If you want my two cents’ worth, WordVixen, you should use the name that you publish your writing under. I made a mistake by getting doublehdesign.com (long story) when I should have gone straight to sharonhurleyhall.com. Your name is your brand, so that’s one thing you should bear in mind when choosing a domain name.

I tend to agree with Sharon. Why not build a bit of name recogniton where you can?

The problem with my name is that its actually quite common. There’s a journalist with my name, and some woman that keeps getting named Woman Of The Year for various things. Oh, and the one that drives me up a wall for this craft/jewelry site? myname.com is already taken. By someone with my name, who’s selling jewelry. If I use my middle initial I get a pitch page for some program that isn’t even named. My middle and last name turn up an actress. My maiden name is free, but I hated it so much I almost married at 20 so I could have a better last name (and live in Scotland, but that’s neither here nor there).

Using .net or .biz tends to be too difficult for most people to remember, so what do I do? If I had married at 20, that name is free. I don’t think hubby would like that much.

Do you have any suggestions? I’d love to hear them. I had planned to register WordVixen for my writing site, and I can always wait out the other me. Most hand made jewelry sites fail, so unless she has amazing success I might be able to snag that domain in a year or two.

I just figured that if I could use vixen in the craft site’s domain, it would be easier to funnel people back and forth between the two sites. It’s the name I use at AC, Helium, Squidoo, and all of my blogs except Nutty Squirrelbottom.

Oh, now I want to visit nutty squirrelbottom… I vote for that name!!! Kidding… I tend to agree with Sharon on this, I haven’t gotten to the whole building a website thing, but regardless of what type of writing you’re doing, your name is your brand…If you’re dead set on using the name that’s common, why don’t you try yournameauthor.com – or some variation… if you’re sticking with freelance writing you could do yournamefreelance – then your title line could be, “Your Name, Author” or “Your Name, Freelance Writing”

I plan on changing my blog name from Merry Jelinek to Merry Monteleone, as Monteleone is my maiden name and the one I’m using to publish under… now that I think of it, maybe I should just register the domain name now, even though I’m not ready to use it – any suggestions as to where to get the domain name?

Hehe… I held on to the name Nutty Squirrelbottom for months before I actually used it. Ya know, I already have that name registered, maybe… Nah, probably not a good idea.

Thing is, I’m working on the freelance, but I also plan to be a novelist. I plan to use a pen name for my fiction anyway (again with the common name and bad maiden name). You do have a good point about adding “freelance” or something to that effect. I just checked it out and most options are available for that. But that would be for my writing site- I’m still having trouble coming up with a name for my craft site. I want to focus on the craft aspect for this site since the monetization would be coming from selling my crafts and jewelry and from affiliate ads rather than clients hiring me.

I registered my domains through GoDaddy since I also used them for hosting (they have a special to register domains for $1.99 if you purchase any of their services). But the next few that I register I’ll either use namecheap.com (Courtney mentioned them on her blog), or through hostgator.com (Dana mentioned the domain service on her blog) since they have a 20% discount right now. Either one is cheaper than GoDaddy.

I was going to say vixendesigns but see that’s already gone. Instead of starting with vixen, what about ending with it?

what about gemvixen.com for your jewels It’s not gone I don’t think and there are things like writingvixen, etc. If none of that sounds good you can go to thesauraus.com and play with name variations there. I often go into thesaurus.com and play with words for hours but I’m funny like that. lol.

Good luck and looking forward to seeing what you decide.

Cheers,
Dana

*lol* I never forgave my parents for selling the huge dictionary (I do mean huge) that included the root of the word, variations, history, examples, etc of each word. I’d read it for hours!

I like gemvixen, but I’d rather not split the sites up. I do like the idea of having a whole series of vixen sites though… wordvixen, gemvixen, craftvixen etc.

Thanks very much. I figure I’ll talk it over with my brother on Thanksgiving and probably register on Thanksgiving or the day after. I want to take advantage of having a four day weekend to get some work done on this, and maybe study up a bit more on PLR. Courtney has me hooked on the idea.

Have you tried the fourth reindeer or Fantastic Mrs Fox? Just a few ideas

I’m totally grooving on thefourthreindeer… I may have to register that one now and come up with a site for it later.

And while I am indeed fantastic, and a Mrs. Fox, I somehow don’t think that conveys what I do accurately. Although I could just go along with what the new Dr Who says in response to being asked if he just makes things up on the spot rather than planning them out. “But I do it brilliantly”.