information The NEW 21st Century Paradigm for Domaining

[Name Trader]

Today it's all multi-level, multi-product/services generic branding, and as I like to say, try selling someone hosting from Diapers.com.

Could you please expand on what you mean by this? What should we forget about the old paradigm and what do we have to learn to be successful in this new paradigm.

 

[PeakDots]

The theme of “tire” is actually a good case study for this style of keyword + extension brandable name.

I can remember Michael Cyger of DNacademy recommending that before investing you should think about who would actually buy it, great advice. I often make the mistake of not following this principle.

There are some negatives against this type of tire domain investment:

1. I check sales a lot and don’t remember ever seeing any tire domains sold at least lately, but too lazy to do a proper check. Before buying a narrow name like this, you should have a good look on DNjournal and NameBio and try to see if any domains have sold in the last year or so.

2. Where I live, I don’t remember ever seeing a new tire shop open up. Nothing ever changes, just the same old national franchise tire stores just keep on going. Not a growing or changing industry. So nobody much needs a new domain.

3. “Tire” is spelled “tyre” in several countries.

4. You don’t buy tires online - who fits their own tires? Another negative.

So all in all, I don’t think a tire domain is likely to be a good investment, better to look for much more generic domains. But you have to make your own judgement.

I hear what you are saying.
I just used tire as an example because tireworld was listed for sale at a big cost and tirecarnival at reg fee.
I don't have any "tire" domains at all.

TireRack .com is a site and I did purchase tires from there. Got my brother in law to put them on. I'm sure the smaller tire/service stations do order there inventory from online distributors imo.

ShoeCarnival made something out of the name so it was just an example using Carnival as a company did brand with this. I do agree it would not be the best suffix to use.

I just try thinking of some of the brands that are established.
FamilyDollar
DollarGeneral
BurgerKing
SamsClub

I do agree the closer you get to the bottom to more risky it is to invest in and you are just hoping one day a company will want to call themselves that name.

Thank you for your valuable feedback.

 

[DomainRecap]

What I have seen with some of my two-word .Com domains registered years ago is that yes eventually someone launches on the .net or some Cctld or a hyphenated version or they add a third word or a number - anything to avoid the aftermarket -even though relatively speaking the cost of the domain would be trivial compared to other costs of doing business.

The worst part about this is that it essentially cannibalizes your ability to sell the .COM to someone else in even a nearby industry. Brand TMs rule within business areas, no matter the extension, and the back-dating only works for the original registrant. Plus, no one wants to be second.

And all this "you'll lose traffic to the .COM' is so old school it makes me laugh every time I hear it, and assuming you are not a billion-dollar multinational (in which case you would have already bought the .COM right?), this is hardly a concern for a small to medium-sized business in 2018.

 

[DomainRecap]

But less obvious, they are also future proof. If you own Diapers dot com that’s great for selling diapers, but if you branch out to baby blankets, and you find that 80 per cent of your profits now come from baby blankets, you will be at a disadvantage in advertising against someone who owns BabyBlankets dot com.

Exactly, these old school EMDs like Diapers.com, Beer.com, Soap.com, etc. really paint you in as corner when you want to expand your business outside the small niche that your name allows.

Plus, you never know if something like Diapers are going to be a thing in 10-15 years - but then every toddler could be wearing CrapHuggers, a space age pantsuit that bio-degrades baby poop into methanol. Ooops, there go Diapers.com into the scrap heap.

 

[garptrader]

I recall someone say about five to six years ago who was a big name in the domain space advocating buying things like Blue-socks.net because it was an EMD which could rank easily given Google's exact-match preference. Then you could put up an affiliate or made-for-adsense site and make a lot of money. I disagreed with that logic and didn't follow the newbies over cliff when Google changed its search engine algorithm to no longer give ranking preference to exact-match domains.

 

[DomainRecap]

@stub
My favourite definition of a brandable domain is something like:

"It is a word (or two) that should be in the dictionary, but isn’t."

It also needs to pass the phonetics test, in that when verbally expressing the domain name, the recipient will automatically be able to spell it.

Like Expedia, you can spell that immediately with no issues and no confusion.

 

[DomainRecap]

Even generic keywords can be branded, Virgin.com is a good example.

But they're not selling virgins, and that's an important distinction.

 

[Name Trader]

Yeah, and Beer.com could be used by Beer & Sons Litigators.. and I'm sure they drink BEER after work.

They key is that any dictionary word or term can be used for anything, but the days of selling Diapers on Diapers.com are long, long over and resale prices are much lower because of this. Beer.com is certainly a valuable domain in 2018, but it's worth exponentially less than the $7 million it sold for.

Is this what you see happened to the iPets.com pricing and why it dropped 75% in 10 years? Or was that purely because of the "i"? Which is no longer desirable in 2018? Anything else, apart from "e" prefixes, which are no longer desirable in 2018?

 

[Premiums]

"e" prefix is an outdated..

 

[Name Trader]

"e" prefix is an outdated..

Sorry. My bad phrasing. I meant "e" was out

 

[Name Trader]

What has occurred to me so far.

a) We are not all branding for the next multi-billion dollar business. Just as an example. A plumber in a medium sized city in the US, probably wants "cityname"plumber(s).com not some brandable domain name. He probably would not register Apple.com (if available) for his business

b) Using a dictionary word for the dictionary word definition, is so 1990's. But as a brandable? Great.

c) Using first or last people's names make great brandables too.

d) Getting a great made up word(s) is a bit like shooting for the stars without much of a rocket. Difficult. No obvious potential sale (correct me if I'm wrong).

e) Single letter prefixes are so passe. What about suffixes? Single letters, abbreviations, or words?

f) Try to use any domain, creatively.

 

[Name Trader]

The worst part about this is that it essentially cannibalizes your ability to sell the .COM to someone else in even a nearby industry. Brand TMs rule within business areas, no matter the extension, and the back-dating only works for the original registrant. Plus, no one wants to be second.

And all this "you'll lose traffic to the .COM' is so old school it makes me laugh every time I hear it, and assuming you are not a billion-dollar multinational (in which case you would have already bought the .COM right?), this is hardly a concern for a small to medium-sized business in 2018.

So should we drop all our .net & .org names. Or just dump them cheaply?

 

[bluemeteor]

The worst part about this is that it essentially cannibalizes your ability to sell the .COM to someone else in even a nearby industry. Brand TMs rule within business areas, no matter the extension, and the back-dating only works for the original registrant. Plus, no one wants to be second.

And all this "you'll lose traffic to the .COM' is so old school it makes me laugh every time I hear it, and assuming you are not a billion-dollar multinational (in which case you would have already bought the .COM right?), this is hardly a concern for a small to medium-sized business in 2018.

But we still hoping someone from another country would buy it. Or that small business is too small to be noticed, so it wouldn't affect the next nearby industry buyer.

 

[bluemeteor]

Exactly, and that happens a lot with multiple smaller businesses operating on different extensions, but I've also seen a medium-to-large (and visible) business start operating off the .CO (or .NET/.ORG) and essentially kill the resale value for the .COM (other than hoping that same biz buys it later).

Big corp excludes big corp > big corp excludes small biz > small biz excludes big corp > small biz excludes small biz