One of the hardest part about starting an online business, is choosing the name. Yesterday, I spent 2 hours trying to think of a name for a new site of mine and eventually came up with a good one. The next part (or you can do it at the same time when deciding a name) is deciding on a domain name. This can prove to be very difficult. So, to help you out, let me first give you a tool I constantly use.

http://instantdomainsearch.com/

The above tool is probably the most useful tool for picking out a domain. It shows you in real-time, which domains are taken and which aren’t. Just enter the name you’re thinking of and see if it’s taken. I often spend hours using this tool, just to find a good name.

However, there are several ground rules you need to follow when choosing a domain. I like to call them commandments as they are so fundamental and important when searching for domain names. So, here are the 3 domain commandments:

1) Thou shall never use number in thee “domain” name.

Numbers should never be used in a domain name. Why? Simple. It’s way to hard to spread via word of mouth:

“Errr, go to “just2laugh.com, that’s with a 2 not a to.”

“A to? or a 2?”

“A 2. Like the number god damn it”.

It’s much easier to just say “go to laughnow.com” or any domain without a number.

2) Thou shall never use hyphens

Unless you are choosing a domain for SEO purposes only, then you should never use hyphens in a domain. It makes the domain much harder to remember and just generally complicates things for the user.

3) Thou shall always you thee .com

This one is probably open to debate, but I believe that when choosing a domain name, it should be a “.com”. Over the years since the internet came into existence, our brains have been trained to believe that “.com”’s are better, more professional and are considered the “main” domains. That’s just the way it is. There are obviously a few exceptions like “playonthe.net” where the use of the “.net” extension can be useful.

These are the 3 rules i stick to when choosing a domain name and I strongly suggest you do so too! Look out tomorrow for a new special report.

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