I’ve found a simple method that any domainer can use to discover the “perceived value” of a domain name - meaning what people associate with it. Knowing a domain’s perceived value can help us write a more intelligible and compelling sales pitch that contains more than CPC, searches per month, and past sales. It can also help our potential buyers realize the broad appeal and potential of a domain name that may even exceed their expectations, because some associations are less intuitive without the right context.
According to Investopedia, the perceived value of a good or service is “the worth that a product or service has in the mind of the consumer.” When we speak of the perceived value of a domain name, we are talking about what a user thinks, feels, or associates with a domain name or word. Sometimes it may seem obvious, but keep in mind that words mean different things to different people, so we may associate one thing with a word, while an entire group of people might think differently. By researching what a domain name means to people in the real world, we should be able to estimate the overall perception of a domain name within society - its perceived value. By finding the perceived value of a domain name, we should be able to accurately uncover a market where that domain name has commercial value.
In this article, I reference a few domain names. Please note this is not a promotion of these domain names. This article is strictly educational, and I only mention these domains as examples to illustrate the method that I am explaining.
As I was perusing the appraisal section on NamePros, I stumbled upon an interesting domain name: liquids.co. The owner was seeking an appraisal for the domain name, and there were several opinions regarding the perceived value of the domain name. Initially, the owner had the domain pegged as a good name for a pesticides website. I felt like I could help the owner understand how people were interacting with “liquids” as a word, so I made a video showing how I would do this and posted it in the thread. However, I felt compelled to share this process with the entire community and not just the members that had a chance to visit the liquids.co appraisal thread.
In order to find out the perceived value for a domain name, we must ask:
We can use Twitter to discover the perceived value of a domain and extrapolate from that into finding a market for that name.
Here are the steps:
Looking at Twitter's tweets gives us real world results for how people are interacting with the word or words in our domain name. Knowing that perceived value helps us determine how to pitch our domain name to end-users and/or other domain investors. For example, we saw that “liquids” did not have a strong association with pesticides, as the owner of liquids.co initially thought. However, the keyword was strongly related to vodka, so the domain name could presumably be pitched as a place for selling alcohol. People also used “liquids” to relate to healthy liquids. With that in mind, a pitch could be formed for a website that provides information on a variety of drinking/smart water, smoothies, and/or juices.
When we are pitching a domain name, rather than simply posting stats on the domain’s history, we can share how people in the real world are using the words that exist in the domain. By pitching domain names within a market where people are actually using those words to describe something (such as vodka for “liquids”), and pointing to examples of real internet user behavior, we can make stronger pitches for our domains.
According to Investopedia, the perceived value of a good or service is “the worth that a product or service has in the mind of the consumer.” When we speak of the perceived value of a domain name, we are talking about what a user thinks, feels, or associates with a domain name or word. Sometimes it may seem obvious, but keep in mind that words mean different things to different people, so we may associate one thing with a word, while an entire group of people might think differently. By researching what a domain name means to people in the real world, we should be able to estimate the overall perception of a domain name within society - its perceived value. By finding the perceived value of a domain name, we should be able to accurately uncover a market where that domain name has commercial value.
In this article, I reference a few domain names. Please note this is not a promotion of these domain names. This article is strictly educational, and I only mention these domains as examples to illustrate the method that I am explaining.
As I was perusing the appraisal section on NamePros, I stumbled upon an interesting domain name: liquids.co. The owner was seeking an appraisal for the domain name, and there were several opinions regarding the perceived value of the domain name. Initially, the owner had the domain pegged as a good name for a pesticides website. I felt like I could help the owner understand how people were interacting with “liquids” as a word, so I made a video showing how I would do this and posted it in the thread. However, I felt compelled to share this process with the entire community and not just the members that had a chance to visit the liquids.co appraisal thread.
In order to find out the perceived value for a domain name, we must ask:
What does an internet user think of when they see our domain name on a forum, blog post, or elsewhere?
We can use Twitter to discover the perceived value of a domain and extrapolate from that into finding a market for that name.
Here are the steps:
- Go to search.twitter.com
- Enter the domain name with spaces in-between words, rather than as a consecutive string. So, for example, to investigate malecologne.com, we would enter “male cologne” instead of “malecologne.” In the case of liquids.co, we enter “liquids” into the search field.
- Review the tweets that come up in the search results, and note the ways that people are using the word(s). With our example keyword, “liquids,” several people mentioned vodka and liquor, which are in a similar category.
- Depending on whether the domain is a single word or multiple words, we look for different things within the results.
- If the domain is a single word, look at the context of the tweet. For liquids, we kept getting tweets in the context of drinking and smoking, particularly water, vodka, and vapor liquid.
- If the domain contains two words, like “male cologne,” we also note the relationship between the words: Are they being used together? Separately? How do they interact with each other?
- For example, one tweet about male cologne used both words together: “But d sad thing about buying male cologne is d male in my life wont let me use it in peace.” Another tweet used them separately: “If you're a 45-year-old male wearing a denim fedora, you probably shouldn't also be wearing cologne from Abercrombie and Fitch.” Take note of the context of the words and their relationship so that we can decipher whether people relate those words to each other, and if so, how they associate the two.
- If the domain is a single word, look at the context of the tweet. For liquids, we kept getting tweets in the context of drinking and smoking, particularly water, vodka, and vapor liquid.
Looking at Twitter's tweets gives us real world results for how people are interacting with the word or words in our domain name. Knowing that perceived value helps us determine how to pitch our domain name to end-users and/or other domain investors. For example, we saw that “liquids” did not have a strong association with pesticides, as the owner of liquids.co initially thought. However, the keyword was strongly related to vodka, so the domain name could presumably be pitched as a place for selling alcohol. People also used “liquids” to relate to healthy liquids. With that in mind, a pitch could be formed for a website that provides information on a variety of drinking/smart water, smoothies, and/or juices.
When we are pitching a domain name, rather than simply posting stats on the domain’s history, we can share how people in the real world are using the words that exist in the domain. By pitching domain names within a market where people are actually using those words to describe something (such as vodka for “liquids”), and pointing to examples of real internet user behavior, we can make stronger pitches for our domains.
