How important are domain names?

[AboutStar]

My question is basically in the title - 'How important are domain names?'

As I'm late to affiliate marketing, I'm finding that many preffered domain names are taken. How much of a problem is this?

I will always go for .co.uk or .com as I believe these are more creditable, but can I make up for not having a completly accrurate domain name (or one that is less clear about the content of the site)?

Your thoughts please......

[Larwee]

AboutStar, here is a thread that covers some of what you asked in your question. It might be of some help to you. How to select a domain name for a business website

[Linda Buquet]

Having your keyword(s) in the domain helps with search engines and branding.
Don't use long multi-word hyphenated names like best-price-blue-widgets-for-sale-here. com,
just to get KWs in as they look spammy and search engines don't like them as much.

There are still lots of good .coms you just need to get creative. I've had good luck in the past with things like adding the #4 before the KW. 4lowrates. com or 4traveldeals. com There are also still quite a few 5 Star names out there so try 5starkeyword. Sometimes a 2 works like 2learnguitar or whatever. Depending on the niche sometimes adding certain words at the end works like KWvillage, KWjunction, KWlanding, KWbase, etc.

There are lots of good free domain name brainstorming tools that let you add a couple KW and then will show you all the variations available. I don't play the domain game any more and don't have access to all my old bookmarks.

Having trouble typing today, may try to look later for you if you need suggestions.