So once I discovered that my first choice in domain names for my little fledgling web design venture (fledgling! get it? get it? oh, I quack myself up!) was already taken, and doing a lot of studying up on the pros and cons of various domain name strategies, plus some SEO-type searches on likely keywords to include in domain names, I put the whole thing on the back burner for a couple of weeks, so I could come back and look at it with fresh eyes.
And what I finally decided: it may be a blessing in disguise that whyaduck.com is not available, because while that name would get lots of hits, not so many would be searches for web design. SEO Rule #1: if you want people to find you, use words that say what you do. So I finally decided that rule trumped the "beware of excessively long website names" rule, because right now people wouldn't know my little startup from a hole in the wall, and would be searching on "web design" ... but I also want to differentiate myself from all the other web design outfits out there, so including "whyaduck" is still cool. And once people do start to know who I am, remembering "whyaduck" plus "webdesign" is not all that difficult.
And I found a really cool, and totally public domain, graphic to incorporate into my website's design, and even as a logo. Little webbed ducky footprints! (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, who got them from the US government of all places--I believe they were from some federal wildlife site back in the day.) The minute I saw these little duck feet, I realized they had a great balance of cuteness and clean design--they will look really classy on a business card. I can even make a little Flash animation of them walking across a page. And every time I look at them they make me smile--which is a great way to feel about a project.
So--next step: building some stuff in Dreamweaver and Flash. More updates as I have 'em.
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