Domain Myths and Lies

I think the stated "myth" is a bit of a red herring. A seasoned domain investor would never claim that shorter is better just because it's shorter. It's more accurate to say that, all things being equal, shorter is easier to sell, and generally conveys more trust and authority to clients/customers.

To illustrate:

StructuralEngineeringCorp.com is clearly more meaningful to a potential buyer than ZWQP.com and thus likely easier to sell to an end user (liquid value is a whole other issue, though).

But... Nuvo.com is a heck of a lot better than NuvoStructuralEngineers.com

There's a very good reason that most brandable marketplaces report that the majority of their sales are of domain names that contain 8 characters or less: people like short names.

 

Domaining as a kid was what inadvertently led me to be a Full Stack Engineer! Had to spin up servers, code everything, and design it all because there wasn't money to outsource.

From server to front end, if I don't know a coding language/etc, I'll reverse engineer it on sight and be fluent in a couple weeks (it's all the same to me).

That article does a great job explaining all the differences between stacks, devs and engineers. Funny story — been full stack for 15+ years but I actually didn't know I was called a Full Stack Engineer until someone asked me "how I became one" a handful of years back.

 

I actually agree with this fully.

This should be something I work on fixing next decade.

 

Good examples.

Saying shorter is better doesn't mean that every shorter domain is better.
It requires a little common sense.

Brad

 

Totally agree. ZWQP.com is what I was aiming at with my hot take. There are obviously 4-letters that are great and would be best to use — such as Nuvo.

While I agree that the majority of reported sales are on the shorter end, I think we're only focusing on one corner of the room. I'd say a large percentage of sales are unaccounted for but the big thing here is:

Many people scoop up a brand with all intentions to bring it to fruit. 90%+ of businesses fail within the first 2 years. In today's age, branding can be a huge decider on failing and staying afloat.

In my years of identity and branding, I've seen many oddly branded (cool on paper/concept) companies sink to the bottom while simple and clearly branded companies skyrocket.

TLDR; Big dreams don't equate to big things.

 

Thanks for the explanation Randolph...i have a funny story along those lines. Ever hear of Agile?....i'm guessing you have, but when I asked an executive friend of mine who works at Anthem BC/BS if he were ever to leave Anthem and cut out on his own, what might he want to do? So he says something about "Agile", so immediately I think because he's such a good athlete, especially a golfer, that he wants to get into something to do with exercise, massage, chiropractic like in agility? Well duh! This guy looks like, acts like and even plays golf almost like Matt Kucher, the guy on the golf tour who wears and advertises Skechers. Regardless, I'm hoping I can fit him into some of my future plans for my domain business, and my new golf business 9Time™. Now that I think about it, i could probably use a full-stack engineer I could trust, and you sound trustworthy to me

 

Yeh exactly. It's like impulse buying vs well thought-out planning. You gotta look beyond the first year or two, and think sustainability. Sure the name might seem "cool" and may catch on for a bit, but what about a LASTING impression?

Consistency breeds trust (does not apply to email spammers, used car salesmen and telemarketers), and most simple and clear branded companies have a solid product to back them. Not these fads that come and go, dreams shattered. You have to think, just because YOU love the name, doesn't mean anyone else will. Wear the shoes and glasses of your target audience.

 

Ha! I'm familiar with Agile and I have this same problem, only backwards. I'm so consumed with math, data, infrastructure that I always think people are talking about it. I have to step back and remember I'm outside the Matrix.

I mostly audit and consult security and infrastructure these days but send me a project overview as it comes and I'll see how I can help.

You nailed it.

 

Ben...i know we met somewhere along the way because I remember you being from the Hammer, and I remember your website, Genuine.Domains. You may recall, I've met some of the greatest people from Canada (Bob Hawkes from Victoria being the best), but with a few exceptions, Canadians are far more accommodating than Americans. Thanks for chiming in, and if you or any of the other Canadian domainers are listening I'd trust any of you to try and sell SavorCanada.com for me, and I would say take for yourself any commission up to 40% of what it sells for. SavourCanada.com would be better, but I don't think SavorCanada is too bad.

On another note, some (not me) take domaining way to seriously. Just for fun I'm looking to buy WordSmush.com as soon as i disconnect. And please...stop sending all that cold air down to Virginia Beach where we should still be wearing shorts Thanks

 

Six months ago?!
Don't rely on your rep to list names.
Go to GoDaddy control center.
Select all your domains, 1000, it's one button.
Click monetize, click domain listing service by afternic.
Put a BIN on your names, all of them, $1500 on 900 names. Floor price, $1000.
The 100 remaining are your beloved domains, don't price them if you want, remove them from that list (clickable button).
Even if $1500 sounds low, do it. The goal is to learn. Leave it for a couple of months.
Once you submit, it will automatically list them in your afternic account. Activate fast transfer through the emails you will get.
Because you have so many nice sounding names, you might sell a couple, who knows.
Then in a couple of months you can increase the price to something else like $2500 or $5000 and see.
You learn.
You can use the same control center for bulk editing like pointing nameservers to ns3 & ns4.afternic.com if you want brokers to handle leads, or dan/epik make offer if you want to talk to buyers.
I'd do half BIN afternic lander, half make offer dan/epik lander.
500 domains in each category is enough for you to learn.

 

Baloney,

No probs (me chiming in), and we have chatted in the past. But, if I may: turning every response from fellow NP'rs into a sales pitch just sours the whole deal.

Other than that, keep on, keeping on!

- Hots

 

Thanks bro for checking out my website, also the website name is GoDomaining.com, please see if you could edit it at your reply post (you made a typo!)

I believe everyone makes mistakes in selecting the right domain names and its cool to admit that it takes years to be perfect in Domain Names, actually in the long run its really both the stats and your gut feeling that play together.

By the way, BigThinkMedia doesn't look bad, considering the competition in this niche, lol.

 

You're right...too late for me to edit my typo, but I was able to get to your site fine from you link. Your comment about "new niches" is spot on. Take BigThink for example, there are all sorts of good domains that can use BigThinkxxxx, and ironically some similar domains can be created using ThinkBigxxxxx. I have about 30 on my list that will make excellent names for my BigThink portfolio. I'm also working on a portfolio for BoGo names , and it' amazing some of the BoGo names that are/were available like BoGoPizza.com....for those who don't know, BoGo stands for "Buy One Get One". I may pm you with some samples of what I'm finding.

Thanks

 

How can you gain exposure without online presence?
Setting up online presence takes hours, not days nor years.
You can PM if this is an issue.
First things first.

 

Josytal...it's happening as we speak. I just got off the phone with my rep from GD who is embarrassed, as well he should be I know this should have been done a while ago, but better late than never. In the interim, I've been gaining all sorts of knowledge about this industry and my portfolio of domains has been improving incrementally Thanks for your concern.

 

Well, I have checked and it seems that DomainGourmet is now under development, and looks pretty nice to me

Rich, keeping fingers crossed to see a nice domain market there soon, and as others told, landers for each domain are really essential. Or, if yo do not like landers, just redirect your domain names to DomainGourmet (I do that with some of mine names for my marketplace, particularly if there is larger organic monthly traffic).

GL!

 

@ThatNameGuy - Rich, I'm still hoping you'll be able to address my previous question on sales strategy regarding SavorManhattan:

 

Marek...unfortunately the young man who was developing the site for me had to stop and pay attention to his catering business in Joburg, SA. I'd agreed to pay him a commission 30% of all sales made and make him a 30% partner in my business once we started making sales. I think he just spent maybe a few days doing what you see, and it's less than 50% complete as far as I can tell. For what it's worth he said he can start up again in January, but he knew I probably couldn't wait on him

He also wanted to develop a couple of my ideas, especially GourmetOlympics.com that has global appeal. Can you imagine a global cuisine competition? With him being in the catering business, this would have been right up his alley.

As for my domains and landers...supposedly I kicked GD hard enough in the ass, they'll start paying more attention to me. I'm getting to be know in the domain industry, and anyone in their right mind doesn't want to be screwing with me. Make sense?

Thanks again Marek, and I'd luv to visit you in Prague some day.

 

Joe..........i wasn't going to address your question until I saw where my good buddy Brad liked your post. First, i've never claimed to have ALL the answers, but I do understand a little about sales and marketing (especially "outbound" sales), and there's no single approach I might take to sell the domain SavorManhattan.com that's considered "Intellectual Property" btw. Now you can debate that until the cows come home Joe, but when I refer to domains as being intellectual property to "end users" it automatically adds credibility to the sale. Moving on...regardless of what you think of the word "Savor" or "Savour" I think it's good, and my research bears that out. Just look at the different definitions for Savor/Savour from around the world and you may understand

I guess SavorManhattan could be considered a Geo domain that can target anyone of a number of industries in NY....maybe the publishing industry like I've already mentioned, or possibly the gourmet restaurant industries or culinary schools in NY of which there are many. Last i checked, NYC and Paris have some of the very best restaurants in the world, and these are the type of people who can relate to the word "Savor", unlike the common blue collar worker eating BBQ or hot dogs in Texas. Please Texas...don't be offended, but Texas isn't Paris

On another note, since I have a bunch of "Savor" domains, they can be marketed to a larger market like the National Restaurant Association or the National Publishing Association. The opportunities are endless when you think about it, and I intend to disprove the theory that "out bound" domain sales doesn't work....just give me a little time

 

Damn, dude! You're cornering the market on Savor names. I love it!

 

Thanks for the insights, Rich! I'm interested to learn more about this part of your post specifically:

If I were doing research on the keyword "savor" I'd probably use NameBio and Google as my main resources.

NameBio didn't show very promising results, since the only notable sales in the past couple years were:

• Savor.co for $11K
• Savorful.com for $1,144

Based on that there doesn't seem to be much demand for the word "savor", but of course there could be many unreported sales not tracked by NameBio…

Google results were more promising, as I easily found businesses using these names:

• SavorStrategies.com
• SavorDigital.com
• SavorMetrics.com
• SavorSocial.com

So this tells me there's definitely some desirability in the keyword. I did also find, though, that all of those names were hand registered by the current owners. So I still haven't found much evidence to support businesses wanting to pay aftermarket prices for it. That would concern me, but it's good to see that "savor" is being used by some!

Is that the kind of research you did as well? Did you use additional sources? Would you mind sharing your findings?

So with this knowledge, and your desire to market the names directly to end users, you're planning to do the following:

And your expectation is that some of the businesses (or aspiring business owners) contacted through these organizations will see the value in SavorManhattan that you see, and will want to buy it from you to either promote their existing business or to brand a new venture?

It's an interesting idea. Are you concerned that these organizations won't want to disseminate solicitous information of this nature to their members?

 

I knew it would be a total waste of my time attempting to answer any of your question...lets just leave it at this....I don't have a clue as to what I'm doing, and you're the Canadian Domain King

 

Negative 5 points today for @ThatNameGuy.

WOW, you have gotten worse & sounding a bit angry, at least before you were adding NO value - going negative is a new "low" for you.

 

I appreciate the compliment, Rich, but I'm far from that! I have loads to learn about buying and selling names with consistent success. It's why I love getting the chance to have these discussions on here.

Apologies if you took offense to any of my post. I was honestly just trying to talk through my thought process with you. Right or wrong, those are the actions I would take if I were considering buying some names with the word "savor" in them.

I know you don't agree with "traditional" methods used by a lot of domain investors, though, so I was just hoping to get some more insight on how your thought process works, and on the information you gathered to convince you that "savor" is a strong keyword that will be desired by end users.

 

Just one more thing Joe....i'm known to be a pretty good judge of character, and while we've never met personally, I know for sure we could never work together, and there's something about you that I just don't trust. You've shown your colors to me, and I don't like what I see/read