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question Are 5L Domains A Waste Of Money?

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Another thread that asked people to list their 5-L .com domains got me wondering if they are in fact a total waste of money for most people. Some of the names listed were truly terrible.

Let's do the math. There are 11,881,376 possible combinations of 5L .com domains. Namebio shows that just over 4,000 have sold this year. The top sale was voice.com and that is indeed an awesome name. But what about the average 5L domain that most people buy?

Well, if around 4,000 of these domains sell every year, it will take around 3,000 years to sell the whole lot. In other words, there is a 1 in 3,000 chance of selling a random 5L domain in the next year.

Many of the 5L names I see people buying and trying to sell are worse than average in my opinion (feel free to disagree).

So if you have a 5L domain how do you plan to sell it when you probably only have a 1 in 3,000 chance of selling in the next year?

The odds are hopelessly against you. Most people are just wasting their money registering these domains.

I hope this post will make people stop and think and also save them some money.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
The problem with these kinds of discussions is that people often misunderstand the original concept and then compound the problem using incorrect numbers, thus ending up with math that is technically correct, but doesn't make sense and isn't actually representative of reality.

NOBODY should invest in 5L domains .. they are almost ALL horrible!

That being said .. 5L that are easy to spell + easy to pronounce + pass the radio test + are memorable in some way CAN BE good investments.

Of your 12 million 5L combinations, 99.9% of them are domains like NQWEK .. very few are good strong pronounceable domains (like Ategy .. lol).


Heck .. when it comes to end users, even the majority of 4L are garbage and have zero chance of selling.


The same could almost even be said for 3L domains for stuff like QFU ... but the difference with 3L (and 2L obviously), is that people will make the effort to find a new business name to fit the acronym if they find a good 3L for relatively cheap. Like if I had a furniture shop and saw QFU, I might brand as Queen's Furniture Unlimited .. or something like that (bad example, but you know what I mean .. lol) .. people won't make that same creative effort for random 5L domains .. instead they'll likely go with a memorable 2 word domain.

Also .. obviously with 3L, there are vastly more businesses that fit them as acronyms.
 
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The problem with these kinds of discussions is that people often misunderstand the original concept and then compound the problem using incorrect numbers, thus ending up with math that is technically correct, but doesn't make sense and isn't actually representative of reality.

NOBODY should invest in 5L domains .. they are almost ALL horrible!

That being said .. 5L that are easy to spell + easy to pronounce + pass the radio test + are memorable in some way CAN BE good investments.

Of your 12 million 5L combinations, 99.9% of them are domains like NQWEK .. very few are good strong pronounceable domains (like Ategy .. lol).


Heck .. when it comes to end users, even the majority of 4L are garbage and have zero chance of selling.


The same could almost even be said for 3L domains for stuff like QFU ... but the difference with 3L (and 2L obviously), is that people will make the effort to find a new business name to fit the acronym if they find a good 3L for relatively cheap. Like if I had a furniture shop and saw QFU, I might brand as Queen's Furniture Unlimited .. or something like that (bad example, but you know what I mean .. lol) .. people won't make that same creative effort for random 5L domains .. instead they'll likely go with a memorable 2 word domain.

Most that I see people buying are the terrible ones. It's like they think it has some hope of selling just because it's a 5L.

Agree that some are good investments, but people are mostly buying hopeless ones.

I like yours because of (str)ategy.com. And even on it's own it's pronounceable.
 
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Most that I see people buying are the terrible ones. It's like they think it has some hope of selling just because it's a 5L.

lol .. I certainly can't argue with that .. but the same can be said of all types of domains .. it's an unfortunate fact that the vast majority of domains being help by people registered on NamePros have a virtually zero chance of selling EVER at any price (even $10).

Newcomers often get bad advice .. or only grasp part of a multi-part concept .. or just can't get past the language barrier .. or aren't good at marketing/branding .. or don't understand the specific niche .. etc etc
 
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lol .. I certainly can't argue with that .. but the same can be said of all types of domains .. it's an unfortunate fact that the vast majority of domains being help by people registered on NamePros have a virtually zero chance of selling EVER at any price (even $10).

Newcomers often get bad advice .. or only grasp part of a multi-part concept .. or just can't get past the language barrier .. or aren't good at marketing/branding .. or don't understand the specific niche .. etc etc

I made plenty of newcomer mistakes myself. And still make some. I think I'm getting there slowly. But agree that it's not just 5L names but all names, mostly that don't make any sense and would be an embarrassment for any business to use.

I think the main problem I had to begin with was just thinking the domain sounded good without thinking of who the end user may be. Also not doing enough research on past sales, similar names for sale, etc.
 
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The points @Ategy.com makes above emphasize what I would have written. Just because something is 5L does not mean it is worth anything. If it is 5L and a word I would argue it almost certainly is worth something and occasionally $30 million :xf.grin:.

Even if not a word, but it is pronounceable, or even memorable in some other way as a combination of letters, it probably has value although selling time may be long.

Re the statistics, @nhauctions, I think rather than comparing the number of 5L that sell in a year to the number of combinations, I think the comparison should be to the number of 5L .com that are currently actively for sale. With advanced Dofo this can be done - I excluded any name with numbers, only length 5, only .com, no hyphens, no internationalized characters and found. That gave me just over 537,000 5L .com are currently for sale (if someone wants to check that I made the right advanced search options here is the link).

Now using NameBio for 5L .com sales from last year I find 4589 sales of 5L .com (link here).

That gives a sell-through probability of 0.85% which is actually pretty similar to the overall rate of sales for .com domain names. Now the real rate is higher, because we are missing Afternic, DAN, most private, etc. (but that is true both in 5L and overall).

So it seems to me that 5L sell not too much differently than .com overall, but that average prices are higher, somewhat, even if you exclude the voice sale.

So as Ategy stressed, good ones have value, most do not. Thanks for starting an interesting discussion @nhauctions - I like it when we try to answer domain questions with evidence!

Bob
 
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some of 5L will not find an end user, but that can be said also about some 4L.
i will argue that there are plenty 5L available for reg fee that are better than some 4L that are selling for around $100.

some patterns tend to disappear first ... mostly repeating letters, try to make a search for available domains like mappa (CVCCV, where the vocal and the second consonant repeats itself) and you will see that most of them are taken.

BTW, mappa.com sold for about 127k
 
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I think the main problem I had to begin with was just thinking the domain sounded good without thinking of who the end user may be. Also not doing enough research on past sales, similar names for sale, etc.
Well expressed. I think, if we are honest with ourselves, many NamePros members were there too in the early days. Certainly I was! I think in most cases we like our domain names so much we don't really challenge ourselves with the idea would this really appeal to potential users to stake their organization's success on. Thanks again.
Bob
 
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I think the main problem I had to begin with was just thinking the domain sounded good without thinking of who the end user may be.

Yeah .. That's the #1 mistake 99% new domainers make, is seeing a cool domain and coming up with a cool and creative idea for how that domain could be used .. and then using that idea to justify acquiring the domain.

While that's super fun and creative and gets domainers' mind running wild with possibilities .. the reality is that you actually need to do things the other way around .. find types of businesses that have already been built/developed (or that will have demand shortly), and find the domains most likely to be thought of by the owners of those businesses.

It's really hard to make the switch .. and it's hard to say no to really cool domains .. but in the end you make more money selling domains that real people and businesses, need rather than domains that only you have a cool idea for.
 
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Back when I were a lad, an acronym was defined as taking the first letter of a word, say for example four words and making a pronounceable new word. i.e.

S.W.A.T
N.A.S.A
S.E.A.L

Has this changed across the world or is this still applicable in general terms?

I have a few ideas for 5L domain names and when funds allow I shall register them. I'm sure that there are more bad reasons than good for registering them but trends can happen overnight now and it only takes one celebrity to break the internet.

Imagine what would happen if for example Kim Kardashian or Taylor Swift said that they were Domain Investors and it becomes a new trend (it'll never catch on lol !!!)
 
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I'm pretty sure acronyms don't necessarily need to be pronounceable (particularly 3L), but the more popular ones are .. mainly due to the simple fact they are in turn easier to remember. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 
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Hi

I think many of those who look at 5L domains, are doing so in a bubble

they lump all 5 letter.com sales in one basket and start to tabulate

the difference is all 5 letter.com are not the same, so they shouldn't be included in same sales scenario

voice.com is 5 letters, but it is also a real word, not a made up word

as such, that category of words that are 5 letters, are distinctively different than those that are not real words.
like acronyms and many brandables, that sound like words and "pronounceables", which at some time in the future, may be included in dictionary and deemed a word.

at least that's how I see them, and would same view on 4 letter.com sales as well.

imo...
 
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Another thread that asked people to list their 5-L .com domains got me wondering if they are in fact a total waste of money for most people.

Excellent question..!

I actually did list some of mine in this thread -» https://www.namepros.com/threads/list-your-5l-domain-names.1160549/page-2#post-7466662

I did so many mistakes by registering so many non-sense names in the past that just like Bob says, so we are sometimes falling in love with our names. We think we are «business» at the beginning until we take our BUY and SELL stats and noticed a big lost over the years.

If you are serious about domaining and keep going no matter what, you'll learn with time and mistakes. Studying the market and read what professionals are doing. NamePros is one of best place to learn about all that stuff.

Here are some of 5L's I sold that at first sight were meaning nothing. Good end users can see and build something with it that you never expected. And they have money for the right one :

SEDO

Capture d’écran 2019-11-03 à 13.08.09.png


BRANDBUCKET

Capture d’écran 2019-11-03 à 13.09.23.png


All these names were hand registered, which is I guess a good ROI.

PASSION + NUMBERS GAMES + EXPERIENCE + NEVER STOP = RESULTS
 
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5L .COM isn't bad domain , 5L suitable for building website , drive traffic with content , then offer to end user in the future. We know Google.COM 6L , but Google isn't worthless domain. ...
 
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The problem is domainers have been told over and over again by a bunch of clueless people that if it's pronounceable then it's valuable. Not true. 99% of the names listed in that thread are total garbage.
 
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Not sure if waste of money, but need to becareful though. I registered 20, dropped 2 and already sold 4.
Total cost $179, domain sold total $1698.

edited : oh oh one of them i bought from flippa for $70, so total cost is $240 not $179 :xf.laugh::xf.laugh::xf.laugh::xf.laugh::xf.laugh:
 
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Bad 5L .COM are most certainly a waste of money.

Brad
 
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I like mine Tusno 5L thread few pronounceable

i believe value lies in 5L being pronounceable.

More 5L possibilities, (wont run out in our life.)

4Lcom premium due: <500K 4L.com all taken

5L too much! Dont think all b reg’d, my life

Samer
 
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Let's do the math. There are 11,881,376 possible combinations of 5L .com domains. Namebio shows that just over 4,000 have sold this year. The top sale was voice.com and that is indeed an awesome name. But what about the average 5L domain that most people buy?

Well, if around 4,000 of these domains sell every year, it will take around 3,000 years to sell the whole lot. In other words, there is a 1 in 3,000 chance of selling a random 5L domain in the next year.

Many of the 5L names I see people buying and trying to sell are worse than average in my opinion (feel free to disagree).

So if you have a 5L domain how do you plan to sell it when you probably only have a 1 in 3,000 chance of selling in the next year?

That would assume every 5L is registered, which is far from the case.
There are many terrible 5L .COM that have never been registered, and are likely to never be registered.

So it would be 4,000 of whatever number are actually registered.

That is also a very simplistic way to look at it.

Obviously it doesn't factor in the quality of the domain. A good domain is infinitely more likely to sell than a bad one or random one.

Brad
 
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I like mine :) sexkb.com compound of 2 words,well an word and an acronym.
I think I will hold on to it a little more ...

But I do agree, most of them are crap that do not mean anything, like posted in this thread something like ATRAH.com or other... random char strings.

Thanks,
Cristian
 
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I like mine :) sexkb.com compound of 2 words,well an word and an acronym.
I think I will hold on to it a little more ...

But I do agree, most of them are crap that do not mean anything, like posted in this thread something like ATRAH.com or other... random char strings.

Thanks,
Cristian

IDK I thought “Salwa.com” was good one:
(Quoting the thread)
“Salwa is a female Arabic name”

Whaat another pronounceable one :)
 
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But ofc, there’re always exceptions to rules:

Nothing beats “OMGNO.com” you win :)
 
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That would assume every 5L is registered, which is far from the case.
There are many terrible 5L .COM that have never been registered, and are likely to never be registered.

So it would be 4,000 of whatever number are actually registered.

That is also a very simplistic way to look at it.

Obviously it doesn't factor in the quality of the domain. A good domain is infinitely more likely to sell than a bad one or random one.

Brad
Yes, that's the mistake I made in my calculation, as Bob pointed out above. I think the problem is that people hear something about 5L domains selling and then assume any 5L is valuable. In reality. the vast majority will never sell at all.

I bet tens of hundreds of thousands have already been bought and dropped, so that's a colossal waste of money. But it applies to all domains, not just 5L, including many duds that I've bought myself.
 
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Random pronounceable 5L or 6L is probably not investment worth.

There has to be some meaning to it. Of course, at its peak BB was able to sell even pigeons...tuff... And that lead people to register even worse names hoping to add them to BB, until eventually they clogged that marketplace with awful trashy names and BB was not able to push them any further...
 
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