Brandable or not, how to know?

[McFfee]

How do you know if a domain is brandable or not?

 

[DKN]

If you want to start a new venture and invest lots of money and time for marketing, will you choose this name as a primary brand of your company?

Then, its brandable!

Think like an end-user. There are lots of factors determining a domains brandability.

Visit brandable market places (Brandroot, Brandbucket) and analyze their inventory.

Follow Crunchbase.com, subscribe their weekly newsletter, you may get to know how newly funded startups choose their brands.

Follow @dv82 's site DNGEEK.com, you may find more details about brandables.


Other Useful Links :

TLDInvestors.com

Handreg.com

 

[Ms Domainer]

I offer some tips on my Brandite sales site:

http://www.brandite.com/2013/09/selecting-powerful-company-or-brand-name.html
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These, of course, are my opinions, and others may differ or even add to this list.

Keep in mind that there are always exceptions to the "rules," but exceptions are rare (usually having to do with visual appeal of a domain).

On this site, I offer only brandable .coms, so the article shows .com bias.

On my main sales site, I offer various TLDs, but I sincerely believe that for a brandable, the name should be a .com, at least for the time being.

DKN is absolutely right: one has to think like an end user. Even if you personally love a name, would an end user share your opinion?

 

[NameFit]

I would put it in these examples - if it is commonly used words like 'SearchEngine.com' that would be hard to brand. If it is unique word or combination of words like SearchMonkey.com then it may be 'easier' to brand. Keep in mind, it is the underlying technology that is branded not the name. You get branded based on what you do. Having a brandable name helps with this process, but that is not the only thing.

 

[McFfee]

Interesting, and when buying an expired 'brandable' domain how to check if it was branded before or not, if this was limited to a region etc. Eg. my domain name IndiaTrails.com sounds good for as brandname for this niche but this company name already may exist as brandname etc.

 

[DKN]

Check Trademarkia.com before purchase to avoid UDRP.

 

[BrandChimp]

Brand-able domains are domain names that can be used as Brand names. They are mostly .com or premium words. Two words .tld are often not considered as brandables.

Virtuzy.com = Brandable (Made up word)
PopcornFreak.com = Brandable (Two words)
Meet.me (one word brandable)
hdjejebdn.com = Not brandable
qt5v.com = Not brandable
CoolBrand.in (Not brandable)
GoodNews.co (Somewhat brandable)