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by on October 1, 2014 Leave a Comment

Interesting Domain Name of the Day 10-1-2014

Domain Name of the Day

Today’s first interesting domain name is:

Indeed.com

Brandable Domain Name for Job site

Brandable Domain Name

I had the TV on while I was cooking last night… or opening up the takeout, however you want to say it and I noticed this ad for a job site called Indeed.com.

Jobs/employment/recruitment type sites have always been popular on the internet and you used to see a lot of them advertising like crazy all over the place back when the bubble was in full swing and everyone was trying to get their site attention and job placement ads.

Over time those sites consolidated or went out of business, but it is still a huge market for domain names, city names, location specific or niche job specific sites so I was surprised to see Indeed.com advertising on primetime tv with a brandable domain.  In my recent discussion on brandables for domain names I focus more on the positives associated to them, but this warrants a bit more discussion.

Single Word Brandable DomainI see where they are going with Indeed because it is a simple search interface that you could easily glance at and mistake for Google’s interface. Clean and simple which I like.

There are two main points I want to [Read more…]

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by on September 29, 2014 1 Comment

Interesting Domain Name of the Day 09-29-14

Domain Name of the Day

Today’s first interesting domain name is:

Woot.com

4L Domain Name

4L Domain Names

I recently moved and I got some boxes from friends and one of those boxes is this picture and corresponding Domain Name.  IMO it is a very cool domain for a lot more reasons than the product domain discussion.

You may have heard of Woot.com.  They’ve been around on the internet selling stuff since 2004.  Were you even using the internet to buy stuff in 2004?  Probably not.

Woot has an interesting background with a cool business model you can check out on their wikipedia entry – it really is interesting if you have a few minutes to check it out.

Let’s get right to the point with this great domain.

Sometimes you can’t tell if a domain is great or not when you first see it… not in this case because it is excellent in so many ways.

Brandable Domains

This is one of the first type of domains people end up buying for investment.  Brandable domains such as Amazon or Google are perfect examples. Brandables might be words used in a different context or they may just be made up words. Most people can’t afford short one word .com’s so they run across made up words that sound cool to them.

Be very careful buying the made up version of brandables.  Trust me, they are VERY hard to sell and you will very likely never sell them.

In Woot’s case, the word had been around especially on the internet in gaming and used in forums extensively before it became their brand.

It is used as a term of excitement or happiness and is popular with gamers and long time internet users… exactly the type of people who buy stuff online early on the internet.

In addition to the positive connotations of the word, it is short.  4 Letter words, on the internet at least, are [Read more…]

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by on September 27, 2014 1 Comment

Interesting Domain Name of the Day 09-27-14

Domain Name of the Day

Today’s first interesting domain name is:

SafetyGloves.com

Exact Match Domains

Exact Match domain

Ok, so SafetyGloves isn’t as cool as yesterday’s interesting domain name, but for the people selling Safety Gloves it couldn’t be any better.

Why should you care about this if you are a domainer or website creator using domains? Easy.

Exact Match Domains

This is one of the first terms most people in domains learn – exact match domains or EMD’s.

The exact match comes from how people browse the internet.

You have some people who type into the url exactly what they are looking for and if you are looking for Safety Gloves you would hit this site first.

Most people will use a search engine like google, but they will search for the exact term “safety gloves” and even though Google has put less emphasis on their rankings search results for EMD’s, it still plays an important factor.

You might say the site and domain… Fit like a glove.  Pardon the pun, it made me smile when I thought about it so I had to include it. :)Exact Match Domain in Advertising

Most people will never [Read more…]

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by on September 26, 2014 1 Comment

Interesting Domain Name of the Day 09-26-14

Today I thought I would start a new series called IDN.

So what is an IDN?

Well, if you are native non-English speaking or are a domain investor you might know that “IDN” is usually referred to in the context of Internationalized Domain Names. Basically web addresses with non-standard ASCII keyboard characters for us English only web surfers.

It really doesn’t matter, because my IDN’s are “Interesting Domain Names” of the day.

My site, my rules.

These names will be one of two types:

  1. Names that I see on TV, adverts on roadways/vehicles/tv/radio, or on actual businesses.
  2. Names that I see for sale or on the drop lists or sales lists I receive

They will usually be good which is why I noticed them, but occasionally I will notice one because it is horrendously bad.  I will try to offer commentary on why they are good or bad just to get them out of my head and start consolidating notes on why Domain Names are good or not – thus why they have value.

Domain Name of the Day

Today’s first interesting domain name is:

Interesting Domain Name Enterprise.com

Interesting Domain Name: Enterprise.com

Enterprise.com

Most everyone in the U.S. will recognize Enterprise as the company who rents cars with a unique twist – “We’ll pick you up!”

We use Enterprise for our corporate car rentals and I saw this Commercial Truck rental sporting the same brand.

Domain Name Pros:

  • Aside from being the exact match for their corporate brand, the word Enterprise sparks all kinds of positive connotations in English.
    • it means a company in one definition
    • it means a project in another definition
    • and another it means taking action in difficult projects
  • It is a common one word dictionary domain name. Huge plus.
  • 10 letters – not bad
  • Fairly easy to spell
  • Very common

[Read more…]

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by on September 25, 2014 Leave a Comment

A little personal development never hurt anyone

Last post I was in the process of buying some new domains in the new extensions – that has been a while and I am very happy with what I picked up.  I haven’t flipped or developed them yet, but that is coming soon.

In the meantime, I stopped buying until I can prove this method out by selling some and I also figure I can pick up more great names in the upcoming extensions being released soon as well as even better names that get dropped when those big renewal fees come rolling around soon!

So what have I been up to?

Personal development.

No, not the losing weight, improving memory, learning a new language, or ying/yang type personal development.  I am talking about website development.

I remember now what drew me to the web way back in the day – it was [Read more…]

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by on February 19, 2014 2 Comments

New Domain Extension Fan or Foe?

The new GTLDs are here!

How are you approaching the tidal wave of new GTLDs?

New GTLD Domain NamesAre you watching from the sideline to see how it plays out?  Do you think they are a Gold Mine or a river full of Fool’s Gold?

Are you buying all you can get?  Or would you not buy one of those domains for any amount of money?

My approach – mimicking the King (the Domain King)

Personally, I am being very selective and buying only what I can on general availability release.  There are a couple I might be tempted to purchase in the pre-registration phases, but at least I have some time to see how these early releases pan out.

If I end up selling a few of the ones I’ve picked up, I will probably roll that money [Read more…]

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by on January 29, 2014 Leave a Comment

Domain-Pocalypse

Snowpocalypse

Riding home on a gator after the snowpocalypse.

Survived the Snowpocalypse here in the South… Got home late, but safe and sound.  Can’t sleep so I thought I would get a few random domain name thoughts out of my head to see if that helps…

  1. Domain Shane isn’t human.  He says he has a full time “real business”, a kid/family, runs ridiculous distances, scans/invests in the stock market, etc.  AND he has a great domain business that he works on only 2 hours a day including blogging, scanning lists of domains like the “secrets” one on this list that is still pissing me off that I missed…  I don’t buy it.  I have to get to Namescon next year and get his secrets after the tables and drinks kick in… Oh yeah.
  2. Secrets on Flippa.  That portfolio of names Shane mentioned that was on Flippa.com closed at $1150.  $1150 for 50 names is what, $23 each and even if they are renewing soon that puts your average price around [Read more…]
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by on January 23, 2014 2 Comments

DomainSherpa.com Brandable domains

The latest domain name review from Domain Sherpa is out.  After writing the article about the Domain Name Sherpas last week, I saw Michael was running a themed domain review this week.

Michael Cyger

Michael Cyger
aka Domain Sherpa

 

Taking the plunge with Themed Domain Names

The topic?  “Really cool brandables”  These are domains that can easily be branded, but the opinions on what is really cool varies significantly so if you don’t know what they are, I suggest starting with this definition and checking out Shane’s article on why domains are irrelevant (not!) and Morgan’s assessment.  Also, if you are planning on buying some to resell, hold, etc do yourself a favor and carefully read Elliot’s experience – it may save you some time and money.

I hesitated to submit a name because it could easily get trashed… Knowing that I had a couple of domains that might fit the brandable description and trying to really dive in and learn to be a “REAL” domainer this year, I decided I had to submit a name!

Before I reveal which name is mine, go take a look at the list of names that were submitted and think about which ones you like (you have to scroll down to “Reader Submitted Domain Names”.)  I wanted to do that before I watched the review, but I was too excited – like a kid on Christmas morning.

So do I get a lump of coal or a diamond in the rough?

 

My brandable domain name

I will say this, there are over 100 domains in the list and I only really liked or understood the brandability of about 15 of them.

My favorites from other submissions, in no particular order, are PinkBear.com, Jumbrellas.com, and [Read more…]

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by on January 20, 2014 1 Comment

Great domain name sales opportunity

For anyone who knows me or follows this blog for any length of time, you know I love podcasts.  What does that have to do with Domain Name Sales?  Plenty!

Domain name evaluation and appraisals

 

Michael Cyger

Michael Cyger
aka Domain Sherpa

Michael Cyger over at DomainSherpa.com also produces a podcast and one thing he has been doing for a while now is Domain Name Portfolio Reviews.  He takes 50 names from two regular Joe Domainers and has a panel of 4 experts he calls Sherpas review the names.

The Sherpas provide honest (brutally honest, which I like) feedback, and possibly pricing recommendations and appraisals.  Great stuff.  They have even made real time offers for names they love!

Learning from other domain owners

Submitting your portfolio to DomainSherpa isn’t for the faint of heart because most of the time the portfolio of names get trashed with the exception of a few names – maybe 5 out of 50 are keepers – MAYBE.  You would have to be open and willing to truly listen if it was your portfolio.  I have submitted my 50 a while back and if it ever does get reviewed it will get thrashed – I plan to do a post where I try to use what I’ve learned listening to them to review my own portfolio… I will update this post if I do my own review – would be fun to do that before they did and compare results if it were to happen :)

The great thing is that you get to see what other people submit – you have to assume it is their best stuff knowing what is going to happen.  Then you get to hear what the Sherpas have to say about the names.  You can really learn a lot about the way truly successful domain name entrepreneurs think about domain names and their business.

Like most things with a subjective factor, sometimes a couple of the sherpas like names while others hate them.  Sometimes that has to do with the way each Sherpa does business – if they specialize in brandables they might like something that another who specializes in product domains or geo domains doesn’t, but in general they like most of the same names.

Domain name themes

A more recent variation of the portfolio review are domain name themes.  Instead of 50 names from two domainers, Michael or one of the Sherpas will select a specific topic or theme for the next review.  The best thing is anyone can submit one domain name within that niche and [Read more…]

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