Choosing a name and .com domain for your new projects

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Posted on 3 March 2010 Business

You thinking about starting a new online app, website or company hey? And you need a name and a .com domain? Yeah, that’s exactly where I was 3 weeks back with, lets call it from now on Project# (projecthash). Here are some tips on how we managed to think up a name for Project# as well as find the almost perfect .com domain.

A teaser of the names I jotted down using my FieldNotes booklet

Names

The first thing the 3 of us did was sit down together, drink a beer and jot down a number of keywords that we thought encompassed the direction and type of project we wanted to build. With that, we all went away and had a mini deadline set to each come up with names, phrases, quotes or keywords we could use to create a name for the project. In total we had close to 40 variations between the 3 of us.

I took the 3 lists from Basecamp, shuffled them and put them into 1 long list, which we now had to choose our top 3 favourites. Luckily we all had 1 name in our top 3, so we finally had a name!

Selecting a .com domain

.com domains are always first prize, so when we were batting our heads against the wall trying to find a domain to match our name, we flirted briefly with going the .net route, but every time I wrote down project#.net, it just never did the name any justice. This is where you must not give up. Keep on searching, trying alternative and quirky uses of the name of your project to come up with a .com domain that is available. Add keywords to the name that don’t change the meaning of the project such as project#app.com, thebigproject#.com or project#now.com. This was the route we had to go and came up with a gem of a domain that is catchy and memorable!

My tips on choosing a name and .com domain:

  • Jot down keywords/phrases/quotes on paper that come to mind
  • Mix and match the keywords and create a list of them
  • Choose your top 3, sleep on it and finally choose 1!
  • Don’t give up searching for that .com domain as it will take a couple of days and different angles to find one
  • Add keywords that don’t change the meaning of the name such as keywordapp, keywordblog, keywordnow, thekeyword etc

By no means is this the definitive way of choosing a name and .com domain, but it worked for us. The more people you have to bounce ideas off the better, but make sure there is 1 person that makes the final decision as all of you may never agree and ultimately never get the project off the ground!

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Making decisions for the future instead of the present

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Posted on 23 February 2010 Business

Sometimes the best decision is the most difficult to make. Referrals and leads have picked up in the last few weeks after a quiet January. The problem with this is I have to take the decision of do I take on these jobs in the short term and make some easy money, or sacrifice the money now for the long-term benefit of building that project I mentioned in my previous post?

On paper its an easy decision – rather turn away the work and get on with that project. However, when you have money on the table, that decision is not that easy. As small businesses, we constantly chasing the money while the dreams and internal projects get postponed over and over again.

So you can understand now why me taking the best decision is definitely not easy!

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Setting timelines to your ideas

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Posted on 16 February 2010 Personal

You know those ideas I wrote about in the last post? Those ideas will only ever remain ideas if you don’t actually put time into making them a reality.

The most difficult part of it all is our ideas aren’t usually something small that you could complete in an hour or two. They usually involve days of work. They also probably involve other people to help turn those ideas into reality. At this point, I’ve often found the mountain almost to high to even attempt to climb, which I guess has been my biggest downfall. This time, I’m trying something new. Using timelines. (I hate using the word deadline, because I’ve missed countless deadlines in my working life and not once have I or someone else died from it. I can’t say much for doctors that have deadlines though!)

Vintage Calendar

Vintage calendar found on Flickr

I’ll let you in on something, I’ve taken an idea, shared it with 2 other guys and we all keen to work on it. It’s not the next greatest web 2.0 web app, nor is it something to do with <insert latest and greatest technology / keyword here>. Its something that if the 3 of us pull off, it will help us realise some of goals we all have in common. It will rock, that I can promise.

Back to the timelines thing. The only way we going to get this idea off the ground is if we break down the process to building it and stick those little milestones to a timeline. I’ve stuck the idea into Basecamp and added dates to all the milestones. By the end of today, for example, we all needed to penned our ideas for a name for this project into Basecamp. By Friday, we need to have whittled those ideas down to 3 names and then the domain hunting begins.

So as you can see, setting attainable targets with dates to your idea / project helps you get things done and also gives you the feeling of accomplishment as you tick those milestones off. Its the small victories along the way that are going to keep us motivated.

To summarise if you have managed to read this far: Break down your idea into attainable milestones and attach dates to them. That will give your idea the small pushes it needs every few days to keep the momentum going and ultimately, see those ideas made into reality!

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Ideas need to be penned

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Posted on 10 February 2010 Personal

I’m constantly thinking. When I drive in my car, that’s when I think the most. Some things I think about are interesting, others, a little boring. Its the interesting things I want to talk about here.

I’ve come up with a number of ideas over the past few years that as of right now, I’ve either forgotten, or found the idea to be completely absurd and stupid. The good ideas (well to me anyway) get overwritten in my mind by the next good idea I think up. There is a constant flow of ideas, just not many make it out of my head onto paper and ultimately into reality. That’s what I’m wanting to change as of today. I bought myself a set of Field Notes that I’ll be using for writing those ideas, thoughts and dreams into.

Field Notes by Coudal Partners

Ideas on a piece of paper aren’t very useful unless you do something about them. Either share them with others, toss them away or, my favourite, put them into action. So I’ll make sure I leave a little space at the bottom of each page for some form of an action plan. And actions, they do speak louder than words. Excuse the clique.

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How to buy music from iTunes in South Africa

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Posted on 3 February 2010 Web

I wrote a post well over 2 years ago about how us South African’s couldn’t buy music on iTunes and that the alternatives we do have are well below par. Well, I thought I’d write a follow up post on how easy it is to actually buy music (and iPhone / iPod Touch applications) on iTunes. So here is a quick guide on how to buy music from iTunes in South Africa.

Setup a U.S. based iTunes account

In order to do this, you need to download any free iPhone app from the U.S. iTunes app store, create a new account, select None when they ask for your payment method and fill in the rest of the information. Simple?

Here is a step by step guide:

Click on iTunes Store in the left sidebar of iTunes. Make sure you are in the U.S. store, but scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking the circle icon and selecting United States.

Once you are in the US iTunes store, find the Free Apps section in the right sidebar of the page, hover over any of those apps, and click the Free link. A popup window will appear where you must click the Create New Account button. Follow the next few steps until they ask for payment. Make sure you use a valid email address, as you going to need it to validate your account.

On the Provide a Payment Method screen, make sure you select NONE.

Fill in the rest of the details using fake details you can generate using the Fake Name Generator website. Don’t worry, Apple won’t ever use these details.

Once that step is complete, iTunes will send you a confirmation email. You need to click the link in that email to verify the account. Once you have done that, you are now the proud owner of an U.S. iTunes account. Click on the Sign In link in the top right corner to login.

Buying music from iTunes

Once you have your U.S. iTunes account setup, you are going to need to buy iTunes gift cards that you can load into your account to spend. There are 2 websites that come recommended:

Once you have purchased the gift card, you’ll receive an email from them with a code. Click on the Redeem link under the Quick Links section (top right of iTunes Store), enter the Gift Card code and off you go!

You should now see your email address next to the value of your gift card loaded in the status bar like the image below:

You can now buy music and apps from the iTunes store!

Disclaimer: This does violate the terms of conditions of the iTunes store, but the music industry in SA need to catch a wake up. There is no decent place to buy music online in South Africa. At least this way, you aren’t pirating music (the artist is getting paid), the only people suffering are the record labels in SA who won’t get their commission.

Hat tip goes to Marc Forrest. Read his blog for some excellent iPhone related tips and tricks.

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