Where the Heck Did “Shrimp Salad Circus” Come From?!

Thanks to Name.Kitchen for sponsoring this conversation — and dragging this story out of me!

Have you ever wondered where my blog got its name? You’re not alone. Fun story…

When we moved here, I realized there were actual jobs in digital media, and I immediately decided to try to parlay my Shrimp Salad Circus experience into a real-life paycheck, even though I had previously worked in fundraising for a poverty nonprofit and had very little to do with digital media in a professional capacity.

Spoiler alert: I got the job.

But the best/most ridiculous part of the whole process, was the question during my interview: “Where did the name Shrimp Salad Circus come from?” Read on for the answer…

The Story Behind the Name – Shrimp Salad Circus

I wish I had something more exciting to tell you, but all it really amounts to is that I had no idea that shrimp salad is actually a food that people eat. It involves mayonnaise, and I don’t really want to go into any further details. Just no.

Anywho, my bestie and I were on our way back from a three-month backpacking trip in Central and South America after college graduation. We’d spent every dime we had and were discussing how we didn’t feel qualified for any “grown up” jobs. Naturally, we decided we should start a coffee shop/bar/crafts commune situation to prolong the inevitable “real life.”

We were sleep deprived. Please remember that.

So then we figured we ought to go ahead and name it, y’know, just to make it official… So we started just spitting random words at each other, and for some reason, those three stuck together. And then I stole them and started a blog because out commune never played out…

The Perks of a Bizarre Name

When your blog is called Shrimp Salad Circus, guess what? Nobody else has jacked your domain name, social media handles, or strange sense of identity before you got a chance to snag it.

Unfortunately though, for people who tend toward the slightly less quirky, it’s becoming harder and harder to scoop up the .com or social media handles to match your name. You could hyphenate, underscore, and abbreviate till the cows come home, but at the end of the day, you’re just making yourself harder to find.

Thinking of Starting a Blog?

Fortunately, if you’re only just now thinking of starting your internet empire, you have a lot more choices these days. Instead of being limited to a blah-blah_blah.com, you can register a more memorable “not com” name! Now, you can conjure up a meaningful, creative vibe right from the start.

If the name you want is already taken by a big business or blog, it might be time to start thinking about ways to customize it a bit to stand out from the crowd. But if the .com is just taken by an inactive site or a tiny local business, then it might be the perfect opportunity to claim the not-com for yourself.

Take the picture above as an example. Let’s say you wanted to call your blog My Daily Creative Life. Maybe somebody already snagged mydailycreativelife.com, but they haven’t posted anything since 2009. The brand is clearly not being utilized, but you can’t have the URL. No problem – make yourself memorable by snagging mydailycreative.life instead!

If you’re starting from scratch. Name.Kitchen has a whole lotta naming tools to help you find yourself your perfect blog and domain name.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Name.Kitchen.