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strategy Profitability of my business idea ???

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berlinquin

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Hi NamePros,

I've had a business idea simmering in the back of my head for a while and decided to share it here. I've learned a lot from these forums and want some quality feedback before sinking a ton of time into a project with no prospects.

My train of thought began when I was reading a newspaper one morning. The column author shared several links to external resources outside his article using tinyurl. So, each link looked something like: tinyurl(.)com/727sd

IMO, the article as whole really suffered because of how difficult it was to read and then copy the links exactly into my browser. The links were also difficult to distinguish from each other and provided no clue about the destination other than the context of the article.

This made me wonder if you could develop a profitable business model like this:
  1. Research industries that publish significant amounts of print material
  2. Purchase short but human-readable domains relevant to the industry
  3. Build service allowing people to register short-links on your industry-specific domain. e.g. with my experience, author could use a link like: newspaper.com/some-relevant-info instead of tinyurl
I have a background in web / software development, so this service is something I could build – it would just take a significant chunk of time.

I'm wondering:
  • Would people use a service like this? Is this marketable? Or are standards like bitly and tinyurl too ingrained?
  • How could a link-shortening service like this be monetized? Would people pay a small fee (< $1.00) to register a link?
  • If such a service could be monetized, would it offer enough ROI, assuming that the cost to purchase short domains is non-negligible?
Curious what thoughts you have. Thanks.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
#2 will be challenging.

I think there is room for innovation. Not sure if industry specific link shorteners would be useful. Not sure about monetizing but getting folks to pay is not easy and would require real value.
 
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At my forums I use external link grabbers that turn all URLs into their titles versus an http URL. I’ve coded a mod (hack) for one version of that.
 
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"Purchase short but human-readable domains relevant to the industry"

well, in .com, only with tons of money. You can use some good new gTLDs, where most of them though will be with pretty high renewals too, so again, only with tons of money...

If you have some good domains (for example if you get a domain like real*estate):

a) you can then create either short-links as
real*estate/london, real*estate/chicago, real*estate/paris

b) or you can create and sell subdomains like
london*real*estate, chicago*real*estate, paris*real*estate, etc

Imagine what you can do with generic names like travel*guide, or emergency*help...

Depending on the quality of what you will create, people can pay a small fee or larger fee...
 
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well, in .com, only with tons of money. You can use some good new gTLDs, where most of them though will be with pretty high renewals too, so again, only with tons of money...

How important is the TLD in the value of a domain if it's being used for link-shortening?

I feel there would be more of an emphasis on the human-readable part, so finding a nice one word domain instead of the usual domain hack.

I'd feel comfortable with .com .co .net

Those are widely known and pass radio test
 
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@xynames Cool hack for online usage. The emphasis on this project would be for print materials, but I'd be curious to see your mod.

Is code on github / are you willing to share?
 
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Various TLDs are used for link-shortening.

Of course, at the moment, nice and authoritative .com domain would be best, there is no doubt about it.

The question is whether one can afford it. If not, then one could opt for new gTLD option. Even this option is not going to be cheap at all, in case you really want to get a good name.

The point is, if the links should be sellable, then they must look good. So will either require perfect .com name or perfect new gTLD name or even perfect ccTLD.

When I think of it, maybe .co or .tv would also serve this purpose nicely and would be cheaper then .com alternative.
 
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The question is whether one can afford it. If not, then one could opt for new gTLD option. Even this option is not going to be cheap at all, in case you really want to get a good name.

Budget is definitely consideration, so likely have to go outside .com

However, ROI is more important to me long-term. There's always risk, but I'm curious if this business model has enough mileage to justify purchasing an expensive domain.

Maybe slight catch 22 – seems like this business model has as much potential as the underlying domain
 
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berlinquin, if you like I can email you my hack, however it is for use on a forum it won't work across the entire internet. It might be someplace for you to start though. Thinking out loud, the answer might end up being some add-on mod that is for browsers. Or something site specific.

In my opinion, link shortening is not the answer, grabbing external titles is.

So for example with my hack this URL
http://xynames.com/
becomes
XYNames - Domain sales since 2002
 
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In my opinion, link shortening is not the answer, grabbing external titles is.

To share a link in a print newspaper, like the example I gave, you do need some domain for people to type in their browser.

Where I see value is being able to customize the specific link.

So, publishing a link to newspaper.com/some-resource in your newspaper builds credibility, because you have authority of a good domain + human-readable, easy-to-follow link
 
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I use my domain G8S.com for this - I haven't tried to monetise it, but it is useful for posting links with php parameters. Many sites don't like the question mark in them.
 
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I've got another site, and that includes interstitials, but I'll probably stop using that, as I think that is a bad idea.
 
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