Prefixes for Domain Names

These days, it can be very tough finding a domain name that works for a website. As so many people have complained: all the good names are already taken! So, what do you do if you want your website to have a name that isn’t long, complex, and hard to remember? These are key elements in successful advertising and marketing. One way is to add a one (or more) letter prefix to the domain name. Have you ever heard of the website iTunes?

So, adding a prefix is an option. Yet, the question arises: which letter do you add that will be the most effective? By and large, the two best letters to choose from are “E” and “I”; people tend to associate them with the Internet, which makes sense. “E” is often taken as short for electronic, and “I” is short for Internet. So, a domain name like: iTunes, iReport, and so on are perfect. At the same time, websites such as eLoan, eBanking, eRealEstate etc. are equally popular. The domain name eBrooklyn was recently sold for $2,500; not a lot, but when you consider that a domain name typically sells for anywhere from $8 to $30, that’s not a bad return on your investment. That brings up the option of registering domain names that might not have anything to do with your line of work; you can look upon them as a potential investment.

All of these types of domain names have the virtue of not needing the suffice “.com” to identify them; that feature is intuitively obvious. Whereas a website called LendingTree pretty much needs to bill itself as LendingTree.com, the “E” and “I” sites do not need that. This comes in very handy when it comes to ads and promotional efforts. In advertising, the old saying: brevity is the soul of wit, is very appropriate. If you can get people to remember your product, your company name, quickly and easily you are that much closer to a sale. So, being able to list your site as iTunes or something similar is very advantageous.

A secondary plus to these names is that they can be similar to or built upon a popular name, yet be different. Also, there is no rule that says you have to use only an “E” or an “I”; those are merely the most popular, respectively. Also, by using a dash (as in “e-Banking”), you can create yet another domain name. Now, this does have a drawback. If you come up with a really great “E” or “I” domain name, you pretty much have to register the “E-“ or “I-“ version, to prevent others from taking it.

Finally, if a one letter prefix does not work out for you, maybe because it is already taken, there are multiple letter combinations that are good too. The domain name “WebMD” is a perfect example of this. With such a name (again), the “.com” aspect is implied. The one thing to consider when using any of these prefixes is that the domain is assumed to be “.com”. If you have to go with a “.net” or some other domain, then the full website name has to be listed.