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Yiwen

posts: 9

May 27, 2008 7:26 PM ET Quote Report Abuse

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My website business is launching this summer - we are providing 4 services free of charge to University of Colorado - Boulder students:

- provide a craigslist of sorts for used textbooks (to undercut the bookstore)

- provide a guide to life/wiki of all of the necessary and you-never-thought-you`d-use information for cu students: locations of banks/atms/drycleaners/stores/etc, how to get a tutor, sports team following, snow report, etc

- provide an editable calendar so students don`t have to go to 6 different sites for events

- provide a place for local businesses to advertise

I want to have a name that appeals to college students but isn`t specific to CU (for potential expansion purposes). I originally started out with "collegiatecrossroads.com" but I felt that was too brick and mortar. Then, I went with "mycheatsheet.com" but the domain was taken. "MyeCheatSheet.com" doesn`t exactly roll off the tongue and I can`t think of any emotion evoking one or two syllable words (see Yahoo! or Joomla!).

Am I going in the right direction?

- Yiwen

sddreamweavers

posts: 260

May 27, 2008 7:31 PM ET Quote Report Abuse

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boulderlive.com

-------------------------

Aaron Wood
CEO
San Diego Dream Weavers
http://www.sddreamweavers.com
awood@sddreamweavers.com

New and improved! Now with blogging goodness!
http://www.sddreamweavers.com/san-diego-seo-marketing-blog/

Webline

posts: 687

May 27, 2008 8:39 PM ET Quote Report Abuse

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OFF-CAMP.US

Available through godaddy for $8.99

-------------------------

M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

CampSteve

posts: 1216

May 27, 2008 8:46 PM ET Quote Report Abuse

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How about using subdomains as part of the naming since you want to someday expand to other markets? Here`s an example.

boulder.forstudents.com

It`s a bad example because the "forstudents" part sucks, but it makes the point. Then someday you could have a madison.forstudents.com and so forth. See what I`m getting at?

P.S. I live in Boulder.

Yiwen

posts: 9

May 27, 2008 9:25 PM ET Quote Report Abuse

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exactly. which is why im making the main domain itself very nonspecific to a school ... so the subdomain can reflect the school itself oif i expand.

heres a thought.

what about something dealing with shortcuts?

the most abstract name i could come up with is "n4m" = inform.

but meh. shortcuts?

beautifulpetunia

posts: 327

May 27, 2008 9:33 PM ET Quote Report Abuse

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how about StudentSurvivalGuide.com or CollegeSurvivalGuide.com?

something like that...

Good luck to you!

Yiwen

posts: 9

May 28, 2008 12:06 AM ET Quote Report Abuse

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what about

FYLS (for your lifestyle)

charlie702

posts: 30

May 28, 2008 12:51 AM ET Quote Report Abuse

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Naming is really tough. Everything that you think of early on will likely be taken...

Try this tool to check for names as quickly as you can type:

http://instantdomainsearch.com/

For me, if the name isn`t right, its hard to stay motivated about the project.

I played around for a while.... my suggestions are "WickyWiki.com" (sounds cool.. might be hard to remember spelling though) and (expanding on webline`s domain hack above):

"SupMaCamp.us" (like "what`s up (at) my campus" and its a palindrome! same backwards and forwards spelling). "onthecamp.us" is available too which would be good for expanding with sub-domains. (boulder.onthecamp.us).. also, "campuscamp.us"...

Best of luck on your endeavor.

Charlie

Yiwen

posts: 9

May 28, 2008 10:26 AM ET Quote Report Abuse

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Thanks for the help guys, these are all great ideas.

However, for the meantime, I used a root-word technique to smash 2 words together.

The working name is SalvaCron

aka SaveTime.

The tagline is "your first stop because time is precious."

I figured long domain names are on the way out. If I want to make a splash, it might have to be with a "Google" or a "Yahoo".

Does anybody have a favorite ... root word lol ... they like? I really like -cron.

Thanks again,

Yiwen

CampSteve

posts: 1216

May 28, 2008 1:28 PM ET Quote Report Abuse

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I have no idea how "SalvaCron" means "save time". That seems like a really far stretch of some sort. I don`t get it and the name sounds meaningless.

The thing about Google and Yahoo as names is that phonetically, they sound like common words (and nowadays they are).

I also don`t think `time` is the way to tap into the college student market. Sure time can be tight for students but generally speaking, time is really flexible in college life. Students don`t suffer from not having time to do stuff because they always make time for the things they want or need to do like partying or studying. I think you`re way off with the time angle.

I think students worry about not how much time they have to do stuff as they learn to be self-sufficient in the world, but how to organize it all (time being only one factor). Everything from studying to running errands to having a social life. Your angle could be convenience or community or something like that.

It sounds to me one reason you`re having trouble with a name is perhaps you`re still figuring out your message.

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