20 Lessons from 20 Years: All The Good Domains Aren’t Taken
The paper in front of me was filled with word combinations; it was 2006. For me, branding and domain selection are like a sport, and I have a process. It sounds dramatic now, but I was looking for the perfect name for my advertising service—what would become known as JuicyAds. I was sitting alone, doing domain lookups, running variations through registrars, watching every half-decent name come back unavailable. The kind of names that feel “right” the moment you say them out loud. Every one of them was gone. Not a lot has changed over the years, no matter how many new dumb domain extensions are created.
What always bothers me the most isn’t that so many good domains are taken, but that most of them are registered and sitting dormant. Often, they are unused, go to a lame landing page, and aren’t even for sale. What a waste. Domainers who are frequently lacking creativity, vision, and ability force more talented people to choose other domains, while these speculators sit on the vast majority of great domains. That doesn’t mean that the remaining options are leftovers no one really wants. It just forces creativity, which is a lot cheaper. Think about the big brands and all those made-up words used on the world’s leading websites, and you’ll understand what I mean.
That’s a dangerous place to sit, especially early on. Domain searching has a way of disguising hesitation as diligence. I told myself I was being thorough, but really I was stuck. I didn’t want to move forward with something I’d have to explain, apologize for, or regret later. I wanted the name to do some of the work for me.
At one point, I almost settled. I had a few “acceptable” options lined up. Names that weren’t bad, but weren’t exciting either. They felt safe in the way that beige feels safe. They would have worked. I could have registered one, built the site, and moved on. That was the path of least resistance, and I was close to taking it.
Instead, I went back to the drawing board and started playing instead of searching. I stopped looking for what already existed and started asking what felt right and what I want my brand to mean. That’s the key. Something a little bold. Something memorable. Something that sounded like the industry I was actually in, not the sanitized version people pretended to operate in.
That’s when the word “juicy” came up.
It felt immediately right. I assumed, like everything else, that it would already be taken. But when I typed it in and saw that juicyads.com was available, it stopped me in my tracks. I registered it without hesitation. Not because it was clever, but because it was obvious in hindsight. It was the kind of name that shouldn’t have been available — and yet it was.
If I hadn’t pushed past that initial frustration, I would have missed it entirely. If I’d accepted one of those “good enough” alternatives, I never would have kept searching. Creativity wasn’t a spark of inspiration in that moment; it was a refusal to settle.
That’s the part most people don’t see. From the outside, it looks like luck. It seems like stumbling onto a great domain that somehow slipped through the cracks. But the truth is that the opportunity only existed because I kept going when it would have been easier to stop or buy something.
Years later, people tell me the name is perfect and that it was brilliant branding — which makes me smile, because the reality is much messier. The name exists because the “right” domain was taken. Because I was forced to be creative instead of comfortable.
In marketing and advertising, it’s easy to believe that advantages are bought rather than built. However, many start-ups and fledgling businesses struggle with this simple problem from the beginning. There are times when paying for leverage makes sense. I’ve bought expensive domains since then, and I don’t pretend they don’t have value. A strong, category-defining name can open doors faster than a clever one.
But it also comes with gravity. When you spend serious money on a domain, you lock yourself into a story before the business has earned it. The name can set boundaries, limits, and expectations. It narrows your freedom to experiment.
On the other end of the spectrum, dismissing domains entirely is just as misguided. Names matter. They frame perception. They influence recall. They signal intent. Treating the domain as an afterthought usually shows up later, when you realize you’ve built something solid under a name no one remembers.
The real tension lives in between. It’s in understanding that a “good” domain isn’t defined solely by availability or price, but by whether it makes sense and gives you room to grow. Whether it allows you to build meaning rather than inherit it.
What I’ve learned over time is that saying “all the good domains are taken” is often just another way of saying “I’m out of ideas.” And that’s not a character flaw; It’s human. Searching for names is exhausting, and the repetitive rejection from domain to domain has a way of compounding until it’s easier to give up. Every unavailable result reinforces the belief that the opportunity is shrinking.
But markets don’t work that way. Opportunities don’t vanish because a registrar says “unavailable.” They vanish when people stop pushing forward and start settling for something that doesn’t excite them enough. If you find yourself uninspired by your own brand or domain, your customers will probably feel the same.
If I had settled that day, JuicyAds wouldn’t exist. It wouldn’t be the same, feel the same, and I would have built it as something else, something quieter, something easier to forget. Not because the business idea was different, but because the energy behind it would have been.
Looking back, I’m grateful that the domain I originally wanted was taken (and if I’m being honest, they were all pretty bad). It forced me to keep going. It forced me to be creative instead of compliant. And it taught me a lesson that’s followed me through other ventures since: constraints and challenges don’t block progress, they shape it.
All the good domains aren’t taken. Some are owned. Some are overpriced. Some are parked and waiting. But there’s a lot more that don’t exist yet because they require a little work, a little imagination, and a willingness to keep searching.
