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Hundreds / thousands of people on here, especially newbies, spending thousands of dollars investing in questionable gTLD's with hardly any track history on namebio, and desperate nonsensical crypto domains which will never find a buyer....
... That is is becoming EASY for people to find a handreg .com for their next web dev project.
Now please understand that this isn't a pop at gTLD's in general, or indeed crypto domains (regretting a few I let go in 2015 right now!). But rather just a general observation that you domainers are letting it slip a little bit.
Allow me to illustrate with my current two projects.
Case study 1: Documentary website
So I wanted to build a documentary website. First things first I need a domain, damn. Where can I find a decent domain? First step is always to hope you strike it lucky with a handreg of course, if that fails you start looking at prices on sedo and afternic.
It was easy, I picked up DocumentaryVine.com, it was a handreg. Loved that domain, so didn't need to start trawling through Sedo, which is good news But why was this available to register in the first place? Here are some developed sites with a similar name:
GodVine (Alexa 111k)
NewsVine (recently closed, internet institution acquired by mnsnbc)
ReadingVine (teaching software)
FileVine (cloud based legal software, $3.2m funding)
CollegeVine (college mentoring program)
GuideVine (Financial adviser directory)
There are a lot more.
Here are some publicly disclosed sales:
LearningVine.com ($3995)
TimeVine.com ($1028)
JewelVine ($2188)
WineVine ($3288)
SocialVine ($2500)
So tell me.... why was DocumentaryVine.com available? Documentaries is one of the largest subreddits, 12 million subscribers, I know for a fact that the second largest free documentary website gets around 3 million page views per month. This isn't a small niche.
Case study 2: Wallpaper website
Most of the hard work is done on the documentary site now, Alexa top 165k already and climbing daily... just have to keep adding content, could do with switching to https and serving content through a CDN at some stage... but I'm ready for my next project.
I'm a fan of 'evergreen' content rather than time limited content, I'm looking for passive income rather than a job.... wallpapers seems like a nice niche, once you've broken through the ridiculous amount of competition. I'm a patient man, I'm building for 5, 10, 15 years so I'll take that challenge.
So once again I need a domain. Ideally a handreg, but will pay if I have to. Admittedly this one was a lot more difficult to find a decent domain for....
I looked at prices of domains I liked.... WallpaperVine was priced at about $1300 unfortunately, outside of my budget. I was struggling, but eventually found.... WallpaperBoss.com
Here are some publicly disclosed sales:
WallpaperBase $3550
WallpaperFinder $1100
WallpaperForYou $1931
WallpaperTop $1205
WallpaperCentral $850
Ending in Boss....
HairBoss.com $2000
LifeBoss.com $5700
PaintBoss $1288
StockBoss $1500
DraftBoss $1400
PasswordBoss $3000
PocketBoss $1500
(etc, etc).
Now, you may counter me on that one and point out that wallpaper domains don't usually go for decent money. I'll accept that one, loads go for around $300, but this was actually a developed site for many years and has some excellent historic backlinks. I hand-regged the domain of a former authority site with some lovely high quality backlinks!
So many people putting faith in gTLD's and stuff like .co and .io.
Do you want to know what I turned down in order to register WallpaperBoss.com? I'll tell you..... I could have handregged DesktopWallpapers.io, and I could have handregged DesktopWallpaper.io to go with it.
And the phrase 'Desktop Wallpapers' gets a lot of monthly searches (100k to 1 million).
And you want to know why I didn't reg that? I didn't reg that because .com is king, and will always be the king, and its ludicrous when you see some of the stuff people are regging on a .io and a .co at huge reg fees and all sorts of other dot craps, when there are evidently still dot coms to be had.
Now I bet that instead of thinking "you know, he's right, I'm going to go and find myself a few .com gems" there will now be people go and register desktopwallpapers.io.
I don't blame them to be honest, that's a nice domain and one which actually works in that extension. If I could be bothered I'd do it myself and see if I could flip it, but I'm too busy (you can forward 10% commission to me if that works out for you).
But I think a lot of people spunking $30,$40, $50 taking a punt on some of these alternative gTLD's, probably in the mistaken belief that they have missed the boat when it comes to dot com and gambling on all sorts of rubbish are forgetting one basic principle....
K.I.S.S
Keep It Simple Stupid
Dot com is king and will always be king.
... That is is becoming EASY for people to find a handreg .com for their next web dev project.
Now please understand that this isn't a pop at gTLD's in general, or indeed crypto domains (regretting a few I let go in 2015 right now!). But rather just a general observation that you domainers are letting it slip a little bit.
Allow me to illustrate with my current two projects.
Case study 1: Documentary website
So I wanted to build a documentary website. First things first I need a domain, damn. Where can I find a decent domain? First step is always to hope you strike it lucky with a handreg of course, if that fails you start looking at prices on sedo and afternic.
It was easy, I picked up DocumentaryVine.com, it was a handreg. Loved that domain, so didn't need to start trawling through Sedo, which is good news But why was this available to register in the first place? Here are some developed sites with a similar name:
GodVine (Alexa 111k)
NewsVine (recently closed, internet institution acquired by mnsnbc)
ReadingVine (teaching software)
FileVine (cloud based legal software, $3.2m funding)
CollegeVine (college mentoring program)
GuideVine (Financial adviser directory)
There are a lot more.
Here are some publicly disclosed sales:
LearningVine.com ($3995)
TimeVine.com ($1028)
JewelVine ($2188)
WineVine ($3288)
SocialVine ($2500)
So tell me.... why was DocumentaryVine.com available? Documentaries is one of the largest subreddits, 12 million subscribers, I know for a fact that the second largest free documentary website gets around 3 million page views per month. This isn't a small niche.
Case study 2: Wallpaper website
Most of the hard work is done on the documentary site now, Alexa top 165k already and climbing daily... just have to keep adding content, could do with switching to https and serving content through a CDN at some stage... but I'm ready for my next project.
I'm a fan of 'evergreen' content rather than time limited content, I'm looking for passive income rather than a job.... wallpapers seems like a nice niche, once you've broken through the ridiculous amount of competition. I'm a patient man, I'm building for 5, 10, 15 years so I'll take that challenge.
So once again I need a domain. Ideally a handreg, but will pay if I have to. Admittedly this one was a lot more difficult to find a decent domain for....
I looked at prices of domains I liked.... WallpaperVine was priced at about $1300 unfortunately, outside of my budget. I was struggling, but eventually found.... WallpaperBoss.com
Here are some publicly disclosed sales:
WallpaperBase $3550
WallpaperFinder $1100
WallpaperForYou $1931
WallpaperTop $1205
WallpaperCentral $850
Ending in Boss....
HairBoss.com $2000
LifeBoss.com $5700
PaintBoss $1288
StockBoss $1500
DraftBoss $1400
PasswordBoss $3000
PocketBoss $1500
(etc, etc).
Now, you may counter me on that one and point out that wallpaper domains don't usually go for decent money. I'll accept that one, loads go for around $300, but this was actually a developed site for many years and has some excellent historic backlinks. I hand-regged the domain of a former authority site with some lovely high quality backlinks!
So many people putting faith in gTLD's and stuff like .co and .io.
Do you want to know what I turned down in order to register WallpaperBoss.com? I'll tell you..... I could have handregged DesktopWallpapers.io, and I could have handregged DesktopWallpaper.io to go with it.
And the phrase 'Desktop Wallpapers' gets a lot of monthly searches (100k to 1 million).
And you want to know why I didn't reg that? I didn't reg that because .com is king, and will always be the king, and its ludicrous when you see some of the stuff people are regging on a .io and a .co at huge reg fees and all sorts of other dot craps, when there are evidently still dot coms to be had.
Now I bet that instead of thinking "you know, he's right, I'm going to go and find myself a few .com gems" there will now be people go and register desktopwallpapers.io.
I don't blame them to be honest, that's a nice domain and one which actually works in that extension. If I could be bothered I'd do it myself and see if I could flip it, but I'm too busy (you can forward 10% commission to me if that works out for you).
But I think a lot of people spunking $30,$40, $50 taking a punt on some of these alternative gTLD's, probably in the mistaken belief that they have missed the boat when it comes to dot com and gambling on all sorts of rubbish are forgetting one basic principle....
K.I.S.S
Keep It Simple Stupid
Dot com is king and will always be king.
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