discuss World of brand-ables: how do you invest?

[Arpit131]

I have been studying the way brand-ables work but haven't been able to spot a trend or some kind of parameters to go for and invest in brandable names.

There are certain doubts that may help solve the queries:

1) Is brandable only good for .COM or .CO/other extension is also good?
2) What parameters do you look at before investing in them?
3) How do you price the brandable names? Is it random?
4) Out of a portfolio that you consider decent, how many can you expect to sell out of 100 in a year?

Brandables seem to be giving a good return considering the price point that they usually go for. However, it is not evident from the sale if the seller had a big portfolio out of which they sold 1/2 or a small quality portfolio?

Any insight would be of great help.

 

[NYJimbo]

Seems a lot of people are dumping brandables here for almost reg fee's. Also BB publishes tons of "brandables" that are just garbage noise-names. Personally I would never waste time with a brandable that was not a .com, if a company is going to invest in a domain name, it better have "The King" or it just looks cheap.

 

[xynames]

Ramdom brandables are not selling well these days. One is as good as another is the problem. If the word in the brandable has some sort of exact match for whatever business is being considered, that can be a different story.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Thanks for the important question, @Arpit131! I do not understand the brandable market much, and I feel it is among the more speculative areas of domain investing and the most difficult to predict. It seems you either get mid $$$$ (or nearly that) or nothing. It is lucrative for some I am sure. My (probably not very authoritative or helpful) thoughts re your questions:

1. I think there is a pretty strong .com emphasis. A few brandables in .co and .io sell but very few. Very occasionally I think a few of the ngTLD will be branded, but most of the brandable marketplaces don't even list ngTLDs.
2. Stating the obvious, the best brandables are speakable, memorable, give a positive emotional feeling, have a hint of being descriptive, and feel modern. I think short adds value, but the difference between say 5 and 9 letters might not be as much as we think.
3. As well as made up word brandables, of course there is a lot of branding these days happening on shapes, colours, foods, math, and other generic words. I find it hard to predict what will dominate even in two years.

I'm reading a book on branding right now, so maybe I will have a better answer in a week or two!

 

[BaileyUK]

I'm reading a book on branding right now, so maybe I will have a better answer in a week or two!

I'm sure you have picked a good book and it will give you some insight into the world of Branding. It is not everyone's cup-of-tea purely because 95% of your time will be seen as being wasted. It does require creativity but above all it requires knowing what Doesn't work, so you can minimize that wasted time.

I've always been grateful that it is outside of most domainers scope. There is some great sales listed in the ongoing sales thread here on namepros. It helps to have a concept in mind and then work from there, also better to work with A4 paper as your ideas develop - then work with the laptop to explore availability/tm's etc.

Rule-out ever settling for a close match, or second best to that idea.(those are what waste your registration/renewal fees) Your buyers will come If your ahead of the market on concepts etc rather than current trends - which will be over explored already

 

[Keith DeBoer]

Domainer, Doron Vermaat, has developed, what I believe is the only website focused primarily on brandable domaining.

In my humble opinion (I'm a contributing writer) it is a treasure trove of information about that market segment and I highly recommend it: https://dngeek.com/

 

[Arpit131]

Seems a lot of people are dumping brandables here for almost reg fee's. Also BB publishes tons of "brandables" that are just garbage noise-names. Personally I would never waste time with a brandable that was not a .com, if a company is going to invest in a domain name, it better have "The King" or it just looks cheap.

Point noted.

Ramdom brandables are not selling well these days. One is as good as another is the problem. If the word in the brandable has some sort of exact match for whatever business is being considered, that can be a different story.

Any other distinction? How about made up terms that sound good? Do they have value?
Or is it just like one among many case?

 

[Arpit131]

Domainer, Doron Vermaat, has developed, what I believe is the only website focused primarily on brandable domaining.

In my humble opinion (I'm a contributing writer) it is a treasure trove of information about that market segment and I highly recommend it: https://dngeek.com/

Absolutely. DNGeek is the bible of brandables. However, it seems to be very difficult judging a good brandable and segregating it from a bad or a not so good one.

 

[xynames]

I believe there was a period when made up (random) brandables, and misspelled words were selling well. I do not believe that has been the case for a little while now.

The issue as far as made up words is that one may be as good as another, and while somehow that was overlooked and people were buying those well at some point in the past, nowadays this has come home to be a real problem.

I have sold some misspelled domain names lately for good prices, and received good offers on many of them that I turned down because I wanted more, but I believe that the offers and closed sales were because the keyword within the domain had something to do with the business that was interested.

As far as completely random made up word domains...never touch the stuff, so my opinion on these is not going to vacillate.

 

[xynames]

I have sold some misspelled domain names lately for good prices, and received good offers on many of them that I turned down because I wanted more, but I believe that the offers and closed sales were because the keyword within the domain had something to do with the business that was interested..

I assume that yesterday's sale (not mine):
nutrogen.com $2,027 GoDaddy
is an example of this.