Thank you Painperdu & CoolHost.com for the welcome and your comments. Painperdu: You made some excellent comments. We are on the same page here.
"Content is King" is like one of those eternal truths that hold true ragardless of the the ups and downs in this market. Of course, with ample content, and an appropriate (aka read BIG) name branding budget, any domain name can be moved up to the top. True, some of those premium domains did sell for a price that reflected what Alan Greenspan would label as "irrational exuberance." However, considering that the price of premium/generic domains have already come down to a level that seems quite realistic, generic domains offer, at the current price-levels, the best of both the worlds.
For example, I recently heard that someone picked up Internet.net in the range of $10k. About two years ago, it would have been unthinkable. So if one was to buy a generic domains now, at such low rates, it would mean big savings in brand development and name recognition costs. Buying a name that is hyped up to be in six digits may indeed turn out to be a bad choice. However, starting out with bank.com (not mine), or QualityLuggage.com (mine) certainly beats starting out with whatchamacallitCryptic.name and not much of a name-branding budget.
I think generic names have never been as good buy as they are today, at the current price levels. They certainly hold a lot of intrinsic value. For example, Look at what Honda has done with Motorcycles.com or what P&G has done with ToothPaste.Com. Personally, I would have liked Harley to own MotorCycles.Com, but that is a whole another thread.
Decision on how much to spend on a generic name should be based solely on careful number crunching.
I am with you on the fallacy of buying names for out-of-this-world prices just becuase they have been hyped up to be so cool. However, there is a case to be made for the excellent value that generic domains offer at this time. I think this is the time to get into active marketing and get the most returns on your generic/premium domain names, and hence this thread.
Thanks for the insight, Painperdu:
[b]CoolHost.com:[\b]
Of course, your suggestion to copy(move?) this thread to Marketing Forum is right on the money. And thanks for the NP bucks!
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SlashRoot
