing you need to secure for your brand is an available domain name. Since there are now nearly 200 million domain names registered globally, it can be extremely difficult to find a suitable name with an available .com or .net domain extension. Therefore it is possible to save hours by using automated domain name suggestion tools like NameStation.com.

The names would be far more descriptive than their current ones. But they wouldn’t embody the essence or spirit of the companies they represent. Even if they offered the exact same goods and services, it’s unlikely Yahoo! or StarBucks would enjoy the same market share they now possess if given the more descriptive, and arguably accurate, names.

Now why is that?

In short, great brand names leverage our emotions. They resonate with the experiential right side of the brain vs. the logical left lobe. And emotions carry more motivational “charge” than logic. People buy emotionally and then justify rationally. And because great brand names create mental “pictures” they equate to a proverbial thousand descriptive words. They are the zipped files, the condensed soup, the computer macros, that all expand and unfold in our minds every time they are seen or heard.

Creating emotionally charged names requires knowledge, expertise and a knack for wording. The first place to find positively charged names is in the words themselves. Words have equity and that equity can be transferred into a company or product name. For example, a company that wanted their customers to see their products and services as fresh, new and exciting borrowed the emotional charge associated with the word “virgin”. That’s how we have Virgin Airlines and Virgin Records. A computer company demonstrated its fresh, friendly approach to the industry with the consumable name Apple. A campy clothing company exuded adventure with its name Banana Republic. An online job board wanted to impress employers and job seekers with its massive listings… hence Monster. And need I mention Amazon? Borrowing on the attributes intrinsic to a word or phrase is a natural way to instantly instill emotion in a brand name.

But with more and more dictionary words being used, hoarded and trademarked, what’s a company to do? Another way is to simply put familiar positive words into unique combinations. Witness our previous example of StarBucks. What’s brighter than a star or has more mass appeal than money? Does it say coffee? No, but it sounds more appealing than “The Coffee Corral”. And more importantly, company names rarely exist in a vacuum. They are on a sign above the store, or on a proposal or on a business card being handed over by a salesperson. There is contextual support that helps fill in the blank so the name doesn’t have to do all the literal, descriptive explaining. That’s where a lot of companies err. They make the name explain their category rather than evoke their benefits.

Yet another way of accomplishing this task is by creating a word that sounds “ish”. When I say “ish” I mean it sounds like it matches the company or product- even if it doesn’t make sense. An example you ask? But of course. My favorite is Viagra. It has the “V” of vigor and vitality, plus the “iagra” of Niagra. While not an existing word, it plays on existing, familiar parts and patterns of speech that create a natural flow to the name. Hence the name Viagra is, in my book, “ish”. It fits the product and the category. Cialis doesn’t. Which means Cialis will have to buy the emotional bond with lots of emotion-rich (and expensive) advertising. It can be done, but it will cost. A whole lot.

Borrowing existing word equity, creating unique combinations and inventing “ish” words. Just three of the ways to develop a great brand name. Try each of these techniques and if you can’t come up with a name, ask a really good Scrabble player!

This is a useful tool for coming up with cool unique name ideas for anything – business names, roleplay names, pet names, baby names, you name it:) 

Simply select a template from the following list to create 100 names in a blink of an eye:

African Names
Croatian Names
Czech Names
Danish Names
Dutch Names
English Names
English (female names)
English (male names)
English (places)
English (tech)
Estonian Names
Finnish Names
French Names
German Names
Gothic Names
Hindu Names
Hungarian Names
Italian Names
Japanese Names
Klingon Names
Latin Names
Latvian Names
Norwegian Names
Polish Names
Portuguese Names
Russian (places) Names
Sindarin Names
Spanish Names
Swahili Names
Swedish Names
Turkish Names

Choosing Your Domain Extension

A domain extension or top level domain is simply the suffix of your website address: (.com, .net, .org, .ca, etc.) Most Internet users are familiar with the “.com” extension, and will generally use this extension by default when typing an address into their browser. Choosing a “.com” extension should be your fist choice in case your potential customers forget that your address is “www.mybusiness.NET”, and visit your competitor at “www.mybusiness.COM” by mistake. Choosing the “.com” extension gives your website the most credibility in the eyes of your customers.

If your business only caters to the local community, then it makes sense to get a country specific domain name, such as the “.ca” extension. A country specific domain benefits you in two ways: both your customers and search engines such as Google will know that your website is registered to a Canadian and operates in Canada. Potential customers will feel more comfortable knowing that they are dealing with a Canadian company, and not a U.S. based business pretending to be a Canadian company. Also, search engines will give your website higher placement in the search results when a user is performing a Canadian specific search.

I personally recommend that my clients, if possible, register both the “.com” AND “.ca” extension. This way, your Canadian based website will benefit from using the “.ca” extension, while at the same time ensuring that they reach your website if they accidentally type the “.com” extension into their browser.

Using Your Business Name

The first choice for any domain name would be your business’ name. This ensures that your customers will remember your website’s address. You can’t expect your potential customers to remember a phrase that just relates to your business.

Choosing Choice Keywords

Including specific keywords in your website’s address will help your rankings in popular search engines such as Google or Yahoo. It is best to choose a keyword that you think your potential customers will use to search for your business. A search engine optimization (SEO) professional such as Cost Effective Design can assist you in choosing your keyword(s). These type of domain names are used in instances where the client does not want to use the business name because it is either already registered by another company, or the company name is simply too long. Any company that is serious about generating traffic through search engines should acquire a domain name with a keyword in addition to your business name.

Don’t Confuse Your Customers

If possible, try not to use domain names that include: “2” for “To” or “4” for “For” or “u” for “You”. These may make your domain look “cool” or “hip”, but in reality they are not very practical. These domain names create a problem when directing your clients to your website verbally or over the phone. For example, if you owned http://www.UsedCars4U.com, every time you verbally directed someone to your website, you would have to specify that the URL uses the actual number 4, and letter U.

To Use, Or Not to Use Hyphens

Given that more and more businesses are registering domain names every day, getting the website address you want is becoming increasingly difficult. One or two word domain names are usually already registered, forcing new registrants to choose URLs containing three or four words. To some people, these URLs can look like a big mess of words. Using hyphens in between the words can make them visually more appealing. For example, “www.used-cars-for-you.com, looks better than “www.usedcarsforyou.com. The jury is still out on hyphenated domain names. The advantages are that they look better and search engines can easily distinguish the separate keywords for better search placements, but the disadvantages are that they are difficult to verbally communicate and type.

The best solution would be to register both the hyphenated, and the un-hyphenated version of the domain name to ensure that there is no confusion.

Domain Name Length

Even though you are allowed to use 67 characters for a domain name, the general rule of thumb is: shorter is better. Although, in some instances, the website address may be more memorable if it is more descriptive. For example a domain consisting of initials only, such as “www.waa.com”, may not create a lasting impression compared to the domain name “www.windsorautoassociation.com”. Therefore, it is best to choose a name that, while short, contains enough description for your customers to easily remember.

It’s not just your site name but it is the first criterion of your success on the Internet and when it comes to a point of success you must hold it tight. It can make your business stand out in the crowd, or just float aimlessly in space. Well many of us think that it merely plays any role but it’s not the truth. Think if nobody remembers your site name or see no visual look of what your site is about.

The temptation of a good domain name is so powerful; that’s why some companies even paid ridiculously high prices to get the name they want. The domains Loans.com and Wines.com were both bought for $3 million each. Telephone.com was acquired for $1.75 million, while Bingo.com sold for $1.1 million.

So the main question is, what points we should consider when we choose a domain name. For better results, your domain name should be memorable and easy to remember. Remember the following tips when creating a domain name.

* The domain name should be short.

* The domain name should be simple.

* It should be suggestive of your business category.

* It should be unique.

* It should be easy to interpret and pronounce.

* It should be personalized.

* It should not be difficult to spell.

* It should not be difficult to remember.

Domain names can be registered through many different companies (known as “registrars”). You can register for 1 to 10 years – prices can vary anywhere from $10 to $20 per year. Most web hosting companies, will handle the registration process for you, but make sure that you are properly listed as the owner of the domain when it is registered.

If you have registered a domain name for a specific period, make sure you renew it in time. You can be surprised at the number of cases, where site owners have let a domain name slip by if they have not renewed in time.

How to use expired domains:

Did you know you can use expired domains to skyrocket your traffic? Let me tell you about expired domains first. Thousands of webmasters invest time, effort and money to promote their site and build up traffic. Many of them then lose interest and move on, leaving their site active. That means that although they still own the domain, they’re not actively promoting it.

All the automatic marketing systems they’ve put in place are still bringing in traffic. The site runs itself. Now, at some point the ownership of those domains is going to expire. If you snap up those domains once they come back onto the market, you’ve got a pre-built stream of customers. You can either rebuild the site, or redirect the traffic to your domain. You could set up an affiliate program get paid for users someone else paid for.

Its that easy.

Websites such as http://www.expiredtraffic.com or http://www.deleteddomains.com are doing great job for expired domains. They actually do all the legwork and let you reap all the rewards. Even you can back-order a specific domain name also.

There are tons of options, and lots of easy ways to make lots of money with very little effort. Opportunities like these are everywhere. All we need a strong determination to succeed, and a good mentor.

To find domains that are currently available, visit: http://www.makewords.com/

The MakeWords.com Domain Name Generator has recently published a daily RSS feed of available domain names, that you can easily syndicate using this link: http://www.makewords.com/dailydomains/RSS.aspx 

The RSS feed contains the same domain names as in their Daily Domains page and is updated every day by MakeWords staff.

Some recent available domains such as these are really good, makes you wonder how they are still unregistered:

micrim.com
generatevideo.com
party-goers.com
idolpals.com
instani.com
first-graders.com
domainergate.com
freshbeach.com
freshresort.com
front-running.com
paranthan.com
rubygoldrush.com
self-financed.com
trifor.com
vegetic.com

There is another important role of domain name that being forgot by web masters.

Search engine friendly domain name is influencing in search engine placement. If you do want to get the top in search engine, then name your domain with this kind of domain name:

1) Use domain name that represents prior keyword of your site. This is very important step in optimizing your web site. At least, this step has 2 positive impacts on your site:

# Your domain name will be much easier to be being remembered by visitors, since your domain name represents prior keyword that they want to know.

# You will have good positioning on search engine because url has it’s important roles for search engines. This kind of url is also called with url-keyword.

For details about url-keyword, you can read our free guidance in SEO-ing web site.

This kind of url will also influence PR of your site, since another web sites which want to link to you are forced to enter your prior keyword as url in texts-link on their web page.

2) Abbreviate some words with numeric:

Eample: 2 = two

4 = for

This will also makes your url in good positioning on few search engines that sorts url based on initial-numeric domain name.

3) Make your domain name as short as possible. Long domain name will only makes your url difficult to remember and easily being forget by visitors, so this should be avoided. In the opposite, using short url-keyword will make your url memorize-able.

4) Use Popular TLD only as much as you can. The reason why it is recommended is, because popular TLD not only will make it easy to remember, but it also represents credibility of your business.

5) If your url consists more than a single word, then use minus (-) sign as the separator. This will avoid misspelling, mistype and make ease in spelling.

About the Author: Endar is a SEO copy-writer. Visit his site for the more info about effective search engine optimization to make your site listed on the top of free search engine. http://www.2search-engine-optimization.info

Don’t fret. “Get creative,” says About.com’s entrepreneurial writer, Scott Allen. Another tip Allen suggests: Employ a thesaurus, too. Beware, though. Choose your name wisely. Chrysler learned that millions costly mistake when they unveiled their new Chevrolet Nova in the late 1970s—and no on in Mexico would buy the car—because “Nova” in Spanish means “no go.” Worse, still: Henry Ford, Jr. named the mid 1950s car with the vertical grill flop after his kid—Edsel.

With your new business, don’t get an Edsel or NoVa for it, as some websites that specialize in creating available domain names can craft this for you. The domain name search engine at www.makewords.com and other internet websites that brainstorm domain names can ensure ways to a great name for your site:

1. Play with names.  Take the first few letters of a combination of names from your family members, street signs or consult a baby name book—like St from Steve, Or from Orson and Nel from Nellie. There, you’ve got STORONEL  Or, something to that effect.

2. Research. What’s the Latin meaning of the name? How is it said in Greek? What’s the proper spelling in Hebrew? Remember, what may mean one definition in this country may take on a totally different—and sometimes insulting—meaning completely in another country or even said in another dialect.

3. And speaking of definitions … Hone in what your product is, does and stands out from the rest of the pack, and chose that one glowing, pivotal product gimmick as the domain name. Then you can register (and worry about) the company name, later. Think of Scott Golden’s rule of thumb: the Purple Cow Theory. Think about it: most cows are either brown, black or white, so if you saw a purple one in a field of all that brown, black or white cattle, you’d notice it, right? Cows are known not for milk alone.

4. Start reading everything. Bus signs, street signs, phone books, the table of elements, surnames.

5. Go Au Natural. Um, no, not naked, but back to nature. Orson Creek. Grey Seas Limited. Whatever works.

6. Get feedback—even if it’s on a name you hate. And this includes your own. Okay, so your own name’s hideous but you figured, what the heck, why not profit from it? Run it by your immediate family, anyway and see what they think, all the same. And, by the same token …

7. If you’re going to use their names—ASK! ‘Nuff said on that. And even if they still say no on the name use—regardless of the double-digit percentages they get from the royalties—move on.

8. Register your stuff, ideas and trademarks—if any—with the U.S. Copyright Office.  You may also want to look into your state’s registered offices for any name trademarks, copyrights or patents your idea may or may not be fringing upon. Also, register with your state as names that you will be doing business as, or known as a DBA, so that the IRS and other financial institutions can keep track with, for and yes, on you. For instance: If you have a Freddie-Eddie, a kid’s only night-light as your product, you may register the website name as your name spelled backwards—like NEVELE for ELEVEN or NEVAEH for HEAVEN—the do business in your given name, SBA whatever you have it spelled as, and register Fred-Ed.com, or something like that.

9. Consider registering .net and .info as domain names, too besides .com. Oh, sure, it’s not as glamorous as is a .com name—but it’s not as crowded and jockeying for web traffic space and branding recognition, either. And, if you’re looking to maximize your search engine places, .net and .info may be the way to go, since not many name brands have those tags to go by, either.

10. Get an EIN with the IRS. That’s an Employee Identification Number registered with the Internal Revenue Service. If you’re gun-shy in using your Social Security Number, they can assign an EIN to you. This way, you can use this for any and all business transactions you’ll be making with your new business.

11. Play with Colors, Shapes and Numbers. So, you’re still determined to get a .com with your name in it? That’s okay. More and more websites today have alphanumeric combinations to their domain names. Like the song by the Brothers Johnson called “Strawberry Letter #22”, some websites have letters and numbers working for them, too. As for a logo, like with a domain name, if you’re going to go on the international scale, make sure that logo is a universally accepted sign. Choose a light, bright color for your logo. A square with a smiley face may work if that smiley face is a rosy pink in most countries. If that “Have a Nice Day!” smiley face is square and yellow, though, you may have to take issue with those who own that kid called Squarepants.

Author: Jessica Mousseau. Start your domain search at MakeWords.com – a free domain name generator and brainstorming site. Our intelligent name suggestion tools help you search, create and bulk check hundreds of unused names or dictionary domains instantly.

NameStation.com Name Generator

Naming your business is one of the most important decisions you are facing when establishing a new company.

There’s a lot of room for creativity, but in order to have a truly unique, memorable and brandable name, you need to consider certain basics:

1. You need a distinctive name that characterizes what your business does
2. The name must be pronounceable, brandable and relatively short
3. You want a name that has an available .com domain

While the first two are a matter of brainstorming and consulting with your friends or colleagues, getting the third one right can be an impossibly difficult task to encounter. With more than 50 million .com domains registered today, you can spend hours looking them up in the Whois database one-by-one, only to find that all the sensible ones are already taken. Fortunately there are the domain name suggestion tools, like http://www.NameStation.com/, that generate hundreds of name ideas instantly, and speeds up the domain name search process greatly.

Very often the names have nothing to do with the underlying business, or service, such as Kodak, Google, eBay. Remember, it’s the uniqueness of the name – you want to distinguish yourself from your competitors. Deep etymology is secondary compared to the uniqueness and brandability of the name.

Another way to decide on a domain name is to try to figure out what message you want to convey to people and combine a couple of short words together, that are easy to remember. Many small businesses prefer to use words that cleverly suggest qualities about the underlying product or service without describing them outright, such as Lending Tree for loans, Slenderella for diet food products, or The Body Shop for personal hygiene products. Such names can easily be generated with the NameStation.com Popular Affixes or Dictionary searches.

If you’ve found the perfect name for your business, you have to take the extra step to secure it by registering the domain name. Domain name registration is not something to be intimidated about. It is a straightforward process, where you just have to follow the step-by-step instructions given by your domain registration provider. All you need to know, is your contact information. No technical knowledge is required.

Try it! http://www.NameStation.com/ business name generator with domain search.

The term started out as screen name (two words), but in recent years, the usage of the single-word form screenname has been  increasing. The abbreviation “sn” can also mean an online screen name.

Screen names are often pseudonyms or first names, many times complemented by extra numbers, letters, or other characters to disambiguate them from users with similar screen names on the same system; this practice is increasingly common as the popularity of online environments grows.

How much a screen name means in reference to its owner usually depends on number of accounts, and length of use. When a person uses the same identity for multiple services, then it probably means something to them personally, such as a nickname or a running joke. People who are not able to obtain their desired screen name on a popular service make minor typographical changes to the name by adding numbers or changing spelling, resulting in a multitude of usernames like ‘Dela54r4h5′ and ‘will0wRick’.

Substituting numbers for certain letters is called Lookalike or l00k4lik3, because the numeric characters visually resemble the alphabetic ones and the name is still readable.

If you have completely ran out of screen name ideas, there are several websites that help you generate new name ideas randomly. Some examples from an online SpinXO Screen Name Generator are the following:

4l3xTab, CaesDressy, FelBeach, InfernoEamon, MorlyDemon, R0d30Lang, SephTin, VividN0bl3, 5illyPat, CandyParke, FeliAlone, IvennGoofy, MortNyc, RacingYul3, SergeSteen, VkDamia, AbrAnnon, CheeBour, FielToxic, JandDonald, MuchDua, RamonXmc, SincGr4nt, WaldMyh3r0, AlfyBoz, ChikSkyl, FitzW4v3, JeffeIam, N3dyTao, RamoX0x0x, SlashKende,  AmirSchool, ClauLovely, ForeverFarre, JeremMo, NascarTha, RecipeHold, SlipkKais, WinnCutie

If you wish to get more personalized results, just enter some words into the three textboxes - for example your name, your favorite pet, your hobby.

Go to SpinXO.com

Feelings are created by the accumulation of experiences with the brand, both directly relating to its use, and through the influence of advertising, design, and media commentary.

A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to a company, product or service. A brand serves to create associations and expectations among products made by a producer. A brand often includes an explicit logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols, which are developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality.
The brand, and “branding” and brand equity have become increasingly massive components of culture and the economy, now being described as “cultural accessories and personal philosophies”.

Basic Concepts

Some marketers distinguish the psychological aspect of a brand from the experiential aspect. The experiential aspect consists of the sum of all points of contact with the brand and is known as the brand experience. The psychological aspect, sometimes referred to as the brand image, is a symbolic construct created within the minds of people and consists of all the information and expectations associated with a product or service. The unicist approach to brand building considers the conceptual structure of brands, businesses and people.

Marketers seek to develop or align the expectations comprising the brand experience through branding, so that a brand carries the “promise” that a product or service has a certain quality or characteristic which make it special or unique. A brand image may be developed by attributing a “personality” to or associating an “image” with a product or service, whereby the personality or image is “branded” into the consciousness of consumers. A brand is therefore one of the most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace. The art of creating and maintaining a brand is called brand management. You’re creating the story.

A brand which is widely known in the marketplace acquires brand recognition. Where brand recognition builds up to a point where a brand enjoys a mass of positive sentiment in the marketplace, it is said to have achieved brand franchise. One goal in brand recognition is the identification of a brand without the name of the company present. Disney has been successful at branding with their particular script font (originally Walt Disney’s signature, but later translated to go.com).

Brand equity measures the total value of the brand to the brand owner, and reflects the extent of brand franchise. The term brand name is often used interchangeably with “brand”, although it is more correctly used to specifically denote written or spoken linguistic elements of a brand. In this context a “brand name” constitutes a type of trademark, if the brand name exclusively identifies the brand owner as the commercial source of products or services. A brand owner may seek to protect proprietary rights in relation to a brand name through trademark registration.

The act of associating a product or service with a brand has become part of pop culture. Most products have some kind of brand identity, from common table salt to designer clothes. In non-commercial contexts, the marketing of entities which supply ideas or promises rather than product and services (eg. political parties or religious organizations) may also be known as “branding”.

Consumers may look on branding as an important value added aspect of products or services, as it often serves to denote a certain attractive quality or characteristic. From the perspective of brand owners, branded products or services also command higher prices. Where two products resemble each other, but one of the products has no associated branding (such as a generic, store-branded product), people may often select the more expensive branded product on the basis of the quality of the brand or the reputation of the brand owner.

Advertising spokespersons have also become part of some brands, for example: Mr. Whipple of Charmin toilet tissue and Tony the Tiger of Kellogg’s.

Brand Monopoly

In economic terms the `brand’ is, in effect, a device to create a `monopoly’ – or at least some form of `imperfect competition’ – so that the brand owner can obtain some of the benefits which accrue to a monopoly, particularly those related to decreased price competition. In this context, most `branding’ is established by promotional means. However, there is also a legal dimension, for it is essential that the brand names and trademarks are protected by all means available. The monopoly may also be extended, or even created, by patent, copyright and other sui generis intellectual property regimes (eg: Plant Varieties Act, Design Act, confidential means of manufacture (secret recipe) etc).

In all these contexts, retailers’ `own label’ brands can be just as powerful. The `brand’, whatever its derivation, is a very important investment for any organization. RHM (Ranks Hovis McDougall), for example, have valued their international brands at anything up to twenty times their annual earnings!

Brand Development

In terms of existing products, brands may be developed in a number of ways:

- Brand extension
The existing strong brand name can be used as a vehicle for new or modified products; for example, after many years of running just one brand, Coca-Cola launched `Diet Coke’ and `Cherry Coke’; although its subsequent change to its main brand and the retrenchment to ‘Classic Coke’ demonstrated some of the problems this may cause! Procter & Gamble (P&G), in particular, has made regular use of this device, extending its strongest brand names (such as Fairy Soap) into new markets (the very successful Fairy Liquid, and more recently Fairy Automatic).

- Multibrands
Alternatively, in a market that is fragmented amongst a number of brands a supplier can choose deliberately to launch totally new brands in apparent competition with its own existing strong brand (and often with identical product characteristics); simply to soak up some of the share of the market which will in any case go to minor brands. The rationale is that having 3 out of 12 brands in such a market will give a greater overall share than having 1 out of 10 (even if much of the share of these new brands is taken from the existing one). In its most extreme manifestation, a supplier pioneering a new market which it believes will be particularly attractive may choose immediately to launch a second brand in competition with its first, in order to pre-empt others entering the market.

Individual brand names naturally allow greater flexibility by permitting a variety of different products, of differing quality, to be sold without confusing the consumer’s perception of what business the company is in or diluting higher quality products.

Once again, Procter & Gamble is a leading exponent of this philosophy, running as many as ten detergent brands in the US market. This also increases the total number of `facings’ it receives on supermarket shelves. Sara Lee, on the other hand, uses it to keep the very different parts of the business separate –from Sara Lee cakes through Kiwi polishes to L’Eggs pantyhose. In the hotel business, Marriott uses the name Fairfield Inns for its budget chain (and Ramada uses Rodeway for its own cheaper hotels).

Cannibalism is a particular problem of a ‘multibrand’ approach, in which the new brand takes business away from an established one which the organization also owns. This may be acceptable (indeed to be expected) if there is a net gain overall. Alternatively, it may be the price the organization is willing to pay for shifting its position in the market; the new product being one stage in this process.

Own brands and generics

With the emergence of strong retailers the `own brand’, the retailer’s own branded product (or service), also emerged as a major factor in the marketplace. Where the retailer has a particularly strong identity (such as Marks & Spencer in clothing) this `own brand’ may be able to compete against even the strongest brand leaders, and may dominate those markets which are not otherwise strongly branded. There was a fear that such `own brands’ might displace all other brands (as they have done in Marks & Spencer outlets), but the evidence is that – at least in supermarkets and `department’ stores – consumers generally expect to see on display something over 50 per cent (and preferably over 60 per cent) of brands other than those of the retailer. Indeed, even the strongest own brands in the United Kingdom rarely achieve better than third place in the overall market.

Therefore the strongest independent brands (such as Kellogg’s and Heinz), which have maintained their marketing investments, should continue to flourish. More than 50 per cent of United Kingdom FMCG brand leaders have held their position for more than two decades, although it is arguable that those which have switched their budgets to `buy space’ in the retailers may be more exposed.

The strength of the retailers has, perhaps, been seen more in the pressure they have been able to exert on the owners of even the strongest brands (and in particular on the owners of the weaker third and fourth brands). Relationship marketing has been applied most often to meet the wishes of such large customers (and indeed has been demanded by them as recognition of their buying power). Some of the more active marketers have now also switched to ‘category marketing’ – in which they take into account all the needs of a retailer in a product category rather than more narrowly focusing on their own brand.

At the same time, probably as an outgrowth of consumerism, `generic’ (that is, effectively unbranded goods) have also emerged. These made a positive virtue of saving the cost of almost all marketing activities; emphasizing the lack of advertising and, especially, the plain packaging (which was, however, often simply a vehicle for a different kind of image). It would appear that the penetration of such generic products peaked in the early 1980s, and most consumers still seem to be looking for the qualities that the conventional brand provides.

Through old texts and comparisons with other languages, etymologists try to reconstruct the history of words – when they entered a language, from what source, and how their form and meaning changed.

Etymologists also try to reconstruct information about languages that are too old for any direct information (such as writing) to be known. By comparing words in related languages, one can learn about their shared parent language. In this way, word roots have been found which can be traced all the way back to the origin of, for instance, the Indo-European language family.

Basic ideas in etymology

• Words may start with a longer, possibly more complicated form which becomes simpler or shorter. For example, lord comes from hlaf weard, meaning “bread guard”.
• In contrast to the point above, short words may be lengthened by the fusion of affixes to a word. For example, elucidation (enlightening) comes from e+lucid+ation.
• Longer words may also be formed by compounding. An example is bluebird.
• Slang words may enter the common language. Sometimes, common words become slang.
• Vulgarisms may become euphemisms for other words, and sometimes euphemisms become vulgarisms.
• Taboo words may be avoided and lost, often replaced by euphemisms or a circumlocution.
• Words may meld together to become portmanteau words, such as meld, a blend of melt and weld.
• Words may start off as acronyms, like laser.
• Reanalysis may cause word boundaries to move. For example, a napron became an apron and an ewt became a newt.
• Words come from specialist trades (font), different cultures or subcultures, and even works of literature (chortle from Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass).
• Words may be named after a particular place (toponyms, e.g. china) or after a particular person (eponym, e.g. Achilles’ tendon).

English etymology

As a language, English is derived from the Anglo-Saxon, a dialect of West Germanic (as was Old Low German), although its current vocabulary includes words from many languages. The Anglo-Saxon roots can be seen in the similarity of numbers in English and German, particularly seven/sieben, eight/acht, nine/neun and ten/zehn. Pronouns are also cognate: I/ich; thou/Du; we/wir; she/sie. However, language change has eroded many grammatical elements, such as the noun case system, which is greatly simplified in Modern English; and certain elements of vocabulary, much of which is borrowed from French. In fact, more than half of the words in English either come from the French language or have a French cognate. However, the most common root words are still of Germanic origin. For an example of the etymology of an English irregular verb of Germanic origin, see the etymology of the word go.

When the Normans conquered England in 1066 (see Norman Conquest) they brought their Norman language with them. During the Anglo-Norman period which united insular and continental territories, the ruling class spoke Anglo-Norman, while the peasants spoke the English of the time. Anglo-Norman was the conduit for the introduction of French into England, aided by the circulation of Langue d’oïl literature from France. This led to many paired words of French and English origin. For example, beef is cognate with the modern French bouf, meaning cow; veal with veau, meaning calf; pork with porc, meaning pig; and poultry with poulet, meaning chicken. In this situation, the foodstuff has the Norman name, and the animal the Anglo-Saxon name, since it was the Norman rulers who ate meat (meat was an expensive commodity and could rarely be afforded by the Anglo-Saxons), and the Anglo-Saxons who farmed the animals.

English words of more than two syllables are likely to come from French, often with modified terminations. For example, the French words for syllable, modified, terminations and example are syllabe, modifié, terminaisons and exemple. In many cases, the English form of the word is more conservative (that is, has changed less) than the French form.

English has proven accommodating to words from many languages. Scientific terminology relies heavily on words of Latin and Greek origin. Spanish has contributed many words, particularly in the southwestern United States. Examples include buckaroo from vaquero or “cowboy”, alligator from el lagarto or “the lizard”, and rodeo. Cuddle, eerie and greed come from Scots; honcho, sushi, and tsunami from Japanese; dim sum, gung ho, kowtow, kumquat, and typhoon from Cantonese Chinese; behemoth from Hebrew; taiga, sable, kiosk, and sputnik from Russian; and lagniappe from American Spanish through American French; ketchup, kampong, and amok from Malay.

Lists of etymologies:

- A list of the origins of computer-related terms
- List of company name etymologies
- Given name etymology

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Adidas — from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler.

Adobe — from the name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the houses of founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke.

Akai — technically it means “red” in Japanese, but the Japanese also use it to refer to the color of the rising sun, as seen on the flag of Japan.

Alfa Romeo — the company was originally known as ALFA, an acronym for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili. When Nicola Romeo bought ALFA in 1915, his surname was appended.

AltaVista — Spanish for “high view”.

Amazon.com — founder Jeff Bezos renamed the company Amazon (from the earlier name of Cadabra.com) after the world’s most voluminous river, the Amazon. He saw the potential for a larger volume of sales in an online (as opposed to a bricks and mortar) bookstore.

Apple — for the favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard. Apple wanted to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time — which had names such as IBM, DEC, Cincom and Tesseract — in order to get people to use them at home. They looked for a name that supported a brand positioning strategy that was to be perceived as simple, warm, human, approachable and different.
Note: Apple had to get approval from the Beatle’s Apple Corps to use the name Apple and paid a one-time royalty of $100,000 to McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., a maker of high-end audio equipment, to use the derivative name Macintosh (’Mac’).

Ask.com — search engine formerly named after Jeeves, the gentleman’s gentleman (valet, not butler) in P. G. Wodehouse’s series of books. Ask Jeeves was shortened to Ask in 2006.

Aston Martin — from the “Aston Hill” races (near Aston Clinton) where the company was founded, and the surname of Lionel Martin, the company’s founder.

Atari — named from the board game Go. “Atari” is a Japanese word to describe a position where an opponent’s stones are in danger of being captured. It is similar, though not identical, to “check” in chess. The original games company was American but wanted a Japanese-sounding name.

more coming soon …

However, it’s also a fact that some Adsense publishers are struggling to make the minimum required to trigger a monthly payment of only $100.

Just in case you didn’t know, Adsense is a program offered by Google that allows anyone with a website, or who is going to publish a website, the facility to publish Google Ads from which you (the website owner) receive a portion of the advertiser’s payment every time a site visitor clicks on one of those Google Ads on your site.

So therefore, the more the advertiser pays for their ad to be shown on a particular site, the more the publisher receives when a site visitor clicks on that ad.

Most webmasters who have Adsense ads on their sites know all about blending the ads into their site’s theme, choosing the right size ads and positioning the ads optimally.

Google’s own heatmap suggests where to place your ads to get the most clicks and therefore maximize your adsense earnings.

However, despite having done all of the above, some sites will continue to have much higher adsense earnings than others.

This can, of course, be attributed to many variables including the following;

1.Traffic

The site with more traffic should out perform the site with less traffic, but this is not always the case.

The following factors can influence this.

2.The number of Ad Blocks on the site

The more adsense ads there are on a web page the less value each ad’s click will generate, ie it seems that the advertising revenue becomes diluted as the number of ads increases

3.Google’s Smart Pricing

Google’s smart pricing influences the amount of revenue paid to the publisher

4.The Advertiser’s advertising Budget

The amount the advertiser is willing to pay to have his ads published on your site will also influence the amount of your portion of his advertising fee.

5.Industry – Niche Market

This is a crucial factor in determining Adsense revenue.

As you can well imagine, a website about “Mating Habits of the North Sea Clam” will not have as many advertisers clamoring to get their ads on that site as a site that is all about “Website Hosting” will, for example.

What this means is that an advertiser wishing to have an adsense presence on the former site will have to pay far less for top keywords than advertisers on the latter.

As you can see the more competitive a market or industry is, the more advertisers are willing to pay for their adsense adverts.

Some sites regularly generate more than a dollar a click whereas others can only muster $0.01 per click at best.

6.Content

Bearing in mind the above point, it follows that the content on your site will directly influence the type of ads you’ll receive via Google’s adsense script.

So if your content is all about red widgets, Google’s adsense script will place ads from red widget advertisers on your site, provided advertisers in this market do in fact exist.

Conversely if your content is geared towards web design you can be rest assured that there are many advertisers paying good money to have their web design adsense ads published.

7.Site Popularity

It’s also fairly obvious that advertisers would be willing to pay more to have their ads placed on high profile sites than those that aren’t as popular.

Now to the crux of this article.

What type of Website will generate killer dollars from Google’s Adsense?

Whilst all of the above are important to make the big dollars from Adsense, an astute internet entrepreneur would build a site that simply targets high paying Adsense advertisers and simultaneously attracts large numbers of targeted site visitors.

Sounds simple enough but before you rush off to build your `Site made for Adsense’ just remember that a site stuffed with the highest paying keywords will not only be frowned upon by Google but will hold no interest for your site visitors and consequently your site’s popularity and success will be around zero.

About the Author: The author, Mark Bellinger is a university graduate, successful businessman and creator of the following websites: http://www.internetbusiness.co.za – http://www.income.za.net

Acceli Web Solutions launches an intelligent Domain Name Generator at www.makewords.com The new domain search system at www.makewords.com contains a variety of features that speed up your quest for unregistered domain names.

Acceli Web Solutions, a New York web development company, announced today the launch of its next generation domain name suggestion tool and search engine at www.makewords.com

Unregistered domains can now be easily found with several new methods, like the random phonetic word generator, using different language rules, synonym search, popular affixes and more.

“At some point almost everyone needs to come up with a name for their startup business, personal website or blog,” said Tauno Novek, Chief Operating Officer of Acceli. “We faced the same question when we were looking for a name for our company. That’s when the idea about the domain name generator was conceived.”

The domain search engine was developed using the new Microsoft.NET Atlas framework that takes advantage of the AJAX (shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) techniques of the web.

“We’ve been running it for a while now and the results are astonishing. Within minutes the search engine returns 5 and 6 letter domain names that sound good, are brandable and memorable! Apparently there is still an infinite number of good names out there, its just a matter of finding them, ” said Novek.

About Acceli Web Solutions

Based in New York, Acceli – www.acceli.com – is a privately owned web design and development company that uses the latest web technologies to build innovative and unique websites.

To learn more about the MakeWords Name Generator, please visit http://www.makewords.com