MicrostockGroup

I assume you register your domain with GoDaddy and not with the hoster, or you will find yourself a hostage by your hoster if you want to change hosting. On GoDaddy it's easy to look up what's still free.

Nowadays you have to work backwards. Think of a domain/brand name first, check whether the domain is still free, then register it - and afterwards you can work from that name on...
Don't forget to register the same name on Yahoo, GMail, Blogspot, etc...
After all that, you can Trademark the name officially, and you're set.

Amen!!   I went with GoDaddy as well.   Finding a name?  Good luck.  Try it yourself.  Just pick two words that have nothing to do with each other and google it.  Odds are, it's a name already..  LOL LOL.
  I literally spent months trying to come up with something, I wrote down hundreds (no exaggeration) of names, ones I would have bet the farm no one had.  Good thing I didn't bet!
   I didn't want family name, didn't want something common... wanted something different.  I also got this bug in my head that I wanted a number in it?  why?  ........no clue.  I thought I wanted something 'spacey'  as in outerspace....  finally,  I decided if I found the name of the newest star discovered/named in the universe,  how many could possibly have that already?
     The newest star named at the time was Pegasus 35.   I wanted a number, so I picked 8,  the number in my family.   And since we were going to be doing illustration and graphics besides photos,  we went with  'imagery'.
     I did the latin plural of   'us'  which is 'i'   and put together  "Pegasi 8 Imagery" .   It wasn't taken,  I went to GoDaddy, bought it and five domains close to it in net, com and biz.   

   Also, if you are going to use it for a business, you might want to make sure the name isn't already registered as a business in your state or local.  We went to the state and fed, got registered, got our federal ID number....   Now, we are doing business as Pegasi 8 Imagery, LLC. 

STILL don't have the website completed, in fact still in the embryo stage. It's a lot of work.  For that we went with Better Photo.com.

But... the money is coming in.  I'm already published in magazines, books, internet.... so is my wife.   We started 'pro' in micros a little over a year ago,  now, microstock  is the least of our income in photography.  We are at this time turning down work.      SOooooo  Peat Bog,  GO FOR IT!   It's tough in the beginning, but it's worth it!  A year and a half ago, if someone told me I'd be doing what I am doing now... I would have laughed and called them fools.  Impossible!

  Nope, it isn't.

I'm sure you can find many other similar stories from the gang here!               
                               -tom

 

I was lucky a couple of years ago, and registered epixx.net. Haven't updated in two years though. Too much to do   

For non-photograpic purposes, I just registered toosmall.net, but nothing there yet. In 2015 maybe 

Which one? :-).

http://www.trash.co.nz  <- I used to run a dial-up BBS called 'The Trashcan', and then when I started a web hosting business it seemed logical to use a similar name, and the same logo..

http://www.ohmark.co.nz <- Business name, for a business I sold in 2004 doing electronics design and development.

And finally: http://cpix.co.nz <- cpix is short and easy to remember, and fits on my jackets etc easily It sorta works as an acronym for a photography business as well.

There were quite a few others I had and subsequently dropped when I started to wind down my web  business about a year ago (Still supporting old customers, not taking on any new ones)

Peat Bog, the trend is brandable over relevance.

The most famous case was amazon.com who could have gone with books.com (yes, they were THAT early!), but imagine how inappropriate that name would be now given all the businesses that amazon.com are running.

Look at Fotolia as a name. It's both brandable and relevant. It's more specific and creative, giving it a stronger identity than names like photos.com (who sell stock photos). Photos.com cannot protect their brand from anyone using stockphotos.com or bigphotos.com or freephotos.com. However, Fotolia would have a strong case against anyone using stockfotolia.com.

Also, look at how Fotolia's brand allows for vertical expansion into other photography related products and services. They could easily start selling camera, photography courses, macrostock photos or media services for the photography market. It's more restrictive than amazon.com, but much less restrictive than BigStockPhoto, for example.

In short, you don't necessarily need to have your keyword in your domain name. surnamephotos.com is no better than surname.com, though will always be more likely to be available. AKA Tom's name, Pegasi8, is a good example. It's very brandable. Perhaps not as memorable as amazon.com, but we don't all have the extremely-early adopter advantage of Jeff Bezos (amazon.com founder and CEO)!

So don't feel you need to have PeatBogPhotos.com.

Many years ago I was in the same boat and I spent over a week writing down potential domain names.  I just wanted someplace to put my photos, artwork and blog.  I continually bounced names off my husband, trying to come up with something that was different and of course available.  I don't really remember why we chose pixelbrat.com but the hubby thought it was cute and catchy so it stuck.  About a year ago when I really started taking my art and photography seriously I wanted another domain that looked a bit more professional.  Since I've gone by pixelbrat on the web for so long I wanted to integrate it into the new name.  I do art of all sorts along with photography so I just stuck "imagery" on the end and PixelbratImagery.com was born.    I still use pixelbrat.com for my blog and other stuff.

I used to run a web hosting company so I have a reseller account with eNom.

I've spent the last few days trying to find a name that isn't already taken.  I've come up with one and started work on the site, I must get to bed before 2am tonight though as I'm shattered!



I did the thesaurus thing too


I didn't think of the Peat Bog name as a domain to be honest, I only use it on forums. It's and old nickname I was given years ago.

I didn't feel I was important enough or brandable to go with an off the wall name like 'go daddy' or 'amazon'.  I've not used my name either, but managed to find something relevant to stock. The dot com has already been registered by someone in the Maldives although the site is not active. So I bought the .co.uk as I'm based in the UK.


That's a great name very versatile.

Thanks to Lee and eveyone for the advice it's all been helpful. Now back to work on the keywords and descriptions 

Peat Bog

Hi,

I guess that what most people are saying is true... You have advantages in thinking forward and having a brandable name, and not one directly related to your business, so you can expand if needed in the future, and even if you don't need to expand you still have a great name.

Just about a year ago i had to make such a decision and went with fnalphotos.com
The reasons are simple, i wanted an international name, one where you could easily know the subject when reading it (photos). While i agree that fnalphotos is not very easy to remember and may seem a bit strange (even more in portuguese), it's working and i'm getting a few results, also due to some adwords and some direct marketing i'm carefully and slowing putting into practice.

btw, fnal are just my initials... so no big mystery there.

Regards

Francisco Leitão

My domains are: www.mjp-photographs.fi and www.mjp-photographs.com. In late of this summer  I decided that it is time to get more serious about this photography thing. So I set up "company" under the same name (MJP-Photographs).

I know little about book keeping etc, but I outsourced things like that to bookkeeping agency (expensive: yes, quality: newer get to this level in my own). This is not yet my full time job but maybe some day it generates enough credits to allow me to do so. The name is registered as: "Private person carrying on trade", its like a normal company but in a very small scale and the taxing is different from other business forms. I do not know is there similar company/business forms in states etc.

The name comes from my name initials. It's bit a lame, but I hope I get nice logo sometime and I try to build web-site for it. Now the web-site is down, but I try to get something for it in next few days.


OT: Is there any logo designers out there? If you are interested design a log please send me  mail.


br, Mikko

because of the way search engines work, a domain name is not all that important anymore.

it has to be rememberable and relevant, and that is about the end of it.

dreamstime does not say anything about stock photos, and yet they are successful.

the actual "best names" is a myth, continued by those who have parked domain names in the hope of selling them to someone at a later date. of course, in Australian that is illegal for .com.au names. It is illegal to sell a domain name, it can only be transferred at no cost.

I have 5 domain names but the most important one for me is the one that links them all together. I also needed something bilingual since I have lots of french clients. So... www.Image-Y.com since my name is Yanik. I also have yanikchauvin.com as this was super important to get since it's my name. One day I'll be famous and I wouldn't want anyone to grab it and try to resell it to be to make a quick $.  I use it as my main portfolio site.

araminta.net

Chosen long before I start photography seriously 

As a sci-fi lover... The Araminta Station is a novel from one of the best sci-fi writer, Jack Vance. And "araminta" sounds nice to me.

Some fantasy doesn't hurt.