How I find if domains and social media handles are available

This is the first post where I will be praising a fellow indie maker's product, Startup Name Check. There's no affiliate link or anything in this article - I just happen to think it's a cool and useful thing for when you have thought of a name and want to see if it's taken already.

Startup Name Check is a really nice and simple website made by Peter Thaleikis. You can just type in your project name, like No CS Degree, and his website immediately shows you if the .com is available, along with Facebook page, Twitter handle, Instagram handle etc. It's a really great way to see if a name is going to work or if it's already taken. There are also options for checking less common exxtenstions like .io, .com.au etc.

There are, of course, some good work arounds if you are in love with a name and someone has already nabbed the .com or the Twitter handle. You can pre-fix your brand name with "get", for instance. If you want an example of someone doing this you have Sergio Mattei who created Makerlog, a community for indie makers on Telegram, whose domain is getmakerlog.com . Another prefix you can use would be "try" as in Pat Wall's trypigeon.co .

So there you have it! An easy way to find if .com and social media handles are available. You also have examples of how you can get around the problem of your name being taken already. If you found this useful I'd appreciate it if you could share it about. 😀

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