Darren asks, ‘What’s in A Blog Name?‘. He’s right, a name is a very important piece of becoming a successful blog. Think branding…it’s all about branding. Certain names and words flow off the tounge and are more memorable than others.
I’ve been reading Darren’s blog before it was ProBlogger.net. What was it? Um, something like blog.livingroom.com.au, I think. Get the point? That name sucked. Sorry Darren, I think you knew that. That’s no way to build a brand name. I think Darren can prove that his traffic and general reputation grew by leaps and bounds when he moved to ProBlogger.net. The design helped too :) Of course, it can be done, but it’s much harder.
So as a serious blogger…if you want to be serious, and taken seriously, you have to stop using those unbrandable blog domains like supercooldude.blogspot.com. The time has come to drop $8.95 at GoDaddy and get your own domain name. Or, for the sake of this shameless promotional entry, you could use one of mine below.
I’m currently looking to either sell or develop the following domain names. If you are interested in either offer, please email me at [email protected].
www.hotelblog.com
I’m looking for a writer who wants to take it and make it into a network blog about hotels. I’m willing to pay up to 75% of all revenue it generates to the right person who can make it a success. I’d host it, and provide the MT blog software and setup. I’d also do the design and any tech stuff. All this person would have to do is write, well… and often.
I also have these domains I’d like to do something with. Either sell them or develop them. Have an idea? Make an offer? Let me know.
News-blog.com
College-blog.com
Career-blog.com
Business-blog.com
Blogbucks.com
Blog-shop.com
Biz-blog.com
If you ask me blog.livingroom.com.au does not suck. “Livingroom” is a imaginative and strong brand name. “com.au” is the normal toplevel domain for australians, and using blog instead of www as a host name is a good method to distinguish main site from blog site. There is no sublevel re-use (like you suspect).
On the other hand your domains all suffer from the “too generic” problem. Can’t be remebered. This might be good for SEO but nobody can remember. The only name which will be remebered is “blogbucks”, the rest sucks, sorry.
Bernd
They may be bland but in my experience URL’s that reflect their content generally do better in the search engines than those that don’t, sure, they might not be trendy but they are practical.
I disagree Bernd, about the livingroom.com.au domain. It’s not a good name to remember. ProBlogger.net on the other hand is effective and memorable, not to mention search engine friendly as Ducan points out.
The domain is BTW: http://www.livingroom.org.au/blog/
Gruss
Bernd
Ahh, that’ll be why Robert Scoble uses the oh so memorable radio.weblogs.com/0001011/ eh? Domain branding is one thing, but it’s not the most important thing. So long as you have some form of domain (which livingroom is, and if you look at its root, its fine to have .au – its about Australia – USA doesn’t rule it all you know)
The RSS aggregators don’t care what your domain says – if I’m doing a search for terms and a feed contains them, it’ll come up. This is just domain snobbery. It’s more important if a whole site strategy is being built, of which a blog is just one part.
Oh, and why has Darren apparently written this article?
He has not.
Sorry, must be a coding thing – on the individual post pages it is probably hard-coded in. I did wonder if planes had net access now :()
Andy, the ONLY reason anyone reads Scoble is because of who he represents. Therefore, he can afford to live in domain obscurity. The rest of us in the real world cannot expect the same.
It’s common sense. There really is no argument when you think about it. Simple, easy-to-remember words and phrase ARE in fact more brandable. That applies across the board, from soda drinks to domain names. You should also not be so quick to think that the mainstream of web users know what a subdomain is. They don’t. They know dot com, and maybe they’ve visited a .net or .org once before.
It’s not domain snobbery, it’s just the facts.
Plus, Scoble has scoble.weblogs.com
Branding matters a lot? How about spelling? Nothing rolls off the tongue and makes a memorable impression like the assertion that “Certain names and words flow off the tounge and are more memorable than others.” Sheesh!
and what about going even a step beyond in brand originality : getting rid of the traditionnal dot com and going for a non-dot-com cool domain name ?
What is in a name?
What is in a name? Is a blog by any other name not as interesting and informative? One of Darren Rowse’s guest authors, Jim Krukal, thinks your domain name makes a sizable difference to the appeal of your blog.
Well I can take your offer to blog on news-blog.com. I can’t discuss this in detail on this comment in fear of comment hi-jacking. Could you just contact me directly via email?
God, comment spam is annoying!
Eckes is just dead wrong on this one. But what do you expect from someone who posts infrequently and runs his own blog on PHP-Nuke?
Just listen to some podcasts some time – as soon as you have to start SPELLING your domain name you’ve already created a barrier to people getting to your site. For some reason people have bought into this idea that a creative, memorable domain name trumps an easy-to-spell name. As soon as you add a hyphen or some sort of unusual spelling you’re going backwards. Wal-mart.com lost them millions of dollars until they switched to just Walmart.com. For example, my blog name is damnablog.com. Say that out loud. It sounds just like it spells, doesn’t it? Whether you see it in print form or hear it audibly you can find it. Same for problogger.net. Here’s some others that work:
dawnanddrew.com
podshow.com
google.com
yahoo.com
But others are getting too cute for their own good, using ‘x’ instead of ‘cks’ (i.e., bandtrax.net instead of bandtracks.net). As long as people use only links or ad banners to get to your site this works great. But as soon as they get home and start thinking “now what was that domain name again?” you may or may not see them again. I am constantly spelling my last name for people. Evidently Dixon can also be spelled Dickson (which is the #1 attempt when I give my name to someone). So my family site is TheDixons.net but then a Dixon would know that. But if this were a commercial enterprise it gets a bit tricky. Fortunately there are only 2-3 common spellings to try. But try to keep it simple.
There are plenty of resources to learn to make domain name brand progress.
Often times the issue is that many small business owners are wearing too many hats;
We will be linking soon; we would be honored if we could be added to this business blogger. We are from the World Business for sale is the leading independent businesses for sale listing service http://www.worldbusinessforsale.com/
The key is to keep it simple. But also to build an audience. If your name is Darren Rowse for example and your domain name is darrenrowse.com, or rowse.com, or darren-rowse.com, people WILL remember it because they just know what they are looking for. And if they just put “Darren Rowse” in Google, there is a fair chance you will show up as the first result anyway. It is all about being straight forward and getting your audience to know you.
If your content is good and they bookmark you and/or subscribe to your feed, nobody cares about long names or short names anyway.
Having a domain name is more than just this. Any name is good if marketed properly.
I blogged that at http://domains.z-names.com by the way…