Coming up with a blog name may seem like a hard thing to do, but it’s actually easier than you think! With a little time, research, and dedication, it’s very possible to come up with an amazing name in an hour or two!
Sure, some people get lucky right away and are able to think of one quicker, but generally speaking it’ll take at least that long to make sure you’ve covered all of the important points of making sure your blog name is a good fit.
Oh! And one quick thing—before you read on, we wanted to remind you that if you purchase a domain name, hosting, or any product from one of our links, we might get an affiliate commission. It doesn’t affect our reviews, and it also doesn’t cost you any more, so if you’re thinking about buying, it’s a great way to support the site 🙂
Tips for Coming Up with a Cool Blog Name Ideas
1) Brainstorm, Brainstorm, Brainstorm!
Remember back in school when you had to come up with a topic for a paper, and your teacher would tell you to start be brainstorming? Well, it’s really the same thing when thinking of a good blog name. Brainstorming is an incredibly powerful tool, when used properly.
The best way to brainstorm is to simply get a notepad and paper or open up a blank word processing document on your computer. Then, just start typing different combinations that come to mind for a blog name—and remember, at this stage, it doesn’t matter if they sound silly or not…you’re just trying to get ideas. Maybe you get lucky and hit on something great, and maybe you don’t—it doesn’t matter at this stage at all, so just have fun with it!
2) Check out the Competition for Inspiration
When you’re trying to think of a great blog name, it’s often good to look at other similar websites, or blogs that are already established, and try to see what they’ve come up with in terms of a name. This doesn’t mean you should copy anyone—but there’s nothing wrong with drawing a little inspiration! Sometimes looking at other blogs can give you just the boost you need to come up with a great name of your own.
3) Make Good Use of a Thesaurus
If you haven’t used a thesaurus before—you’re really missing out because it’s one of the most powerful tools there is when it comes to writing! If you don’t know, a thesaurus is essentially like a dictionary, but its purpose is providing synonyms to words instead of definitions.
For example if you look up the word “dog” in a thesaurus, it’ll show words like pup, puppy, doggy, hound, etc.—all words that mean the same thing as “dog” but are actually different. This can be incredibly helpful if you’re trying to come up with variations on your blog name or if your blog name is taken and you want to think of an alternative.
4) Type Your Name Out In Uppercase and Lowercase
When you think you’ve got a shortlist of potential blog names, you should make sure to type them out in both lowercase and uppercase. For example, if your blog name was exampleblogname.com, you’d type it out three ways:
- exampleblogname.com
- ExampleBlogName.com
- EXAMPLEBLOGNAME.COM
This combination of upper and lowercase letters helps you to make sure that it doesn’t look strange or the combined words don’t spell any swear words, or odd things that you don’t want your name to contain.
5) Ask Your Friends for Help
This is something that people often forget to do when trying to come up with a blog name, but it’s one of the best ways to get new ideas, and also a great way to find out if the idea you have stinks.
Sometimes it’s easy to get stuck in a creative rut, and asking a friend for ideas can be just the thing you need to think of the perfect blog name, so don’t be shy—ask your friends!
Got your name all picked out? If so, jump over to NameCheap and lock it up before it’s taken! They have some of the best prices around, and are hands down our favorite domain name registrar!
Bad vs. Good Blog Name Ideas: How to Tell the Difference
So, you’ve got a blog name picked out, but how can you tell if it’s any good or not? Well, here’s a short checklist of things that it should be/not be:
[icon type=”icon-check”] Brandable
You blog name should absolutely be brandable. What does this mean? Something that sounds like it could be a household name, but also something that’s unique enough to be memorable. You might need to gather the opinions of friends on this one, but it’s absolutely a characteristic of any good blog name.
[icon type=”icon-check”] As short as possible
No one likes a long, hard to remember blog name. It shouldn’t have any hyphens in it if at all possible, and should be short and sweet. This doesn’t mean it has to be one word, but two or three are typically the maximum—beyond that, things start to get a little silly (as a general rule).
[icon type=”icon-check”] Not contain any adult words or strange things
Again, this was mentioned above, but it’s absolutely true. Take a good amount of time to scrutinize your blog name to make sure that it doesn’t contain any bad words, negative words, or anything else that’s strange. Also—make sure that it can’t be turned into an odd acronym.
Using a Blog Name Generator
One way to come up with a catchy blog name is to use a blog name generator. These are available online in various places around the web and they essentially combine verbs, nouns, and adjectives at random in order to help you think of something.
With the good ones, you should be able to specific some parameters such as word length, character length, and other similar things. However, our experience has been that the best blog names don’t come from using a generator but from good old fashioned hard work and brainstorming!
Travel Blog Names – Coming Up With Something Catchy
If you’re trying to think of a travel blog name, especially a catchy one, you need to devote some time to brainstorming and practicing the concepts mentioned above.
One thing to do that may be helpful is thinking of words that describe yourself as a traveler—are you adventurous? Frugal? Fearless? All of these adjectives can be useful in creating a great travel blog name, and they can also be incredibly brandable too. It may also be helpful to think of places that you’ve been or special experiences you’ve had while traveling—all of these can be things that you can use to help brand your travel blog, or connect with another word to come up with a great travel blog name.
Fashion Blog Name Ideas: Thinking of a Great One
Thinking of a fashion blog name isn’t as hard as most people believe, but because fashion is a trendy industry, your fashion blog name should be equally trendy!
Taking time to think of something that’s trendy, catchy, and stylish is the best way to think fashion blog name. To help with this, you may want to spend time thinking about your own personal style and words that encompass it. Is it sheik? Laid-back? Avant-garde? Once you have identified some words with describe your fashion style, try thinking of how they can be combined in order to arrive at a fashion blog name that fits.
Food Blog Names & Concepts
There are so many food blogs on the Internet, how to do come up with a food blog name that stands out? Well, one of the best ways is to spend time brainstorming, thinking about the type of food that you like to prepare, and then get a list of names, adjectives, or nouns that describe your cooking style.
For example, if you love grilling, you may want to think of words that relate to that method of cooking, and then things about yourself that could be combined with them. For example, chef Bobby Flay’s food show was Boy Meets Grill, play on the phrase “boy meets girl.” Something clever like that can make for a great food blog name!
Makeup Blog Names – Clever Ideas
Like fashion blogs, makeup blog names should be trendy, clever, and stylish. In order to think of a makeup blog name that meets this criteria, you’ll need to do some brainstorming!
One thing that may help is to think of the type of makeup that you like to do and a bit about your own personal makeup style. Do you like to focus on high-fashion makeup? Or do you like to focus on natural looks? Thinking of these things can help you come up with words that describe your style and specific interests with makeup, and then you can incorporate those words into your makeup blog name.
Registering Your Domain Name
After you think of a blog name, there are a few things that you should do next:
1) Make sure it’s available
This is important—just because you’ve thought of an awesome name doesn’t mean that it’s going to be available for registration. This is best explained by this hilarious GoDaddy Super Bowl ad:
Just because you had the idea, doesn’t mean that you’re the only one—so check to see if it’s even an option!
And how do you check? Our favorite domain name registrar is NameCheap.com. We use them constantly—they have great prices and are a no-nonsense type of domain registrar, meaning they don’t constantly try to upsell you on things like GoDaddy and other registrars do—and they’ve got some of the best prices around.
2) Make sure it hasn’t been spammed before
This is an important one, and not something that a lot of people think about. When it comes to registering a domain name, it’s possible that the blog name you thought of had been owned by someone else in the past, and dropped/expired, and is available again.
You can check this by doing two things:
First, go to whois.domaintools.com and type in your blog name with the .com after it. The next screen will show one of two things: either it will say “Never Registered Before” or “Deleted and Available Again.”
If it says “Never Registered Before” then you’re good to go—that means you’re the first person to register this name. However, if it says “Deleted and Available Again” that means that this name was previously owned by someone else and is now available to be registered again. If this is the case, you need to check to make sure it wasn’t a spammy domain before. If it was, it could be blacklisted by search engines and this could make it hard for people to find your new blog.
If the domain was registered before, then take a moment and go to archive.org/web and type in the domain name. A big calendar will come up with historical snapshots of what the website looked like in the past—you can click on these and see what it was before. If it doesn’t look like anything spammy, then you’re probably ok. However, if it does—then you may want to think of another domain name.
3) Register it!
Finally! Now you’ve thought of a good name, it’s available, it’s clean and never been spammed (or never been registered before).
That means you’re clear to register it! Go on over to NameCheap and get it before someone else does!
P.S. We also recommend at least 2-years registration to start with any domain name to give yourself enough time to get things going…you’d be surprised how fast a year passes. Plus, spammers tend to only register new domains for a year, so it’s just another sign that you’re serious about creating a great blog!
After You’ve Got a Name—Getting Your Blog Online
So, you’ve got a great domain name, it’s registered and all yours—what’s next? Well, you need to get your site online!
This means that you need to purchase hosting—which is essentially renting space on a web server to store the files that make up your website. For beginners and professionals alike with low to moderate traffic we recommend Bluehost and SiteGround. We also have an exclusive deal with Bluehost that can’t be beat anywhere on the web, so check them out!
And we also love SiteGround!
