Companies have now caught onto the whole "brandable domain" charade. I can hand reg 10 brandables tomorrow that are better than 60% of the trite they have on their site, and so can other companies.
I will be dumping a lot of "brandables" unless they are TRULY good quality brandable names, unlike "janinja", "cheatly", "jurable", "okebu" etc...
It's just gibberish with a price tag.
Single word, or two word short .COM's that make sense are truly brandable, and companies are willing to pay $30k and up for quality names instead of spending $2,000 on junk.
Their "free listing" strategy is a bit of desperation as well, they know whats going on, and what's to come of 'brandables'.
Glad someone has the nads to speak up about this nonsense. Think of a cutesy-pie word or word combination (the more absurd the better!) and stick a lame $2 logo next to it and pretend you know jack sh*t about marketing sense. What a joke.
While I completely agree that the brandable marketplace is ridiculous compared to standard domaining and has been hyped up far too much by new domainers looking for an easy "lottery" without putting in the time and money to register aftermarket domains, I think you guys are being a bit ignorant.
First off, why would companies just now have this sudden epiphany that it's all a charade? 7 years ago theses companies could have hand regged 10 brandables that would be even better than those 10 you could go reg now, yet they've still managed to pump 7 figures into brandbucket alone since then.
I'm not sure what you're expecting to happen, but I don't think brandables and the brandable marketplaces are going anywhere. Contrary to your beliefs, I actually think brandable marketplaces are genius from a marketing standpoint and most definitely an entrepreneurial standpoint. Only briefly skimming over the way Margot formed BB I'm not sure if she just got lucky and it kind of fell in her lap as she was trying to trim the fat from her portfolio, or if she shares the same views that I do, but so many people bash brandables and call the marketplace stupid, but the issue is stupid domainers. 1st look at it from an economic perspective, and forgive me for this upcoming tangent.
Every single day people start online and offline businesses big and small , develop apps, software and games, create new products, foods, technologies, and so much more. For the most part these individuals, companies, startups, products, and so on are all going to need a name/brand, which means there is a massive demand, and as economics 101 has taught us, demand facilitates the creation of markets.
So as we all know the huge demand for names, the same demand that is the reason domaining even exists, results in a market that's even more huge. Huge markets with huge demand allow for segmentation. With market segments catered to different types of consumers there will be some that have a large budget and see a 30k+ generic keyword domain as the most suitable option or the best fit for their brand, but the amount of companies that realize value in domain names, can afford $30k+ premium name, AND find the exact generic keyword/s that match their service or product is waaaaayy fewer than in any of the other domain markets.
The majority of endusers, however, couldn't fathom spending that amount on a domain name, and wouldn't have the budget to do so even if they could. Several won't even see the value in a quality name, and do just as you said by picking up a handreg themselves. That still leaves thousands and thousands of end users that look to the aftermarkets for a name and they likely don't have an issue investing $xxx-$2xxx in their brand.
Some people even prefer brandable names over generic keywords, and I'm often one of them. (I hate saying this because the name listser is my only brandable I don't like lol..oops) But if I create a product, business, app, game, anything that I plan on maintaining and building long-term, I would prefer a name that I can build a brand on instead of a keyword name10 times out of 10. For instance something like 3dprinter.com which let's say costs $100,000. I would kill to have this domain for domaining purposes, but a 6 letter pronouncable name that I found and loved for $2,000 and $98,000 for brand building and awareness would take the cake everytime. Some names I can understand, but I've never understood the ungodly amounts of money some people pay for generic keywords and EMDs, then just get outranked for their own domain keywords by quality content and better SEO.
Before the brandable marketplace came into existence though, anyone who just wanted a brandable name instead of a keyword name didn't really have a way to target them. Sedo and GD are so ridiculously overloaded with names for sale that most of the names listed will never even get noticed, especially if the domain doesn't have any root word to search for, and browsing categories to look for them becomes overwhelming. When taking into account an enduser that is unfamiliar with the platforms, the marketplaces are the furthest thing from user friendly. So like every successful entrepreneur in history, BrandBucket noticed a demand that wasn't being met, created a market to meet the demand, and the market has only grown since. In addition, the "cheap $2 logos" made shopping much more user friendly and allowed for domains to stand out instead of run together like the pages and pages of 200 domains listed in 12px font. And all they had to do to improve their marketplace was offer designers the possibility of $100 that didn't even come out of BBs cut. And in true monopoly fashion they charged the highest comissions in the industry, but still had people lining up to get names approved because brandable sales were nearly impossible before their market came along.
Finally wrapping this rant up, the brandable sites have used seo to target actual brandable enduser keyword phrases and searches. And I've done some seo and developing of brand related websites in the past, and the industry is much larger than you would think. Brand development and consulting keywords are all around $9+ cpc on average. You give humanity too much credit by saying they could just go reg their own, because a ton of people have no creativity whatsoever, and aren't aware of what makes a domain valuable. With keyword domains you can tell which names have been taken for years, but with most brandables you can't differentiate. And even if you hand-regged it a few weeks back, the enduser buying it could care less, because it was a domain that stood out to them and suited their needs giving it a $xxxx value that they didn't see in any aged premium keyword names.
The same way that domaining became less profitable and died down a few years back when it became popular and seemed easy, the brandables will become less profitable and seem to die down because everyone saw people actually selling domains that they made up and hand-regged for xxxx, so every swinging dick regged the first 20 they could find for a chance to get rich quick. It's disappointing so many crap names did just get added, but after looking at a list of 680 domains that sold on BB and seeing name after name that I would never even think to waste reg fee on, anything is possible I guess..
Wow I just went on a roll and wrote a damn novel..
