Lifestyle Blog Names – The ULTIMATE Guide

Choosing the right name for your blog can be quite a daunting task, but if you get it right, it can go a long way in making your blog a success.

I’ve made the mistake of choosing the wrong name (quite a few times) and learn a lot of lessons.

Today, we’re gonna find out, how to come up with a great name for your lifestyle blog.

Before we talk about how to choose the right domain name, you’ll need to know these 3 essential things about your new lifestyle blog:

What’s your blog about?

A lifestyle blog can be about a lot of different things.

You could talk about anything: fashion, furniture, travel, food, wine and much more … The list is endless.

But if you want people to quickly know what your site is about, then it has to be about something specific.

If it’s too general, then it’ll be easy to forget in an endless sea of lifestyle blogs.

If you want to be remembered by first time visitors to your site: talk about just one topic < within a topic < within a larger topic.

That’s called a niche > micro niche > nano niche

Lemme explain with an example:

Niche: Men’s Fashion Blog
Micro Niche: Men’s Watches
Nano Niche: Gold Plated Men’s Watches with Chronograph

As a new blogger, your strategy should be to only create content about your nano niche.
When you blog grows, expand to the micro niche topics and then later the entire niche.

This way you'll build a narrow audience first and later you'll be able to attract a wider, larger audience.

And for reasons I'll write about in a later post; that's the best way to reach people when you're just starting out.

So now that you have chosen a niche for your blog, the next question you need to ask yourself is:

Who is it for?

Let's say your nano niche is "men’s gold plated watches".

Now it’s obvious that the audience for a blog about men’s gold plated watches is going to be for men, right?

But what if you find that almost all your visitors are women looking for gifts for men?

You’ll need to change all the content on your site!

Instead of talking about how accurate, tough and waterproof the watches are (stuff which men want to know), you’ll need to talk about how these watches are great gifts for wedding, anniversaries, birthdays etc. (things that women who are buying gifts want to know).

So before choosing your blog name, think about your customers and come with a name that’ll appeal to them.

You need to know your ideal audience/customer’s:

Age, Gender, Occupation, Education level, Income, Location and what there’s interested in (demographics).

If you can't be 100% sure, at least have a good guess before you choose the name.

You'll also need to think about:

• Why they’d be interested in your topic
• What search terms they use when looking for things you blog about

What are they expecting when they come to your blog:

• Do they expect to find a content site?
• An ecommerce store?
• A reviews and comparisons site?
• Scenic photography?
• Travel Hacks?
• anything else ...

Once you’ve figured that out, write it down and check if it makes sense to you. Also ask your family, coworkers and friends.

Next talk to some people who match your site's ideal visitor description and ask them what they’d like to see on your site.

Talk to them in person, on the phone, on forums, see their questions on question sites like quora.com

Basically, do your research and make sure the domain name sounds good to your audience.

How to choose a domain name

I've made the mistake of choosing a domain name in a hurry and learnt the hard way that I shouldn't do that.

And in this section we’ll talk about you can avoid making the same mistake:

this is an old video but still relevant

Strange Or Clever Names

Clever names don’t always work, but sometimes they do.

Take some inspiration from these cleverly named lifestyle websites:

The Blond Abroad: Simple yet catchy name. It rhymes (that’s awesome). It’s easily understood that it's a travel site for women.

Ape To Gentleman: Brilliant name for a men’s style and fashion blog. The "desired outcome" is right there in the name!

(kudos to the person who thought of this)

Corporette: This name works when used with a tagline like “For Overachieving Chicks”. But I doubt anyone will be able to figure it out without some kind of context. Once you understand it though it’s a clever name.

The only thing that worries me about the name: it's likely to be misspelt.

Which brings us to the next point ...

Make It Easy To Spell

Now it’s easy to think that people are just going to click on a link to come to your site.

So how does it matter if your domain name isn’t easy to spell?

It's simple ...

Don't think about now, when your blog is still unknown.

Think about what’ll happen a couple of years later when your blog is well known.

That's when many people will just type in the name of your blog to come directly to your site.

And that's when hard to spell words become a big problem.

Not in the beginning, but later.

And obviously to you, your domain name will always seem easy to spell.

The question is: is it easy for others?

To test this, try to get people to your site without a click, in the following situations (get help from your family and friends):

• Tell them your domain name over the phone or in person and ask them to type it in the browser quickly
• Ask them to type in your domain after a quick glance at your business card
• Ask them to send an email to you@yourdomain.com

It's a simple way to eliminate the options which are difficult to type quickly and correctly.

Use Repetitive Sounds (if possible)

Repeating sounds tend to linger in the mind. Our brains enjoy these sounds and keep playing them over and over.

That's what makes such sounds so memorable.

Like a song that's stuck in the head and keeps playing on loop.

Big companies have been using repeating sounds for their brand names for many decades.

These big companies spend big money in advertising their products,  so you can bet that they spend a lot of time, effort and money to make sure they get the brand name right.

And such names have become some of the most world's best known brands:

• Coca Cola
• Dunking Donuts
• Kit Kat
• Tic Tac
• Bora Bora (Resort)
• and many more (Just prompt ChatGPT "well known brand names with repeating sounds like: Coca Cola, Dunking Donuts, Kit Kat")

Here are some lifestyle blogs that use this naming technique:

• Thirteen Thoughts
• Positively Present
• Forever Amber
• Gorgeous In Grey
• Treasures & Travels
  

So now you know how you can take advantage of the naming techniques that big companies use to build memorable brands.

Things to avoid when choosing the name

Avoid Repeat Letters Between Words

Avoid words ending with the same letter as the beginning of the next word.

Example from the video above: PastaAficionado.com becomes pastaaficionado.com when written in lowercase (how it will appear in the browser's address bar).

Imagine yourself telling this domain name to a big shot businessman at the International Pasta Conference.

You'll need to say “you need to type 2 As, one for pasta another for aficionado”.

That sounds a bit uncool.

Avoid Hyphens And Numbers

Let's talk about hyphens:

do-i-really-need-to-explain-why-this-is-a-bad-idea.com?

Let's talk about numbers:

The rule is - Use numbers in your domain name only when numbers are a part of your brand name.

Good examples:

• 3M.com (3M is a well-known brand name)
• iGTA5.com (GTA5 is a well known game)

Bad examples:

• mail4india.com (trying to use 4 to sound out FOR – looks and sounds lame)
• and anytime the number 3 is used to represent a mirror image of the letter E (it's 3xtremely uncool)

Avoid Existing Brand Names And Trademarks

Make sure you don’t infringe on anybody else’s copyright or trademark because you can end up facing legal action for this.

And it's not up to you to decide if you did something wrong, the judge will decide that.

If they find you guilty, then you won't just lose the domain name, you'll probably need to pay a fine too (or maybe more).

So even if such domains are available, don’t buy facedbook.com (or a body piercing site called facehook.com) or even common misspellings like gooogle.com

Play it safe and don't buy domains that sound similar to existing well-known companies and brands. 

Time Limited Trends (Be Careful)

It might sound really cool to name a site about a trending topic.

Brands called Om & The City and eat,sleep,wear are both based on popular movies.

But here’s the thing about trends: they go away after sometime.

This means that names which are piggybacking on a trend, need be sure that they can develop a strong following, before the popularity of the trend fades away.

Look, I’m not asking you to avoid such names.

I actually like them a lot and I think they can be quite clever, even funny. And that can make such names memorable for your existing audience.

The only issue with such names will be reaching new audiences after the trend ends.

So initially when the topic is trending, the marketing will probably be easier because of piggybacking on trend. 

And later, when the trend ends, it's not like you have to shut down the company. The company can still continue marketing and still grow the business.

So in my opinion, piggybacking your marketing on a trending topic can be a great way to launch a new company. It doesn't guarantee success, but can be of some help.

So thinking about this strategically: if you decide to get such a domain name, you should make sure you can build an audience quickly.

Before your brand name stops making sense to new audiences that you haven't reached yet.

More things to avoid:

• Avoid incomplete words like flickr (scary story: flickr.com had to offer $600,000 to buy flicker.com which was getting 3.6 million visits/yr mostly from people typing in the wrong spellings. ouch!)
• Avoid intentional wrong spellings like lyfestyle (just looks bad)
• Avoid any word which you’ve ever had to spellcheck
• Avoid words with a silent letter in them (most people can't spell words like Psychology easily)
• Avoid certain foreign language words which sound nice but aren’t easy to type like "haute couture". Be particularly careful when using French and Italian fashion or food words because being from the industry, you might know the correct spellings, but are you sure everyone in your audience does too?

Types of domain names

Branded domains

Zoosk, Twitter, Google

These are made up words that don’t mean anything but brands have been built around them. The main thing here is the sound of these words.

The sound is easy to think of (no tongue twisters) and so they are easy to remember.

Also the spelling are the same as you would think they would be, if you never heard the of the brand before.

So if someone just told you the name verbally and then you went to type it into your browser, it’ll probably be the right spellings.

Branded domains are excellent if you already know your site is going to be a big brand later.

Obviously there are bad examples of this too:

Zerxza.com is the wrong way to use create a brandable domain. It doesn’t sound like the spellings and the sound isn’t memorable.

Keyword Rich Domains

Keyword rich domains are domains that target a specific search term that you want to rank for.

Years ago, I bought a domain name howtomeditate.xyz (horrible domain name, I know) with the intention of creating a website targeting the search term “how to meditate”.

It was a bad idea and the site failed to rank high on Google.

So don’t buy a keyword rich domain. That tactic won’t work.

Abbreviations

BMW.com, F1.com (redirects to formula1.com), NHL.com are all well-known abbreviations and great domain names.

But such domains won’t really work in the lifestyle blog niche so let’s skip them and move on to ...

Personal Domain Names

Your own name as the domain name is great if you are serious that  running your lifestyle blog is your passion in life.

But do take a moment to think about what you would do if you decide to exit the blog at a later date.

What if later you don't want to run a lifestyle blog?

Maybe you would want to use the domain for a personal blog?

Also, the other problem with using your own name is the first time someone sees or hears the domain name, it's just YourName.com. They have no clue what the site is about.

But this won't be a problem once you start developing "a name for yourself" in your field. (bad joke, i know)

So think about these things before using your personal domain name for your lifestyle blog.

Made Up Words

Then there are domains made up words that are a mix of 2 or 3 words:
MicroSoft.com, WordPress.com or SpiritScience.com

Or domains that mash 2 words together to make 1 word:
Mixology.eu or thejungalow.com

These names can be great but are tricky.

Because there are no particular set of rules that work well here, so you'll need to work with your intuition and ask close people for their opinions.

Try it out. It might work for you.

Domain Name Extensions

It’s a lifestyle blog. Just go for a .com domain.

Seriously, a .net or .org just doesn’t suit the niche of lifestyle blogs. It just doesn't sound right.

If the domain you’re looking for doesn’t have a .com available, just try a different name.

But I really think you should try hard to get a .com domain for a lifestyle blog.

Country TLD (top level domain)

These extensions are only good if you’re sure that the website will be just for that country.

For example iHeartBerlin.de is always going to be just about Berlin so it’s absolutely fine that they’re using .de (Germany’s domain name extension) instead of .com

And if you’re going to be marketing only in your country, you can use easy-to-remember-and-spell words from your native language as well.

That opens up a whole new world of domain name possibilities for you

New ICANN extensions

There are a whole host of new domain name extensions which have come up in recent years.

Stuff like .blog, .agency, even .pizza (I’m not kidding)

Domain registrars have tried convincing us that these domains will sell like hot cakes and the super high prices they’re charging are justified.

Nope. I don't believe that hype.

These new extensions just aren’t that popular and people just aren’t used to them.

Plus, they cause confusion for older and less tech-savy internet users.

So avoid the new extensions. Stick to .com for your lifestyle blog.

Buying The Domain

It doesn’t really matter where you buy the domain name from.

But you should avoid the free domains offered by hosting companies because they kind of lock you in with your hosting, which means that if you ever want to change hosts later, it would cost you more (but you’ll still be able to do it).

Buying the domain from a separate company means that it’ll be easier to move hosts or transfer the domain (if you ever decide to sell the domain or website).

I buy my domains from Cloudflare.

Domain Privacy

Also when buying the domain, I recommend that you buy privacy protection too.

That's because when you buy the domain you need to provide your address, phone number and email as well.

This is public information and spammers can easily pick up your info and send you tons of spam.

And once they have your info, they'll probably also sell it to other malicious actors as well.

So protect your info right from the moment you register your domain name or you could be flooded with endless spam.

Conclusion

Choosing a great domain name is the first step towards creating a great lifestyle blog. 

Starting a blog is challenging but later when your blog starts becoming popular, it’s a very satisfying and fulfilling experience. Enjoy it.

I hope you got some good value from this post.

Take care and best of luck with your new blog