Last Monday I released Lean Domain Search’s new business name generator, a tool aimed at helping prospective business owners come up with a professional name for their business.
Just about everyone who tried it agreed that it came up with fantastic results; Domain Name Wire even wrote an excellent post titled Lean Domain Search adds business name generator the day after the launch.
However the more people I spoke to the more I realized that it wasn’t clear to folks what that difference was between the old website name generator and the new the business name generator. The business name generator helps you come up with website names too, right? Yes, I explained, but the domain names the business name generator comes up with are more geared towards offline businesses. I gave an example or two, they would ask some follow up questions, I’d answer, and after a few minutes of back and forth most folks kind of had a better idea what the difference was. If it took someone I was speaking with several minutes to understand the subtle distinction between the two tools, the casual web visitor was probably not going to get it at all (and this is not their fault or a matter of me writing better copy… it really is confusing).
The second problem was that it would be very difficult to reach the right people at the right time who could really benefit from the business name generator. The scenario I laid out in the launch blog post was that you wanted to start a construction company and were having trouble finding a name. That is a good example as far as my ideal customer goes, but reaching someone trying to start a construction company at that crucial stage where they still needed a business name was going to be extremely difficult. With some heavy marketing I might be able to reach some of them at just the right time, but even if I did I’d have to get them to understand the previously mentioned difference between the website name generator and the business name generator.
All of this is a long way of saying that I decided scrap the business name generator so that like before, there’s just one section for searching for domain names. However instead of completely getting rid of those results, I merged the domain names the business name generator created with the old website name generator so that the site now checks a whopping 6,188 domain names instead of 2,500, giving you an even wider selection of domain names to choose from.
A new pricing model
In order to continue devoting time to Lean Domain Search, I do need to find an income stream on top of affiliate revenue to support the site. So what I’ve done is this:
Lean Domain Search is still free to use, but the number of available search results that you can review for free will be limited to a few hundred. These are the best search results and should give most of you an adequate selection of good domain names to choose from. If you’d like to explore all of the search results (up to 6,188 max) for an even wider selection of domain name ideas, then you have to upgrade to one of the paid plans.
Similar to the pricing model for the business name generator there are two paid plans: one if you want short term access to the full search results (typical if you use Lean Domain Search infrequently and just use every now and then to name a website) and one for long term access (typical if you use it year round to name a lot of websites or businesses). If you’re interested in signing up for one of these premium plans, I encourage you to check out our new Pricing and Sign Up page. I hope you’ll agree that for the time and money that you save by using Lean Domain Search, the new pricing is a pretty good deal.
As always if you have any feedback on the changes please don’t hesitate to drop me an email (matt@leandomainsearch.com) or say hi on Twitter @mhmazur.
Thanks —
Matt
Lean Domain Search 