{"id":14794,"date":"2013-07-08T10:15:53","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T08:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=14794"},"modified":"2013-07-08T10:15:53","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T08:15:53","slug":"bad-domain-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2013\/07\/bad-domain-name\/","title":{"rendered":"[SPONSORED] Don&#8217;t shoot your startup in the foot by settling for a second-rate domain name"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14798 aligncenter\" alt=\"domain\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/assets\/domain.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"404\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Domain names are the real estate on which startups reside, and you know what they say about the three most important rules for real estate: location, location, location. For startup domains, &#8220;location&#8221; is all about having the right name &#8211; not too long, not too short, unique in its category,&#8230; the list goes on, but ultimately the trouble always comes down to matching the startup name you&#8217;ve had in mind with a domain name that&#8217;s available or affordable.<\/p>\n<p>Many startups look for alternatives to finding that perfect &#8220;.com&#8221; alternate gTLDs (global top level domains) like .co, or other TLDs like .io .ly, and the less-respectable .me have become alternatives, with a few notable successes (leweb.co, about.me, bit.ly) and a lot more failures. Other alternatives, especially for mobile apps, have been prepending &#8220;get&#8221; or appending &#8220;app&#8221; to their name, such as getbase.com for Base CRM, or tigerlilyapps.com for Tigerlily; however, ultimately, without the 5 star domain, there will always be the need to eventually buy the domain.<\/p>\n<p>For startups considering a name change or just starting out and looking for that right name, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brandbucket.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Brandbucket<\/a>\u00a0marketplace which, since 2007, has offered a selection of quality hand-picked premium domain names available for sale as ready-to-use brands, is a great way to skip the line, the whiteboard hours, and start looking at the problem from the other direction, namely &#8220;What domain names do I like, knowing that the domain &amp; an associated brand trademark are available for purchase?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve written about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/2013\/02\/28\/20-more-french-startups-whose-names-dont-work-in-english\/\">bad French startup names<\/a>\u00a0in the past &#8211;doubling letters, using &#8216;startup&#8217; name endings like &#8220;-eo&#8221; or &#8220;-ize&#8221; &#8211; these are all &#8216;hacks&#8217; in both senses of the word. If you can&#8217;t own the .com, you&#8217;re ultimately going to either have to A) buy it or B) change your name. Even Blablacar, formerly covoiturage.fr, who doesn&#8217;t own covoiturage.com, ultimately had to weigh the value of owning the .com of their brand (in addition to wanting a more international name as they spread across Europe).<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of how you go about choosing your startup name, domain, and ultimately the brand, know that all three go hand-in-hand, and to ignore one is to ignore all three.<\/p>\n<p><em>This Sponsored Content was brought to you by <a href=\"http:\/\/brandbucket.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BrandBucket<\/a> (Syndicated Sponsors powered by InfluAds). For questions about Sponsored Content, contact us at <a href=\"mailto:sponsorship@rudebaguette.com\">sponsorship@rudebaguette.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Domain names are the real estate on which startups reside, and you know what they say about the three most important rules for real estate: location, location, location. For startup domains, &#8220;location&#8221; is all about having the right name &#8211; not too long, not too short, unique in its category,&#8230; the list goes on, but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":14798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10563],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}