Possible rebranding of my website, your feedback needed!

What if my website will be split up into different domain names that define PRODUCT rather than AUTHOR name? I need your opinion whenever I should or shouldn’t do this rebranding, and if yes, you can suggest domain name ideas.

Why domain Teoalida.com is no longer ideal

I started website in April 2009 to show off my projects, without knowing which one will bring most audience or money. Main portfolio were AutoCAD buildings designed by me after a deep research of Housing in Singapore and other countries. I linked it from freelancing websites hoping to get people hiring me, but I never won any project. In December 2009 I published housing research too, to share my knowledge and help Singaporeans with free information.

The reason of buying domain name Teoalida.com is that it is the name local friends know me since age of 12, and it was unique on internet and easy to be found by people looking for me to hire. Having all my works on same website turned helpful at early stage, only 10-20 visitors/day looking at designs of imaginary houses, once I added Singapore housing information in 2010 I suddenly grew to 100+ visitors/day and it generated also Facebook likes and tweets that helped whole website to appear higher in Google. Over time Teoalida became a BRAND known all over the world, especially for accurate and up-to-date databases.

Nowadays most people visit me for specific information offered on website, and less for knowing the author / person behind website or his other projects. The benefits from having same name everywhere are reduced, because I no longer do freelancing, I usually reject people who want to hire me to make a project, I focus on selling ready-made projects so more audience means more sales. Some people don’t realize that Teoalida is also a PERSON’s name and wonder why website is named like this. Some people don’t spell my name correctly, and I became worried about how much audience I lost because I branded my website according my name instead of according content offered.

Which are best domain name ideas for following websites?

.com domains are the best, but there are over 150 million registered .com domains so is difficult to find one available (see domain statistics by TLDs), so I am looking for alternative domain name extensions.

1. Database selling website, for www.teoalida.com/database and www.teoalida.com/cardatabase – database.world would have been ideal, but it is a premium domain that cost $5000. database.gay and database.lgbt are available at <$30/year but does not suit me, I am straight!
2. Housing information website, for www.teoalida.com/world and www.teoalida.com/singapore – there are few nice .sg domains available, but I would like a domain where I can host housing info about other countries too. On 2 October 2024 I registered www.housingmap.sg.
3. Architectural design website, for www.teoalida.com/design
4. The Sims website, for www.teoalida.com/thesims

All websites will have “about me” buttons linking to www.teoalida.com which will also contain projects that does not fit in any of the 4 websites. 1st is currently producing 80% of my income, www.carqueryapi.com is my main competitor, despite of lagging updates, lack of support and lack of info about people behind website.

Some people also advised me to separate professional work from personal work, but I don’t know how this could be done since whole website is the work of 1 person.

Best practices: domain name must be SHORT and without hyphens, easy to remember, easy to type on mobile devices. So don’t suggest me www.singapore-hdb-floor-plans-and-list-of-bto-dbss-sers.com, I am looking for short domains like www.hdbinfo.com (if was not taken), it is also not required for a domain to contain targeted keywords, the most popular American CAR website is www.edmunds.com, far higher than www.thecarconnection.com.

Arguments for changing and against changing domain

I talked with several SEO experts and most were AGAINST rebranding, because Google rank higher 10-year old domain than a newly registered domain, but I still think that rebranding will bring more benefits, BECAUSE:

In 2012 I talked with someone who made had a Blogspot blog, posting japanese idols and other sexy girls (mostly bikini models, NOT porn). Despite of non-original content (all photos stolen from other websites) his website grew to 1000 visitors/day in just 6 months until Blogspot suspended it. For comparison, www.teoalida.com took 6 years to reach 1000 visitors/day with original content that took me hundreds hours of work!

Myself I made in 2011 a Blogspot.com blog to post some maps to reduce bandwidth usage of Webs.com (limited to 500 MB bandwidth). I reminded about it in 2016, despite of lack of updates and half images broken, it was still getting 100 visitors/day. After moving content and putting a redirect to teoalida.com, the new page was getting only 20 visitors/day.

Conclusion: people are 5 times more likely to click in Google search results a domain that define CONTENT than a domain that is AUTHOR name.

I can create myself 10 blogs posting random content stolen from internet and probably in a year some of them will reach hundreds visitors/day. But how will this improve my image and my life?

Origins of “TEOALIDA” name

At age of 6 I invented several dozens hard-to-spell names. Once I started school, at age 7-10 been writing humorous stories / conversations with some of these names, some being inspired by jokes done by my schoolmates, some from other events happening around me.

Teoalida character was a highly intelligent female intervening in every dispute and solving every problem, she was also school teacher. There was also a male Teoalid. Other character names: Chipisstave, Hancoare, Tarromen, Tarcăcti, Uendaschit, Chistageel, Fediuect, Haidamela, Milioaica, Griliveta, Saugrilild. Stagmela, Stag Mivălaie, Stanjamela, Stangina, Tenzana, Trovizleli, Zleli Ze. They were living in 3 cities (Mionrare, Boimare, Mourare) located in Spartygania, founded by Sparty-Tennglis. Matry-Cornia was the school, Infotronia were computers, Malora was construction factory, other factories without definition: Qea, Quenstain, Mazacidas, Metravigas, Mittevhar, Tegavima.

My parents were often talking negatively about me, adding word “idiot” next to my name, making me ashamed of my real name, consequently I had to create myself an image under a name that is not related with my real name and negative image created by my parents.

Given by my intelligence I started seeing myself in the name of Teoalida character, even if I am male, and since age of 12 I signed all my projects as “Made by Teoalida” and I told to friends to call me this way. When I connected to internet at age of 16 my parents forbid me to tell any “real personal information” on internet, thus I used name Teoalida in LAN chatroom.

And at age of 20 I “launched” my name worldwide, by making business website teoalida.webs.com and signed up in freelancing websites with this name (although it was not necessary to run my business website in same name I was known by local friends). I choose this name because of uniqueness (in 2008 searching “teoalida” on Google did not showed any results than our LAN forum) and intended to adopt Teoalida name legally in the future (by this way broke all links with my family).

Once my popularity grown I noticed A LOT of people who cannot spell my name correctly. In Google Search Console I see my website getting traffic from keyword “teolida”, people emailing me also address with Hi Teolida, sometimes Teoalinda, or other variations. Some people even split my name “Hi Alida Teo”. In my neighborhood, kids who heard about me from other kids mouth, pronunce Toalida.