Domain name investing is hard. Typically only about 1% of names sell by the end of a full year. Many names will not sell for a very long time, or ever. Naming trends and popular niches may change.
Pricing is difficult. If you price too high, the rate of sales may go down, but if you price too low, you can’t be profitable.
While opinions of others can help with acquisition and pricing decisions, it is important to build the skills to objectively rate names yourself. As is often said, “you make money on the buy.” Effort invested in smart acquisitions will pay off in the future profitability of your portfolio.
This article, and the follow-up that will be published next week, takes you step-by-step through the process I currently use. Most of these ideas have been around for years, and the majority have been written up in one or more NamePros Blog articles. See, for example, the 2020 article Free Tools for Quick Domain Research, the follow-up article Seven More Free Tools for Domain Investors, or the 2021 NamePros Blog article 21 Useful Sites for Domain Name Investors.
I thought it would be helpful to have the process unified into a two-part NamePros Blog article. Also, I consider the sequence of steps in the process. I think the order of the steps matters. If you jump to ask for opinions of others at the outset, or look at automated appraisals, or even number of registered extensions, it can highjack a careful and objective analysis of the name.
From start to finish, it should not take much more than 30 minutes per domain name to carry out all steps in the process. The first few times you go through the process it will probably take much longer, but as you get familiar with each step it will be less. Also, there is no need to go through all steps if early ones indicate the name is not worth an investment.
While paid subscriptions can bring other information and metrics to bear, and make some of the steps faster, the following does not depend on any paid services.
The process I outline can work for generic names that serve as brands, or, to some degree, for product or service match names, but is not mainly intended for service match names.
This process is not suited to made-up or creative spelling brandables, a topic for an article in itself. This process also does not apply when searching for names with a primary focus on parking revenue or development.
Start With The Name
Before you look at a single metric, focus on the name. Say the name out loud. Write it down. Ask yourself: Is this a quality name?
We will look at potential uses a bit later, but start off by asking yourself:
The audio test, sometimes called the radio test, can be applied: say the name to someone and see if they recall the name accurately.
Most brands are fairly short, and don’t often have more than two, or at most three, syllables for good reason. Short names have more impact, and are easier to share and remember.
Now there are exceptions to every rule or guideline, but the above points give a starting framework for assessing a domain name.
If the name fails the test of being a strong name, move on to consider another possible acquisition. There is no need to even carry out the other steps in this process.
A Specific Example
It is easier to see the process through the lens of a specific example, so let me illustrate each step with a name that I considered last week. I saw that the name rafter.xyz was available. I was not sure right off whether I wanted to hold the name, and this process helped me decide. I think this is a helpful example, as the choice is not obvious, and it involves an extension other than .com, meaning that the extension itself, and fit to the term, are important considerations.
While I will demonstrate each of the steps using this name, this article is not about that name or that extension. I know views on .xyz vary. This particular name is simply an example. I could readily have used a .com, .io, .ai, .co, .net, .org, .cc, .us, .me or something else, and the steps would be essentially the same.
Personally, when considering an .xyz domain name, I mainly restrict potential acquisitions to single-word names that are not registry premium renewal. A quick check indicated this was not a registry premium name.
Look It Up In A Dictionary
The first step of the process involved looking up the term in a dictionary. I was very familiar with the construction meaning of the term ‘rafter’, and also thought of a second possible meaning associated with operating a raft. I went to an online dictionary, in my case Merriam-Webster, to confirm my understanding, and see if anything else interesting came up.
Even if you feel confident about meaning and spelling of a word, always look the term up in one or more dictionaries. As well as avoiding spelling errors, or misunderstanding what a term means, seeing the definitions will show some of the ways the name might be used.
The rafters hold up the roof of a building. That idea seemed to me rich for metaphorical applications, in addition to literal use in construction, architecture or engineering. When considering potential brands, look for terms with both literal and metaphorical possibilities.
Also, I liked the potential tie in to rafting, maybe even in an augmented reality, spatial computing, or metaverse sense.
My checklist for the ‘rafter.xyz’ at this point looks like this.
A Meaningful Business Fit?
Some words may appear strong at first glance, and you might convince yourself that you would start a business on the term. However, if we look objectively, there is little real indication of business demand for the name. So let’s next look at that next.
I suggest doing three tests:
When I accessed OpenCorporates for term rafter, active businesses only selected, it showed 1602 companies and organizations. That is definitely an encouraging number. How many is enough? It depends on the extension, but for the second tier of extensions, I regard anything around 100 and up promising. For a .com the number might be just a few or even zero. The number can also be low for very early stage technologies.
You will need an OpenCorporates account to go deep into listings, but you can get a sense from the first page of ways the term is used. I see ‘rafter’ is apparently a surname as well, something I did not realize.
If at OpenCorporates you click on the right on one of the regions, you can get the full list for that specific region. This is is directly useful for names targeted at a single region, but I also find it helpful to see the complete list for a region, rather than just the early part of the alphabet globally.
What about tech-oriented startups, is there evidence for recent use of term ‘rafter’? The image below shows a portion of the CrunchBase search.
I went through the list to see how many use ‘rafter’ or a longer form of that exact term in the company name – I counted 19. I considered that a relatively strong indicator of modern use, considering that I did not have access to the full list. Make sure to actually go through the list, as some of the listed business will not actually be relevant.
I was also encouraged that there was breadth in the types of business using the term, everything from construction to digital marketing, from education and training to ranches.
So feeling confident after the general look at the word, and the indicators of overall business and startup use, I decide to move on to other metrics.
Google Search
I always do two Google searches on any term, one with, and one without quotation marks. This provides an indicator of familiarity of the term. For “rafter” with quotation marks, there were 16.5 million results, without about 44 million. Exact values will vary with searcher.
Super high numbers here are not always a positive. I think there is a ‘just right’ middle ground of terms that are common enough to feel comfortable as a brand, but not so common that they feel boring.
But also use the Google search to get a feel for the term and how generic it is. If results are dominated by one super well-known business, be very cautious. In the case of rafter, the top page is mainly Wikipedia, dictionary, how-to videos about construction, informational articles, etc.
Here is a tip: do a google search on rafter logo. This will show you some business logos that include the term. It will be mixed with services that provide logo services, but still will provide a visual indication of business use of a term.
Trademark Summary
From my Google searches, the large number of businesses using the term, and the generic nature of the dictionary word, I was pretty confident there was not a potential trademark issue for rafter, but it is always good to do a search.
Particularly when you have doubts, or are investing a significant amount in a name, you should go to the primary trademark databases, such as TESS and WIPO, but for a quick trademark overview I use Furm.com. Even abandoned trademarks can be an indication of interest in a term.
Registered Extensions
Generally speaking, highly-desired terms will be registered in many extensions, both exactly, and as part of longer names.
The easiest way to get this data is with dotDB. Even the free dotDB account gives a certain number of searches per day. I show the results below for ‘rafter’.
You can also get extensions registered data from the Graen domain appraisal. That also allows a number of free searches per day.
While domain investors sometimes focus only on how many times the exact word is registered, the related longer domains number may give a better idea of business use of the term, businesses using multi-word .com, along with names held by investors, of course.
In this case ‘rafter’ the exact term is registered in 58 TLDs, while appearing in 28,382 longer names. The latter appears at first glance fantastic, until you realize that it includes longer words such as crafter, drafter, etc. that have nothing to do with rafter.
Note that if considering a name with a relevant match across the dot, check both the simple and complete term. If you are considering the domain name
Does the Extension Match the Name?
Some names can be great terms, but they are unlikely to sell in that extension. This is a step that is often ignored, perhaps because there is not an easy metric to look up, but before you go further it is critical to evaluate the name with with extension. Here are the steps I use:
What I found in the 2021 analysis A Look At What Sells in XYZ still largely holds as to the type of names that sell in the .xyz extension. Most, but not all, developed sales in the extension get used in web3 or decentralized applications. The majority are used by early-stage startups in sectors such as blockchain, cryptocurrency, collaboration, networks, venture capital, NFTs, smart contracts, decentralized services, DeFi, digital marketing, fundraising, web resources, creative tools, metaverse, etc. Almost none are used by local bricks and mortar businesses.
As time goes on, you will also accumulate personal experience with what sells, especially if you decide to specialize in relatively few sectors and extensions. I have sold only three 4-figure .xyz names: one is used in decentralized web resources, one in digital identities, and one in venture investment. These are consistent with what the above analysis showed.
The analysis suggested that the vast majority of .xyz sales are single English words, with the average length 7.1 characters. So ‘rafter’ fits that nicely.
‘Rafter’ is not as good a fit for the types of businesses that use .xyz, however. While metaphorically a term like ‘rafter’ could be applied to decentralized services, collaboration or creative projects, or for virtual reality or metaverse experiences, it is not an obvious fit. So from my business list, the odds of a contractor or engineer or restaurant/event venue using the domain name is probably low.
Stay Tuned for Part Two
I hate it when I am listening to a podcast, and it is in two parts, and I have to wait a week to see how the story ends, but that is going to happen with this topic. The topic is simply is too long for a single NamePros Blog post, but I will post Tuesday next week the final part.
Part 2 of the analysis includes:
Pricing is difficult. If you price too high, the rate of sales may go down, but if you price too low, you can’t be profitable.
While opinions of others can help with acquisition and pricing decisions, it is important to build the skills to objectively rate names yourself. As is often said, “you make money on the buy.” Effort invested in smart acquisitions will pay off in the future profitability of your portfolio.
This article, and the follow-up that will be published next week, takes you step-by-step through the process I currently use. Most of these ideas have been around for years, and the majority have been written up in one or more NamePros Blog articles. See, for example, the 2020 article Free Tools for Quick Domain Research, the follow-up article Seven More Free Tools for Domain Investors, or the 2021 NamePros Blog article 21 Useful Sites for Domain Name Investors.
I thought it would be helpful to have the process unified into a two-part NamePros Blog article. Also, I consider the sequence of steps in the process. I think the order of the steps matters. If you jump to ask for opinions of others at the outset, or look at automated appraisals, or even number of registered extensions, it can highjack a careful and objective analysis of the name.
From start to finish, it should not take much more than 30 minutes per domain name to carry out all steps in the process. The first few times you go through the process it will probably take much longer, but as you get familiar with each step it will be less. Also, there is no need to go through all steps if early ones indicate the name is not worth an investment.
While paid subscriptions can bring other information and metrics to bear, and make some of the steps faster, the following does not depend on any paid services.
The process I outline can work for generic names that serve as brands, or, to some degree, for product or service match names, but is not mainly intended for service match names.
This process is not suited to made-up or creative spelling brandables, a topic for an article in itself. This process also does not apply when searching for names with a primary focus on parking revenue or development.
Start With The Name
Before you look at a single metric, focus on the name. Say the name out loud. Write it down. Ask yourself: Is this a quality name?
We will look at potential uses a bit later, but start off by asking yourself:
- Does this feel right as a company name? Think about this within a context of existing successful company names. Is this similar in quality?
- Is the name clear, or potentially confusing?
- How memorable is the name? If you mention the name to your friend, and ask them tomorrow, are they likely to remember the name? Does it leave an impression?
- Is the name distinctive enough for a good brand? Generic terms can be great for parking or increasing traffic to a site, but most brands will not choose a descriptive generic name.
- Does the name carry positive connotations or emotional feel?
- Is the name special in some way?
The audio test, sometimes called the radio test, can be applied: say the name to someone and see if they recall the name accurately.
Most brands are fairly short, and don’t often have more than two, or at most three, syllables for good reason. Short names have more impact, and are easier to share and remember.
Now there are exceptions to every rule or guideline, but the above points give a starting framework for assessing a domain name.
If the name fails the test of being a strong name, move on to consider another possible acquisition. There is no need to even carry out the other steps in this process.
A Specific Example
It is easier to see the process through the lens of a specific example, so let me illustrate each step with a name that I considered last week. I saw that the name rafter.xyz was available. I was not sure right off whether I wanted to hold the name, and this process helped me decide. I think this is a helpful example, as the choice is not obvious, and it involves an extension other than .com, meaning that the extension itself, and fit to the term, are important considerations.
While I will demonstrate each of the steps using this name, this article is not about that name or that extension. I know views on .xyz vary. This particular name is simply an example. I could readily have used a .com, .io, .ai, .co, .net, .org, .cc, .us, .me or something else, and the steps would be essentially the same.
Personally, when considering an .xyz domain name, I mainly restrict potential acquisitions to single-word names that are not registry premium renewal. A quick check indicated this was not a registry premium name.
Look It Up In A Dictionary
The first step of the process involved looking up the term in a dictionary. I was very familiar with the construction meaning of the term ‘rafter’, and also thought of a second possible meaning associated with operating a raft. I went to an online dictionary, in my case Merriam-Webster, to confirm my understanding, and see if anything else interesting came up.
Screen capture courtesy of Merriam-Webster online dictionary of part of entry for the word ‘rafter’.
Even if you feel confident about meaning and spelling of a word, always look the term up in one or more dictionaries. As well as avoiding spelling errors, or misunderstanding what a term means, seeing the definitions will show some of the ways the name might be used.
The rafters hold up the roof of a building. That idea seemed to me rich for metaphorical applications, in addition to literal use in construction, architecture or engineering. When considering potential brands, look for terms with both literal and metaphorical possibilities.
Also, I liked the potential tie in to rafting, maybe even in an augmented reality, spatial computing, or metaverse sense.
My checklist for the ‘rafter.xyz’ at this point looks like this.
- dictionary word – YES
- clear – YES
- short – YES, just 6 letters
- straightforward – YES, just 2 syllables, easy to say
- audio test – YES PASS
- relatively common – YES (but not too common)
- multiple meanings and uses – YES
- metaphorical applications possible – YES
- could I see starting a business on the name YES (probably, still a little unsure at this stage)
- memorable – MAYBE, not as much as some words
- special - NO
- positive connotation? – NEUTRAL
A Meaningful Business Fit?
Some words may appear strong at first glance, and you might convince yourself that you would start a business on the term. However, if we look objectively, there is little real indication of business demand for the name. So let’s next look at that next.
I suggest doing three tests:
- Quickly jot down ideas for possible business niches that could reasonably use the name. If you have trouble coming up with more than a few, or if they feel like stretches, move on to consider another name.
- Next, go to OpenCorporates and search the term. How many active businesses and organizations use the term? It is not necessarily because you are likely to sell the name to one of these businesses, but rather if a term has been widely adopted in the past, there is a higher chance startups in the future will also consider the term. Make sure to click active only when using OpenCorporates.
- It is good to focus particularly on use of the term by recent startups, since much of the demand for names comes from startups. One way to do that is to do a company search for the term on CrunchBase at this link. Simply enter the term, and it does a good job of finding matches, the better matches generally appear first. If you expand the list you can see up to 25 possibilities without a subscription. Go through the list and see how many are similar to the name you are considering. Ideally you want to see a list full of startups using the exact term, and all in very different niches or sectors.
When I accessed OpenCorporates for term rafter, active businesses only selected, it showed 1602 companies and organizations. That is definitely an encouraging number. How many is enough? It depends on the extension, but for the second tier of extensions, I regard anything around 100 and up promising. For a .com the number might be just a few or even zero. The number can also be low for very early stage technologies.
Screen capture (small part of total list) courtesy of OpenCorporates for the word ‘rafter’, active businesses/organizations only.
You will need an OpenCorporates account to go deep into listings, but you can get a sense from the first page of ways the term is used. I see ‘rafter’ is apparently a surname as well, something I did not realize.
If at OpenCorporates you click on the right on one of the regions, you can get the full list for that specific region. This is is directly useful for names targeted at a single region, but I also find it helpful to see the complete list for a region, rather than just the early part of the alphabet globally.
What about tech-oriented startups, is there evidence for recent use of term ‘rafter’? The image below shows a portion of the CrunchBase search.
Screen capture courtesy of CrunchBase of a portion of the results for the term ‘rafter’.
I went through the list to see how many use ‘rafter’ or a longer form of that exact term in the company name – I counted 19. I considered that a relatively strong indicator of modern use, considering that I did not have access to the full list. Make sure to actually go through the list, as some of the listed business will not actually be relevant.
I was also encouraged that there was breadth in the types of business using the term, everything from construction to digital marketing, from education and training to ranches.
So feeling confident after the general look at the word, and the indicators of overall business and startup use, I decide to move on to other metrics.
Google Search
I always do two Google searches on any term, one with, and one without quotation marks. This provides an indicator of familiarity of the term. For “rafter” with quotation marks, there were 16.5 million results, without about 44 million. Exact values will vary with searcher.
Super high numbers here are not always a positive. I think there is a ‘just right’ middle ground of terms that are common enough to feel comfortable as a brand, but not so common that they feel boring.
But also use the Google search to get a feel for the term and how generic it is. If results are dominated by one super well-known business, be very cautious. In the case of rafter, the top page is mainly Wikipedia, dictionary, how-to videos about construction, informational articles, etc.
Here is a tip: do a google search on rafter logo. This will show you some business logos that include the term. It will be mixed with services that provide logo services, but still will provide a visual indication of business use of a term.
Screen capture portion of results for a
rafter logo Google search.Trademark Summary
From my Google searches, the large number of businesses using the term, and the generic nature of the dictionary word, I was pretty confident there was not a potential trademark issue for rafter, but it is always good to do a search.
Particularly when you have doubts, or are investing a significant amount in a name, you should go to the primary trademark databases, such as TESS and WIPO, but for a quick trademark overview I use Furm.com. Even abandoned trademarks can be an indication of interest in a term.
Registered Extensions
Generally speaking, highly-desired terms will be registered in many extensions, both exactly, and as part of longer names.
The easiest way to get this data is with dotDB. Even the free dotDB account gives a certain number of searches per day. I show the results below for ‘rafter’.
Screen capture courtesy dotDB for term 'rafter'.
You can also get extensions registered data from the Graen domain appraisal. That also allows a number of free searches per day.
While domain investors sometimes focus only on how many times the exact word is registered, the related longer domains number may give a better idea of business use of the term, businesses using multi-word .com, along with names held by investors, of course.
In this case ‘rafter’ the exact term is registered in 58 TLDs, while appearing in 28,382 longer names. The latter appears at first glance fantastic, until you realize that it includes longer words such as crafter, drafter, etc. that have nothing to do with rafter.
Note that if considering a name with a relevant match across the dot, check both the simple and complete term. If you are considering the domain name
Example.extension, you should do a dotDB search for ExampleExtension, as well as one for simply Example. That does not apply for extensions such as .com or .xyz however.Does the Extension Match the Name?
Some names can be great terms, but they are unlikely to sell in that extension. This is a step that is often ignored, perhaps because there is not an easy metric to look up, but before you go further it is critical to evaluate the name with with extension. Here are the steps I use:
- First ask, Is there a record of aftermarket sales in this extension? If you have considered many names in a certain extension before, odds are you already know this. If not, go to NameBio, set the extension, and look at number of sales and sales volume for the past two years. When I do this for .xyz it tells me there have been 1802 sales, totalling about $4.5 million over the two years. But you are not done yet.
- Next look at what types of names sell in this extension. The best way to do this is to actually browse lists of names that have sold in the extension using NameBio and/or DNJournal. Without a subscription, you will be limited in how many you can see at NameBio, but with different searches can still get an idea. Remember you are looking for patterns, not for which precise names sold.
- You can save time by consulting an analysis of the types of names that sell in an extension. It is now a few years old, but I did this for the .xyz extension in A Look At What Sells in XYZ.
- Another source of information is the registry itself, that may feature developed websites in the extension. For example, go to gen.xyz.
- Don’t overlook discussions in an extension here on NamePros that will generally include mention of sales, developed sites, and investor opinions on the type of names to consider. For .xyz there are numerous NamePros discussions, including this one started in 2015: XYZ Thread: Sales, Regs, Discussion, News, Debates.
- Follow here on NamePros, or on social media, investors with strong holdings in an extension as they will regularly mention both sales and developed sites. Of course @DNGear is the Queen of XYZ, but there are others to follow as well. For example TheDomainPunk has a quality .xyz portfolio as well, and regularly posts on X lists of developed sites on the extension. In some cases the registry will also have an active social media account and provide monthly updates on sales and developed sites.
What I found in the 2021 analysis A Look At What Sells in XYZ still largely holds as to the type of names that sell in the .xyz extension. Most, but not all, developed sales in the extension get used in web3 or decentralized applications. The majority are used by early-stage startups in sectors such as blockchain, cryptocurrency, collaboration, networks, venture capital, NFTs, smart contracts, decentralized services, DeFi, digital marketing, fundraising, web resources, creative tools, metaverse, etc. Almost none are used by local bricks and mortar businesses.
As time goes on, you will also accumulate personal experience with what sells, especially if you decide to specialize in relatively few sectors and extensions. I have sold only three 4-figure .xyz names: one is used in decentralized web resources, one in digital identities, and one in venture investment. These are consistent with what the above analysis showed.
The analysis suggested that the vast majority of .xyz sales are single English words, with the average length 7.1 characters. So ‘rafter’ fits that nicely.
‘Rafter’ is not as good a fit for the types of businesses that use .xyz, however. While metaphorically a term like ‘rafter’ could be applied to decentralized services, collaboration or creative projects, or for virtual reality or metaverse experiences, it is not an obvious fit. So from my business list, the odds of a contractor or engineer or restaurant/event venue using the domain name is probably low.
Stay Tuned for Part Two
I hate it when I am listening to a podcast, and it is in two parts, and I have to wait a week to see how the story ends, but that is going to happen with this topic. The topic is simply is too long for a single NamePros Blog post, but I will post Tuesday next week the final part.
Part 2 of the analysis includes:
- finding competitive names for sale
- checking status of other versions of the name
- comparator sales
- domain history and reputation
- getting a second opinion
- putting it all together
- establishing a price
- estimating a probable sell-through rate
- deciding if the acquisition makes numerical sense.
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thanks 
