First of all .. because I know you're going to do like you always do and accuse me of "stalking" you .. let me just quote something I wrote months ago that specifically shows I already thought what you're currently doing is ridiculous and very bad domaining strategy (what a surprise for the 20th time).
That being said .. not sure if I was clear, but I like Epik as a brand .. as I mentioned above, I don't mind single words with alternate spellings .. what I don't like is two-word brands where one is altered (unless it's a very fun creative play on words).
So Epik = good
But Epik Search = not so much .. Epic Search would be ok
So now that that is out of the way .. again because of your consistent rude and obnoxious behaviour to myself, others and the entire domain community in general, I won't hold back simply state the fact that yet again you're very colossally wrong here. Not just because the domains you've mentioned here are horrible brands .. but also because there are serious legal issues as well.
If I were to start a bank tomorrow, chances are I'd name it EpikBank over EpicBank...
LOL LOL LMAO LOL LMAOROTF LOL ...
You really do hate us and want to kill us by making us laugh to death right?
*lmao x infinity*
You have an EPIC (and EPIK) failure to grasp even the very basics of branding and marketing. What you wrote is probably the most ignorant, false, incorrect, {insert EVERY word not allowed on NamePros here} statement ever made on NamePros. And I'll go into detail to show why that's a fact and not just opinion ...
Just like "domainer" isn't a real word, either is epik
However, they both are found in the Urban Dictionary and Wiktionary, thus they're not made up words imho.
Just because a word is not in a dictionary doesn't mean it's not a word. "Domainer" most certainly is used by a significant number of people. Plus if you're going to check a dictionary to see if a word is in it, then maybe check the definition for "word" itself, which does not include the fact it needs to be in a dictionary:
Word: A single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.
On the other hand, "Epik" is a deliberate misspell of the word "Epic". As a *word* it had no meaning beyond the word it's a deliberate misspelling of. Whereas "domainer" does have a distinct meaning not found in any other word.
but two word domains have become my skill set that I've been told I'm pretty good at
Who told you that? lol .. Yes .. even I admit and have said several times that SOME of your domains are not garbage (yumnames is fine). But again, for the most part what you do is "fantasy business development" and NOT domaining (although admittedly it is here .. even if it's horribly bad domaining).
Now getting back to Epik vs. Epic. As a business person, would you rather own the domain EpicTravel at 20K or EpikTravel at 2K? In my mind it's a No Brainer
, but not so fast old time "domainers" might say?
Of course it's a no brainer .. but not in the way you've got it! EpicTravel.com is a very good domain .. while EpikTravel is a useless garbage domain from an domain investor's point of view.
IMPORTANT KEY POINT YOU SEEM OBLIVIOUS TO: Your very perspective is flawed from the start if you think the competition and comparison for "EpikTravel" is just "EpicTravel".
Because the actual alternatives to EpikTravel are the hundreds or even thousands of {AnyRealWord}Travel brands out there. Most of those domains available in the $1,000 to $10,000 range and each a significantly better brand than EpikTravel, thus making EpikTravel effectively worthless (as an investor) as there are too many competing better alternatives in the price points you need to be in in order to maintain a profitable portfolio.
Is EpikTravel "usable"? Yes .. even I will say it is .. it isn't a tragedy if someone uses it. It's clearly a very poor brand, and if someone bought it as an end user at $15 I'd tell them to invest more or search longer. But often that's not possible, and in that case EpikTravel is indeed "usable".
However .. to be very clear,
it's still a very bad investment as a domainer because in order for you maintain a break-even portfolio, you need to sell 1% of your portfolio at 100x markups or some equivalent like 2% at 50x or 0.5% at 200x. (Those numbers are for handreg's). There is absolutely no way EpikTravel is anything close to being of a high enough quality to make those numbers unless you're doing heavy outbound, in which case you couldn't even use those numbers because you'd need to factor in the significant cost of time, making profit an even bigger mathematical challenge depending on how much you value your time.
To put things in perspective, I just bought the domain EpikTravel.com from Epik.com for $8 and GD Values it at $1,343 while it Values EpicTravel at $6,455. And while those valuations sound way out of bounds, NameWorth values EpicTravel.com at $9,450 and EpikTravel.com at <less than $500. Furthermore, NameWorth values Epik.com at $64,000 and Epic.com at 10M, that's right ten million dollars
Your continual references to automated valuation tools to try to justify your points just continues to prove how completely clueless you are about the true investment value of domains. Automated valuations aren't that bad for the single words and a few other sub-set of domains, but they are virtually completely irrelevant for most 2 word brandables. To be clear $10M for Epic is a bit high, but it's not ridiculous; and $64k for Epik is also a bit high, but also not ridiculous.
It's important to note that because of the brand equity
@Rob Monster has built into "Epik", the
*brand* currently is worth significantly more within it's current industry .. but that's a result of the time, effort, resources, development and marketing Rob has invested into the brand. Meaning that the Epik "brand" (and domain) could actually be worth $640k to a domain related company, but it wouldn't even be worth $64k to food or transportation related start-ups for example.
Thanks for your reply, but is it 10X better or 20K better?
YES! Any Epic{word} brand is actually going to be worth
vastly more than 10x Epik{word} .. probably more in the range of 50x to 200x.
Epic is better because it passes the radio test. It's the default spelling. You have to specify the "k" every time in spoken form.
Exactly .. you'd think this should be obvious to anyone. The only thing I disagree with this statement is that you didn't put "vastly better" instead of just "better"! lol
How about Citi Bank or Commercia Bank or my hometown bank, Towne Bank? Were they "terrible" ideas too?
Of course these are horrible brands. That being said, there are many ways in which companies can overcome bad branding. Namely a significant marketing budget or smart viral tactics. Then there are even cases where a brand doesn't even matter; most corner stores are a good example of that, although that's changing a bit with the advent of online ordering for deliveries. Also when there is a product that fills a significant market need, then people will go to it despite the brand.
That's why we all cringe each and every time you constantly vainly brag and boast about all the businesses you apparently named 40 years ago. Branding pre and post Internet world are two VERY different things. More importantly, branding your friends businesses is NOT AT ALL the same thing as building a profitable domain portfolio. Coming up with names for businesses is much much easier than being a long-term profitable domainer.
Are you only purchasing EpikTravel.com, based on the efforts of Epik.com? Now for a company to brand as EpikTravel.com, they would realize they would lose a lot of business to EpicTravel.com, and would need to own both in order to gain traction, and if they didn't they were going to be spending their marketing dollars elsewhere.
It's not just fighting a huge uphill battle to be distinctive from the "Epic" version. But beyond that, if Epic{word} actually does exist as a company, then for every such domain someone registered with Epik{word}, they are also infringing on their trademark as EpikSomething is very certainly and clearly "confusingly similar" to EpicSomething. They would and indeed
should lose the UDRP or other legal actions taken against them every time in the case where the second word is industry defining like Travel or Mortgages (if those "epic" companies already exist).
I'm aware of that @MapleDots...EpikNames is Robs if he wants it. I guess since I reg'd it at Epik he could probably take it and hold me hostage
For someone who seems to keen to trademark everything, as well as improperly and overly use the "TM" symbol, you ironically don't have much clue of how trademarks actually work.
@Rob Monster actually isn't allowed to hold any of your domains hostage. Not only that, but he has enough integrity to not just illegally take it like that! If one of your domains infringes on a trademark, then the trademark owner would file a UDRP or other form of legal action against you, and in turn
@epik would be given a legal mandate to freeze your domain and then turn it over to the trademark holder in the likely case you lose the legal action.
And forget any legal and trademark issues .. the fact you registered EpikNames at Epik simply shows an outright complete lack of class. Maybe you did it without realising what you did, but that just goes to prove how brash and how little thought and analysis you put into your domain acquisitions.
Even worse is your twisted usage of the word hostage and trying to pin it on Rob .. when in fact IT IS YOU who has taken HIS trademark hostage!
lol .. I Actually have a ton of Name, Domain, Brand domains, but I actually chose NameCult specifically because I didn't want to be the cats meow. I only started it because my daily lists were getting too long to fit here at NamePros. But as strange as it sounds, the name I chose wasn't too important because the people who visit come because (like I mentioned above) I have a product that filled a market void in being a mostly manually curated list of about 400-500 domains at auction every day and 1000+ at closeout. As much as I'd love for the non-domainer world to use my daily lists, it's safe to say that not only are they not my audience, but that if indeed I was targeting end-users, it would actually hurt the industry if they started buying expired domains at wholesale instead of buying our retail priced domains.
I have to admit I wasn't even a huge fan of the name at the start, as I have significantly better domains in the domain niche. I'll be the first to say it's not a great name, but it doesn't matter.
That being said, it has kinda grown on me .. and I do enjoy the irony that both cults and domains are similar in that they can be mesmerising and addictive! lol
That being said, I am thinking about some potential changes!
