We are beginning to franchise our concept and need an 800 number. We are quite willing to pay the $6995 if we could get a really go number. We tried to get 800-RUBBISH (which would be perfect) but the owner said ‘absolutely not’. If you have other good alternatives, we’re open to ideas, but we have used your service to get alternatives and we don’t see any yet that we feel are good enough.

Thanks, Ted

(moved from a diferent post to this more appropriate post)

First of all, I appreciate your business (he had just ordered a number) and will help you any way I can, however we really can’t do that type of consulting any more. We are too visible now in the industry to do the bounty hunter work any more. We try to teach people how they can track things down themselves, (see http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/consulting/) but we are more like real estate agents now, than bounty hunters. We do the best job in the industry at helping customers find good options related to their keywords or business, but we can’t make generic terms become available any more than you can go get generic domain names inexpensively.

The good news is that you don’t need a generic domain name to build a successful business and you don’t need a generic toll free number either. The first most obvious domain name isn’t available any more than the first most obvious toll free number is. But you don’t drink generic soft drinks or buy generic cereal. You don’t drive a generic car or want to buy generic things in most categories. You look for a brand name. It may sound easier to start if you have a generic name, but in the long run a brand name ALWAYS does better.

It’s OK to be descriptive or suggestive but you do NOT want, nor do you need to to be a generic name for your business. You won’t be the first in the search results when they look for your company name, people looking you up in the phone book will see other businesses with similar sounding names, and you will need to do more advertising before people will remember your name. This is especially important for competitive or crowded industries.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Keyword Search is only looking at one cross section in time. It can look into the future a little by checking the numbers in disconnect which are coming out within the next few months but there is a pretty high turnover in toll free numbers and if you are persistent you will often find better numbers available. The Keyword Search that mails the 800 Watch emails to you makes it easy to be persistent because it will email you the new serch results as soon as we have the new database ready each month.

This is already overkill in answering this question, but we also have a very good section of our site about this:
http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/lookup/#post-237

And the point about asking us if we have any ideas is kind of tough too. We’ve tried to program the computer to try to emmulate creativity by understanding relationships so it could try related terms. But the system is too big to really answer a question about alternatives personally. I appreciate the faith you have in me, but the computer is honestly way better than I can ever do. But I suspect that the Google computer is smarter than even the smartest Phd’s that work there. So just make sure you try or even beat on the Keyword Search (http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/keyword/). It’s an awesome tool.

I hope that helps. Let me know if you need anything else.