Two domain projects, 542 names, one honest list

.forum, the land grab

94 of 131 free

The anchor. .forum is cheap to register and moderately expensive to keep: most names run $1.54 the first year and $31.41 every year after. The generic single-word names are largely gone or priced as premium, but the craft vocabulary, the words that describe how a forum actually runs, is almost entirely open and almost entirely standard-priced. That is the opportunity, and it is a narrow one, because this vocabulary is exactly what a competitor would want.

Facilitation and retreats

19 of 56 free

Where you already have paid expertise and no domain to hang it on. Mostly .com and .ai, plus a few specialty endings. The gap here is between generic facilitation language, which is crowded, and retreat-specific language, which is not.

Speaking

12 of 29 free

The thinnest lane, and I think deliberately so. Speaker-services names are heavily worked over by an existing industry. The ones still open are open because they are specific, which is usually a feature.

Moderation, panels, and better questions

6 of 27 free

This lane collided with 1000 Great Questions halfway through the list, and that collision is the most valuable thing in this report. Panel moderation and question design are the same skill sold to two different buyers.

EQ and IQ

12 of 36 free

You already own iqveq.com, iqwitheq.com and iqversuseq.com. Reading the Forum Playbook OS brief changed how I read those: in forum protocol, IQ and EQ are not a personality framework, they are the two topic types a forum runs. That reframes this lane from crowded self-help into your own trade language.

Founder mental health

20 of 38 free

The lane with the clearest unmet need and the least competition for language, because most of the good phrases are sentences rather than keywords. Ties directly to the Mental Health Field Guide already in your goals file.

Creativity

6 of 15 free

Small on purpose. Most creativity names are either taken or vague. The ones worth having are the ones that state a position.

Connectors to what you already run

8 of 22 free

Names that only make sense because Forum Playbook, Catalyst Collective, and forum14.com already exist. Cheapest lane to justify and the easiest to skip, which is why it is last.

1. Experience Share

experienceshare.forum   available   $1.54 first year · $31.41/yr after

What it is. A single-purpose site that teaches the one rule that makes a forum work: you speak from your own experience and you never give advice. Short explainer, the language to use and the language to avoid, a downloadable card for the table, and a two-minute video of the rule being broken and then done right.

Why it works for you. This is the most distinctive vocabulary in forum training worldwide and nobody owns the domain for it. You have taught it for a decade. It is also the perfect free front door to Forum Playbook OS: the people who search this phrase are moderators who are about to need the paid product.

Shape. One page, then a resource, then a funnel. Cheapest thing on this list to ship and the highest ratio of credibility to effort.

2. Forum Playbook, locked across the endings that matter

forumplaybook.forum   available   $1.54 first year · $31.41/yr after

What it is. You own forumplaybook.com. The OS product is going to have an app, an API and a marketing site, and right now the .app, .ai and .forum versions of your own brand are sitting open for anyone.

Why it works for you. This is the cheapest insurance on the list. The brief already assumes Forum Playbook is the product name for a paid, per-forum subscription. A competitor registering forumplaybook.app once you are selling in the App Store is a genuinely bad day, and it costs $8.75 to prevent.

Shape. Defensive, not creative. Point them all at the existing site until the OS ships.

3. The Mental Health Field Guide

mentalhealthfieldguide.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. The book already in your 2026 goals file, given a home before it is finished: the working table of contents, a chapter released at a time, and an email list that grows while you write.

Why it works for you. Both the .com and the .org came back free at $11.08, which for a phrase this plain is surprising and will not last. This is the one name on the list where the project already exists in writing and the domain is the only missing piece.

Shape. Publishing site now, book later. The .org is worth holding alongside it because this subject eventually attracts a nonprofit or a partner.

4. The Loneliest Job

theloneliestjob.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. A brand for the founder-isolation problem: a newsletter, an interview series, or the emotional half of the Field Guide split out under its own name.

Why it works for you. It is the phrase everyone uses about running a company and nobody has claimed it. It also states the problem forum solves better than the word forum does, which makes it a natural top-of-funnel name pointing at everything else you do in this space.

Shape. Editorial brand. Works as a podcast title, a talk title, and a chapter heading at the same time, which is the test a good name should pass.

5. Chapter

chapter.forum   available   $1.54 first year · $31.41/yr after

What it is. The organization-level product rather than the group-level one: a chapter runs a dozen forums, and the person who owns that problem buys tools for all of them at once.

Why it works for you. This is the commercial insight hiding in the list. Forum Playbook OS is priced at $20 a month per forum, which is a small sale made many times. Chapter is the same product sold once to someone with a budget, and the domain is the plainest possible name for it, at standard price.

Shape. A pricing tier and a landing page before it is ever a separate product.

6. Questions

questions.forum   available   $1.54 first year · $31.41/yr after

What it is. 1000 Great Questions pointed directly at the forum table: the questions a moderator asks during the three-minute question window, sorted by whether you are trying to open something up or close it down.

Why it works for you. You already own 1000greatquestions.com, the iOS app and the question bank. This is the same asset with a different door on it, aimed at the audience that will pay for it. 1kgq.forum and 1kgq.ai are both free too, so the whole family is available at once.

Shape. A filtered view of a database you already maintain. Closest thing on this list to free money.

7. Facilitation

facilitation.forum   available   $1.54 first year · $31.41/yr after

What it is. The training brand. You train other chapters' moderators already; this is where that becomes a product with a price rather than a favor with a calendar invite.

Why it works for you. Every generic facilitation domain in the .com and .ai space came back taken, and this one is open at standard price. facilitator.forum and facilitators.forum are free alongside it, which means the singular, the plural and the practice can all point at one place.

Shape. Services page first, cohort training second, certification third. The word certified.forum is also free if that third step ever happens.

8. Moderation

moderation.forum   available   $1.54 first year · $31.41/yr after

What it is. The consulting lane you named directly: helping organizations that run peer groups fix how their meetings are moderated.

Why it works for you. Note that moderator.forum, the singular, is already taken, which tells you somebody else is thinking about this exact space. The practice noun is the better name anyway, and moderate.forum and moderators.forum are still open.

Shape. A consulting front door. Pairs with panelplaybook.com if you want the conference-panel version of the same skill.

9. Five Percent

5percent.forum   available   $1.54 first year · $31.41/yr after

What it is. The opening ritual, as a standalone thing: each member's six minutes on the five percent of their life they would not normally say out loud. A timer, a prompt, and a way to capture what came up.

Why it works for you. It is the part of a forum meeting that people remember and the part that is hardest to explain to someone who has never done it. As a free micro-tool it demonstrates the value of the paid OS better than a feature list would. fivepercent.forum is free too, so you can hold the spelled version and redirect.

Shape. A single-screen web tool. Could ship in a weekend using the timer code you already have.

10. The Retreat Brief

theretreatbrief.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. Productized retreat design: someone answers a structured set of questions about their group and gets back a real agenda, a facilitation script and a timing plan.

Why it works for you. Retreat facilitation is the lane where you have paid expertise and no domain at all. The generic retreat names are gone, but the specific ones are open, and a brief is a better product than a service because it can be priced, repeated and eventually automated.

Shape. A form and a deliverable. Do it by hand five times, then let the thing that already writes your proposals write the first draft.

Backyard and the feeder

12 of 30 free

The literal ask. backyardbirder.com is gone, which is not surprising for the plainest two words in the category, but thebackyardbirder.com and thebackyardfieldguide.com are open. The feeder names are a sub-lane of their own and almost nobody has taken them.

Beginners

9 of 23 free

Of your two beginner guesses, beginnerbirder.com is free and beginnerbirding.com is taken. The pattern across this whole lane: the noun form survives, the gerund form is gone, because the gerund is what content farms buy.

Kids

28 of 40 free

The biggest lane and the most open. birdingforbabies.com, your own example, is taken, but nearly everything adjacent to it is free, including getmykidsintobirding.com exactly as you wrote it.

Field guide as a product

9 of 13 free

Where the book idea lives. livingfieldguide.com is taken and thelivingfieldguide.com is not, which is a lucky break, because that is the best available description of the thing you actually described building.

Slow motion

12 of 17 free

Your real differentiator and the only lane here nobody else can copy, because it depends on footage you already own. You hold slowmotionbirds.com; this lane is about whether the idea gets a second, broader name.

Identification

10 of 22 free

Crowded at the obvious phrases and open at the specific ones. whatbirdisthat.com and namethatbird.com are gone; idthatbird.com, spotthatbird.com and birdidapp.com are not. Worth being honest that Merlin owns this behavior and owning the domain is not the same as owning the use case.

Playful brands

5 of 16 free

Mostly taken, which is what happens to warm generic phrases. birdingbuddy.com is gone, and note there is an existing smart-feeder company called Bird Buddy, so that name was never really available to you in the way that matters.

Ornithology, for people who cannot read yet

26 of 27 free

Your idea, and the standout result of the entire report: twenty six of twenty seven names came back free. The joke works because the word is four syllables of lab coat attached to a toddler, and the reason nobody owns it is that nobody has bothered to be funny in this category.

1. The Living Field Guide

thelivingfieldguide.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. The thing you described: a field guide where every entry moves. Tap a bird and it flies in slow motion, at the speed where a wingbeat becomes legible. Text, range and song underneath, the way a normal guide works, with the one thing paper cannot do sitting on top.

Why it works for you. This is the clearest product idea in either half of this report, and the name states it exactly. livingfieldguide.com is taken and the the version is not, which is the whole difference. It also sidesteps the illustration problem completely: you are not competing on drawings, you are competing on footage, which you own outright.

Shape. Web first, because the footage is already web-deliverable through the player you shipped in August. App second. Book third, and the book is the merchandise, not the product.

2. Baby's First Field Guide

babysfirstfieldguide.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. The board book and its companion app. Ten to fifteen backyard birds, one per spread, with a QR or an app tap that plays the slow-motion clip and the call.

Why it works for you. It is a gift, which is a much easier thing to sell than a reference work. The phrase is warm, it is instantly understood, and it puts the whole ornithology joke in the reader's head without saying the word. It is also the most obviously shelvable name on the list, and shelf logic is the right logic for a book.

Shape. A real printed object plus a free companion app. The app sells the book and the book justifies the app.

3. Ornithology for Babies

ornithologyforbabies.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. The joke, done straight. A deliberately over-serious scientific field guide for an audience in diapers: proper taxonomy, proper terminology, rendered in board-book form with a completely deadpan tone.

Why it works for you. You said it was fun, and you are right, but it is more than fun. The gap between the register of the word and the age of the reader is the entire brand, it is memorable in one hearing, and it is the kind of thing people photograph and post. Twenty six of the twenty seven names in this lane are free, which means you can own the whole joke rather than one instance of it.

Shape. Start as one book and one landing page. If it lands, the lane is deep enough to become a series: littleornithologist, juniorornithologist, futureornithologist are all sitting there.

4. Slow Motion Birding

slowmotionbirding.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. The practice, rather than the footage. You own slowmotionbirds.com, which describes a thing you have. This describes a thing people do, which is what a brand needs to be if it is going to include other people's attention rather than only your files.

Why it works for you. It converts a video library into a point of view: that birding got better when you slowed it down. That is a position you can write from, speak from, and build a guide around, and it is the connective tissue between the footage, the guide and the kids' products.

Shape. The umbrella. Everything else in this lane can sit under it. Hold slomobirds.com alongside as the short form.

5. The Backyard Field Guide

thebackyardfieldguide.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. The scoped version, and the one that is actually finishable: not every bird in North America, just the forty or so that show up at a feeder in Middle Tennessee.

Why it works for you. Scope is the reason most field guide projects die, and you already have the inventory for this scope. A complete guide to forty birds beats a partial guide to eight hundred, it ships this year instead of never, and it is the honest version of what your own footage covers.

Shape. The first real product. Do this one to learn the format, then widen.

6. Get My Kids Into Birding

getmykidsintobirding.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. A parent-facing how-to: the five birds to start with, what to buy, where to stand, and how long to expect a six-year-old to last before they want to go inside.

Why it works for you. Your own phrase, available exactly as you wrote it, and it is a search query more than a brand, which is the point. Parents type sentences. This one catches them at the moment of intent and hands them whichever product is ready.

Shape. Content funnel, pointing at the book and the app. The least glamorous thing on this list and probably the highest traffic.

7. Beginner Birder

beginnerbirder.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. The plain-language front door for adults who are curious and slightly embarrassed to be curious.

Why it works for you. It was on your own list, it is free, and it is the noun rather than the gerund, which is why it survived when beginnerbirding.com did not. It also covers the audience the kids products miss: the parent who got interested because the kid did.

Shape. Either a standalone starter guide or the adult tier of the same content the kids products use.

8. See Every Feather

seeeveryfeather.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. The line that explains why slow motion matters, used as a brand rather than a tagline.

Why it works for you. Every other name in the slow-motion lane describes the technique. This one describes the payoff, which is the thing a person actually wants. Worth holding even if it never becomes the primary name, because it is the sentence that sells the footage.

Shape. A campaign, a section header, or the name of the premium tier. Cheap to hold, hard to re-create.

9. The ID app name

birdidapp.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. The identification tool, if you build one: point, shoot, get told, then get shown the slow-motion version of what you just saw.

Why it works for you. Said plainly, Merlin owns bird identification and you are not going to beat it at identification. What Merlin does not do is show you the bird moving after it names it. The domain is worth holding as an option on that, not as a plan to compete head on.

Shape. An option, not a roadmap item. spotthatbird.com and idthatbird.com are also free if a better idea shows up.

10. Raising Birders

raisingbirders.com   available   $11.08 first year · $11.08/yr after

What it is. The community and newsletter layer: parents who are doing this, comparing notes, posting what showed up at their feeder.

Why it works for you. It is the recurring-revenue shape in a category otherwise made of one-time purchases. It also generates the thing a guide needs most, which is other people's sightings and photos, and it gives the books somewhere to live after they are bought.

Shape. Newsletter first. Only becomes a community if the newsletter works, and most do not, so do not build software for it yet.