Buying
A registration costs little. A bad name costs every year after that. I learned this by filling a portfolio with names I could not explain. Use the checker as a stop sign, not as permission to buy.
1. Paste the name before you bid
Do this while the auction is still cheap, not after you have already talked yourself into it. Read the weaknesses first. If brandability or the extension is in the basement, you do not need the rest of the report. Close the tab.
Compare a clean brandable such as a short .com with no hyphen against a leftover like best-cloud-hosting-online.com. The checker exists to make that gap obvious. Details of what the numbers mean are in the FAQ.
2. Do not buy the score
A high overall score is not a comparable sale. It means the letters are built like names that can attract a buyer. It does not mean anyone is waiting. If you cannot name the buyer — a company, a founder, a type of shop — you are guessing. Guessing is how I lost money the first time.
3. History next, always
The checker cannot see the past. Open the Wayback Machine and follow the history audit. Casino, pills, spam blogs, or a pile of junk backlinks: walk away even if the score looks pretty. For drops, use expired-domain valuation on top of the checker, not instead of it.
4. Check you are not buying someone else’s brand
If the whole appeal of the name is that it looks like a famous company, that is not an investment. Read the trademark and UDRP guide before you invent a story about fair use.
5. Write a maximum bid before the countdown
Use the bottom of the checker’s range as a ceiling when you are buying to resell to other investors. End-user retail is a different price, and you only get it if a real company wants that exact name. Auction rooms punish hesitation. A number written down in advance is the only thing that saved me later. Comps still beat our range: check NameBio.
6. If you still want it
Register or win it, then lock the account and renew on purpose. A clean name is easy to lose the ordinary way: an expired card. If you cannot flip it, lease it, or use it, it does not belong in the list.
Start here: run the name. If the report is weak, that is the answer. You do not need a second tool to tell you to skip it.