strategy Developing A Domain Name Acquisition Strategy

While there are many ways to find success in domain name investing, I suspect that most successful investors have a strategy to guide their acquisitions.

This week, investor James Kim shared his strategy for finding names. With his permission, I am sharing his strategy here, along with a few of my observations on domain name acquisition strategies in general, and links to relevant NamePros content.

While the specific example he gives is for an .io name, as he points out, with slight changes the same approach could be used with other extensions and for other uses such as establishing pricing.

I ask readers to share their own strategies in the comments section, so we can all learn from each other.

James Kim Strategy

The strategy that James Kim uses has two stages. In the:

1. First stage one finds and evaluates potential names, while
2. The second stage is a more detailed evaluation of the potentially worthwhile names suggested by the first stage.

Additional evaluation stages are possible, and would improve confidence in the results.

While the strategy could be adapted to a variety of extensions, James gave an example based on a search for worthwhile .io names.

Those who are on X can read the original explanation of the process here. For those who do not use X, I include essentially the full strategy below.

Stage One – Identifying Potential Names

James started by looking for a worthwhile domain name that started with the keyword pro. DotDB plays a central role in his strategy, and some of the steps are only possible if you have one of the paid plans that allow you to export a full set of results, and get information on which domain names are active.

The idea of the initial search is to find strong combinations that are registered in .com but not in .io. Here are the steps of stage one:

1. Use dotDB to find and order a list of registered names that begin with keyword pro. You would modify this with your favourite keywords, of course. See resources on keywords later in this article.
2. Isolate names that have .io missing in the list of registered extensions. Find one or more promising terms. In his example, this yielded the term ProMix as promising.
3. Next use dotDB to look at that specific term, ProMix in his case, for exact and broad registered names. When I check dotDB today it shows 78 exact registered TLDs, and another 653 that include the term ProMix. That seems strong evidence for the value of the combination. The broad number is somewhat higher than when he posted the strategy a few days ago, probably an indication some investors have responded with new registrations.
4. Before investing too much time, he next uses Whois to check that the .io of the term is indeed still available.
5. Check the Site Status option in dotDB for “Active” and search again. For his example, this yielded 62 active names that dotDB classified as active, from both the exact and broad inclusion lists for the term. Note you need an upgraded DotDB plan to do this part, which marks the active names with a green indicator.
6. Next he visited the 62 active sites, to see how many were truly developed and operating websites. In his example he found at least 5 true developed sites.
7. Based on these results, he either moves on to the second evaluation stage, see below, or, if the results were not strong, starts over with a new keyword.

Stage Two: Evaluation

Now he evaluates the suggested term, ProMix in the example, to evaluate it as a potential domain registration. Here are the specific steps he suggests:

1. Search the term with quotation marks in Google. When he did this he found about 2.4 million results, an encouraging number. Note that this is the number of search results, not the search volume.
2. In the next step, he uses Google image search to look at what corporate logo results come up. Shown below are part of the results for ProMix as an example.
3. The more diverse the logos the better. As he notes, if the logos are mainly the same, it is an indicator of potential trademark issues. In this case the logos represent companies operating in many different sectors and niches. That by itself is not a guarantee of no trademark issues, but it does mean that the name does not target one specific business.

As a result of this analysis he registered this name in 2022, and in the subsequent 15 months has received several offers. That is an indication that the process was effective, although he has not yet sold the name. He also mentions that additional verification steps are possible.

As he comments, the many different businesses using the name suggest the possibility of a new business adopting the name as well. There is also some chance that one of the existing businesses will prefer the .io as an upgrade to their existing name.

A Few Observations

I like the system that he uses, and the visual display of logos was an interesting approach I had never considered.

While true that a large number of diversified users for a term is positive, it is still wise to check specific exact and broad trademarks on the term. This can be done using resources such as TESS in the USA, along with other tools such WIPO, MARCARIA, and Furm.com, among many others.

While the logo display is a nice visual way to overview existing businesses using the term, one can also find lists of businesses using a specific name. Here are a few tools I have used to do that:

• OpenCorporates
• Datafiniti (need a paid plan)
• LinkedIn business search

There are also business directories for specific regions, such as BuzzFile which covers the USA, or Bizapedia that covers North America.You can also do a simple Google search on a phrase like businesses using the name Example to get a list.

If you have access to Domain Academy, through GoDaddy Discount Domain Club, the Valuation Worksheet will give you direct access to Datfiniti and CrunchBase company numbers.

Related NamePros Discussions

As you develop a strategy, these NamePros articles and discussions may be helpful:

• The strategy will depend on the type of name that you invest in. @Dave wrote a really clear article on the different domain categories.
• It is good to keep up with keywords that are in fashion. Fortunately, both Afternic and SquadHelp have begun to share these regularly. Check the most recent shared data, but I covered this topic in Data Analytics from SquadHelp. There is also information from Sedo in the 2023 Global Domain Report. DotDB have a keywords section, although you will need a paid plan to access the longer lists.
• The Domain Investing: Just The Basics series provides some background ideas on research, metrics and developing a strategic plan.
• The NamePros Blog article Free Tools for Quick Domain Research not only introduces the basic tools, but covers possible misinterpretation of the metrics.
• The article Look Beyond A Single Domain Name Metric provides examples to illustrate that it is best to consider multiple metrics, rather than rely only on one.
• Last year I wrote about the topic of making and using keyword lists: Making A List…And Updating It Often.
• Just a few weeks ago the NamePros Blog covered Questions To Consider During Domain Name Acquisitions.
• Some time ago, the NamePros Blog covered What Domain Names To Acquire: Can A Prospectus Help?
• This link will take you to all NamePros discussions that used the keyword strategy.

Final Thoughts

Sincere thanks to James Kim (account @spender on NamePros) for developing and sharing his strategy. There is no doubt that the hard work and discipline of following a sound strategy will pay off. As he commented,

If you pioneer your own way, it will become your own niche. From then on, multi-registration is possible.

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We are fortunate that tools such as dotDB and ExpiredDomains make it relatively easy to implement strategies, and NameBio provides a proving ground of actual sales data.

While those with extensive domain investing experience can count on instincts developed over time, for those of us newer to domain names, some sort of formal strategy is indispensable.

While the details of strategies will vary, one common feature to most strategies will be inclusion of two stages. The first to form a list of possible acquisitions, and a verification stage to rank those possibilities. Acquiring only the best of the names from the first stage, based on quality indicators, is essential. The strategy that James shared illustrates this nicely.

Many investors may use a strategy, without calling it a strategy. If you sort closeout or auction names according to certain criteria, that is at least part of a strategy.

I urge readers to share in the comment section below their own strategies for identifying and evaluating domain names.