This is a weekend project of mine. It's an idea I had after seeing so many comments here about the lack of available .com names for startups.
As PG once said: "Take a luxury and make it into a commodity"[1]. So, I decided I'd try turning name consulting from something only large corporations could afford to something anyone could. I hope you'll take me up on it :)
If you'd like to see a few examples of my work, just check out the links in the site's footer.
Did you take into account how much time it will take you to process a non-trivial order? $20 seems quite low to me when you want to achieve a good hourly rate.
Maybe you should bump it up a bit (> $50). It would still be a commodity price.
$50 is also too low. Price according to the value you generate. You generate obvious value in three ways:
(1) Company operators waste tons of time coming up with names. SWAG the number of hours you think people typically take to settle on a name (it took us several days). Back that out to a dollar figure by dividing the typical yearly salary of a funded company operator by $2000 and multiplying by hours.
(2) Companies frequently rename. Put a dollar figure on the cost of a company rename 6 months in, then multiple that by the percentage risk you think the typical company has of renaming (how many renames do you see? how many companies do you think there are in your market?).
(3) Better names generate business (or, they ostensibly do). By the way, I'd probably use Mint vs. Wesabe as my primary example here, since both sides mentioned Mint's name as a key asset.
There is no way these three factors add up to just $50.
A side benefit of charging something closer to your value is, working with people who think $20 is OK but $50 is too much will absolutely inevitably cause you heartache. The people that think $50 is too much are going to be bad customers (as a group). For any business, be it outsourced order management for prop trading firms or hobby figurine sales, $50 is a rounding error.
Geeks have a hard time remembering that pricing isn't just about optimizing customer acquisition vs. customer value. It's also a key component of your positioning. If you charge hobbyist rates, you will serve the hobbyist market. Look at graphic design. It is very possible to get good-looking illustration done near your price point, but impossible to get it done by anyone with a reputation. Designers that serve real companies charge multiple orders of magnitude more just for piecework. And real companies wouldn't dream of slumming with the $50-$100 illustrators, even when those people have more talent. Pick the market you want to serve, and then tailor the price point to that.
Apparently you missed the part where he quoted PG saying: "Take a luxury and make it into a commodity"
It's because he's charging a commodity price that I decided to give it a go and pony up. I would never ever pay the going rate for a 'professional' in this business.
No, I got that part, and also the part of his positioning where he said "name consulting was previously only available to big companies and we want to make it available to smaller companies".
Pricing isn't a binary decision between "cheap" and "nosebleed". This is another geek pricing pathology.
I think $50 is too cheap. I think, if your market is "people that actually need names but are smaller than PepsiCo", there are very few three-figure prices that aren't rounding errors. Why would he want your business? How many entities are there like you, and how often do they pony up for names, and how much does it cost to support them?
Well, in our case we would normally just come up with a name ourselves. But because 50 dollars is worth a shot we're giving him some business. And something tells me there might just be more people in the same situation as we are. But I guess we won't know until he lets us know how many from HN decided to give it a go.
Same. $20 sounded worth the risk, but I'm not going to do it for $50, especially without seeing any evidence of past names generated.
Perhaps a Hacker News special? Or perhaps a different price for those who don't mind sharing the outcomes of your service, and a more expensive price for those who do mind?
As a graduate student, $50 seems like a lot of money to spend on anything except rent... Plus figuring out the return process and if its not super simple just seems like quite a lot of hassle.
I had this same service a few years ago, and even at $99 it is a money loser. And kinda boring after a while -- even if you autopick the names, you still have to review them before giving them to the client.
It would help if you showed some project descriptions, and the names you have found for them (of course with consent from the customers), as a kind of portfolio.
Maybe I'm cynical, but because you emphasis the "money back" part, it feels more like a scam. I was sort-of half expecting an auto-name-generator: "$randomstring.com is still available!" If only 10% don't ask their money back, you make a profit.
I once heard about a "baby gender predictor", with money back guarantee, which just always emailed you "Congrats, it will be a boy!". About 50% right :).
Maybe a bit off-topic, but this scam has always intrigued me. You can, in fact, do better than just "Money back guarantee!" You can do as much as, say, "We'll give you your money back, plus an extra 50% of the fee!" So your "customers" pay $50, and if you are wrong you give them back $75. You still make $12.50 on average per customer by guessing randomly, so long as you scam sufficiently many people.
This is precisely how sports handicapping services work. Every week, 50% of your customers are happy and return, the other 50% are unhappy and might not return.
You could do more to get the potential customer comfortable with your product. 7 days and $50 is a lot to request of people, when there is competition for this service. It looks like one of those competing tools was created by you, http://impossibility.org . And for full disclosure, I am working on a domain name suggestion tool too: http://domainjig.com
During testing, I learned that many different opinions exist about what makes a good domain name. So while you may have settled the matter in your own head, you should take care to set expectations for your customers. A quick list of domains you think are good (perhaps also domains you think are not good) would help people see if they agree with your priorities.
For instance, I've heard differing opinions about the importance of these characteristics:
Did you read the naming philosophy section? This bit is interesting:
"Think about this scenario: You're at a party and someone asks you where you work. If you say "I work for shoes.com," it's pretty obvious that you work for a website that sells shoes.
But, if you say "I work for shoe.ly," then you have to go on to explain it to them: "It's a website that sells shoes." If you owned the .com, everyone would already know that."
This is a very cool idea, but I would lose the whole Zeus thing, it gives an air of adolescence to the site. Also,
* Saying you'll find the perfect name is a bit of a stretch, what does "perfect" mean in this context? Is google a perfect name?
* When you say results are guaranteed, you mean the customer will like it. However, in most cases, the founders liking the name has little bearing on how good the name resonates with customers, that's what's important (read pg's discussion about their initial agony when their cool name for their startup was taken, their original choice sounds horrible) . I think you should provide a methodology, even a simplistic one, to help people decide which one is better.
* If you don't have a portfolio yet, which I assume since you say this was a weekend project, do analysis on 5-10 company names (if YC the better), and explain why they are good using your methodology. This will give you credibility. Show that you are the expert in this field. Right now, it looks like another name guessing site.
startupgods.com? I dunno, you look like a plumber with a leaky faucet. I'd have a little more confidence if you had a name more like "PerfectNameFinder.com" or something like that.
It is still off. It should really be StartupNamingGods.com or LetMeNameYourStartup.com or something else that indicates it is about naming. StartupGods is more like a cocky alias for YC :)
IMO, None of them are good for branding. The best one is which has nothing to do with your business. (Example: Apple has nothing to do with computers, Adidas has nothing to do with sports equipments)
It gives you leverage to take business in any direction. For example, if your naming business becomes huge success and you want to start naming more things - like OpenSource Projects or simple apps - the word "Startup" in your name is gonna make you think twice.
I wonder what names you'd give out when you yourself have a bad name, IMO. Any sample names you've created?
Confusingly similar (cringe) to "namesonic", a company that already exists and has been around since 2001. Interestingly, they claim a trademark on the word but I couldn't locate any filings in the US.
There Was a trademark on "nameonics" in the early 1980's, however:
We were John's first customer. It was mostly an impulse buy because it was so cheap.
We have a restaurant guide in The Netherlands with a dutch name (eet.nu, translates to eat.now) with a big community of reviewers. We want to expand, so a international name is required.
If we brainstorm about names, it takes up a lot of time and we're never completely satisfied with the results. Naming stuff is hard, and it's even harder if English is not your first language.
After 4-5 hours of waiting, John gave us a list of 14 names (we got 7 bonus names!), and we picked the name HungryJury.com. Registered the .com and twitter account a few minutes ago.
We're pretty satisfied with the service and will probably use it again in the future!
You should also try to do twitter handle availability.
I think I saw a website long time back which checked a username availability across many websites and social networks. Can't remember it. Can someone help me out here.
You have to appreciate though, that $50 is still a modest price if the service is as good as it claims. Just look at domain squatter prices, you get pretty much nothing with $50.
Alright I'm testing you out. 50$ for a great name is an awesome price point imo. It's just enough that I find it expensive but small enough that I'd pay for it. With a money back guarantee I'm glad to test the waters.
I'd like to use this--I have a site I soft-launched recently that I'd like to rebrand--but without examples of names you've come up with in the past, it's a hard sell for me.
I know I can get my money back, but I really would rather not do that... I'd rather only make the buy if I can be reasonably sure I'll be happy, instead of having to make you work and then ask for my money back if it turns out we have separate styles.
I think startupgods.com is a cool name for this business. Nice layout also. If I had a new business in mind I wouldn't hesitate to try your service. The money back guarantee makes me feel comfortable, but I am just curious on the amount of refunds you will be processing - I guess it depends on how creative you are at naming. Please report back with results.
I was about to give this one a try but it seems the price has gone up to $100 now!!
I hope thats as a result of demand because $50 was at a level that I didn't think twice, but $100 has made me reconsider. Hopefully for your sake I am the minority then!
This is super cool. I haven't signed up yet, and obviously haven't seen the quality of the results, but it's a great idea, and definitely something I would pay for for my next project. (Naming is definitely one of my weak points)
This sounds like a great idea. I find shortish domains all the time and try and squeeze an idea into them, but I have real trouble finding something properly appropriate (for .com anyway). I've signed the forms :)
Sounds cool. I have a company name already, but I may need (a|some) product name(s) later... when I get to that point, I may give you a shot. I mean, it's $50, with a money-back guarantee, what's the harm?
Wow, ok $100 now? Must be getting some pretty serious orders to jump from $20 to $50 and now to $100? Good for you. I'm with the rest of them though, I'd like to see some results/examples!
Do you check candidate names for possible trademark conflicts? (I understand that you are not a lawyer, but at least some preliminary checking would be nice.)
I presume you get a free name and an unpleasant nagging feeling from your conscience. It's probably not worth the effort to try to prevent this in the beginning.
I suppose they could take $10 of the $50 you paid them and register the name before sending it to you, and if you like it they'll transfer it to you. If you don't they'll give you your money back and try to sell the name to someone else. But, yea I guess the hassle of doing this probably isn't worth it in the beginning.
As PG once said: "Take a luxury and make it into a commodity"[1]. So, I decided I'd try turning name consulting from something only large corporations could afford to something anyone could. I hope you'll take me up on it :)
If you'd like to see a few examples of my work, just check out the links in the site's footer.
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html