I have only acquired domains by “hand registration”. No aftermarket, no auctions, no drop catching, no deleted domain lists and none of all the other garbage lists people look at.
In the past 10 years or so, I have focused almost entirely on made-up words, although I also have other types of names from many years ago.
These types of words are harder to come up with on a blank sheet of paper although I typically don’t sit down and do that directly. But these words take more time, work and patience to come up with.
What usually happens is that I will hear a word, or someone’s name, or a place name and I also see such words too. This then gets me thinking of “what if I…” and then I spend some time moving 1-2 letters around, maybe adding 1-2 letters, swapping out letters (like C for a K, S for Z, I for Y). I do these run throughs with paper and pen.
I then enter all the words that I like onto my super-duper spreadsheet and then I leave it for a day or two. I then go back to the words and see whether they still appeal to me like they did on day one. I say them out loud and more than just a few times.
Sometimes they still appeal after that, but often times though they don’t. I may change one or more words that I added on day one and then repeat the wait/sound test.
Once I have a bunch of words I like (there is rarely just one word), I then log into my account at my registrar's site, and only then do I carry out whois searches, trademark searches and then run them all through search engines, for all the words. If there are some names in use by existing companies that are close to mine and which I think could confuse people, I will often strike that name from my list of names to register.
If the domain is available, there are no live trademarks and search engine results show no company using that name/no confusion likely, I proceed to register the name.
