The real fun of Brandable domains

[Bailey]

Amazing what is missing in some well thought out domain investment strategies.

What is it that is really hard to understand ?? about domain buyers (outside of the generic term waterfall)

 

[doodlebug]

I'm happy to do both but the only brandables I will bother with are ones where I can get both the .co.uk and .com

 

[Bailey]

I'm happy to do both but the only brandables I will bother with are ones where I can get both the .co.uk and .com

Personally, experience has shown me that that to be the wrong strategy.

com market first if available - then and if only a top muti-used term do i consider the .co.uk - which I 'm happy I hold plenty of, without the .com.

For all the established value of generic terms, most of us seem to be able to put or finger on the button of value to these terms. But, there is a multitude of ways of getting a generic term across (I accept the very best is indeed the Very best)

However the buyer of a good marketable/brandable domain has his eye on just one target - the domain he wants. Of course he will run away from excessive pricing, But the reality is that a catchy/relevant word pairing does get a good few enquiries - more so than I have ever encountered on the generics that are hold.

 

[Aegean]

Well I have sold some 16 brandable domains within the last year, all of which have both the .com and .uk, which is very appealing to a commercial business in the UK. Even my old employers generally wouldn't buy a domain unless they could acquire both.

 

[doodlebug]

Conflicting but interesting points and both from people with actual experience, Aegean do you mind shedding some light on how much you get for these sets ?

Thanks

 

[Aegean]

Well, it does depend on the domain name of course. Most of the domains I have sold have been between 2000GBP and 5000GBP (for both).

The bottom line for me is that whilst exact match and keyword domains are fine, I own a number of them myself, companies doing any reasonable degree of business are interested in branding and promoting the company brand. Almost every medium-large business is branded and the key to success is the association between your brand and your product line. Certain exceptions, like my old employers who bought diy.com , are fine, but generally the emphasis is on branding, so when some of these larger firms want to set up smaller firms for whatever reason, they go for individual branding, not keyword domains.

Its also worth remembering most of the companies I have dealt with arn't relying purely on SERPS for business, they almost certainly have a full marketing budget, of which internet marketing is only one part.

 

[aZooZa]

If the client is UK-based, and you are hand-regging brandables (there are plenty to be had), it would be sheer lunacy not to reg the .com as well as the .co.uk - my 2p.

 

[grantw]

However the buyer of a good marketable/brandable domain has his eye on just one target - the domain he wants. Of course he will run away from excessive pricing, But the reality is that a catchy/relevant word pairing does get a good few enquiries - more so than I have ever encountered on the generics that are hold.

Completely agree. I'd estimate 75%-85% of my sales over the past five years have been brandables rather than generics.

Grant

 

[doodlebug]

I'm tempted to chuck generics out and only do brandables, it won't happen though but I do have some really good .com and .co.uk matching brandables on my available list, I think I will start regging them and give generic registrations a rest for a while.

I have about 30 nice sets to reg so would cost about £450 to reg

 

[Edwin]

Is anyone who is posting about successful brandable sales willing to post ANY brandable domain name that sold? You don't have to post prices, of course. I'm just struggling to understand what you mean by brandable since there are a quasi-infinite number of brands you could make up.

For example, add a colour to the name of an animal and you're already talking thousands of combinations and they're all "brandable" ("red puma", "purple rhino", "green lion", "yellow panther", etc.) and that's just one of countless millions of different permutations of two topics you could come up with. And that's if you stick to "real words" - if you go all web 2.0 and start dropping or substituting letters from existing words, you're talking billions more possibles.

In other words, how do you fish successfully in the infinite brandable ocean, rather than in the tightly bounded pond of generics?

 

[Rob_F]

Is anyone who is posting about successful brandable sales willing to post ANY brandable domain name that sold?

My recent Sedo sales...

All .co.uk

stovestore
pricespy
atlastravel
mycreative
ihelp
justjewellery

- Rob

 

[grantw]

I class brandable as anything that's not an exact term - eg. poker.co.uk / fastpoker.co.uk, I guess it's open to debate though. Here's my sales from last month that I'd probably class as brandable:

ifast
lifestyler
forthepeople
gopro
leef
goldbuyer
onlinepokersites
topmassage

That same month I sold 2 generic domains. The generics went for more individually but overall the brandables brought in somewhere between 2 and 3 times the amount of the 2 generics.

Brandables are a gamble as you're waiting for the right pesron to come along who has their mind set on that exact domain. In my experience though it's no more of a gamble than generics.

Knowing what to go for comes with experience I guess and I've no doubt at all that I've got a LOAD of stuff that will never sell.

Grant

 

[Aegean]

Well Edwin, good question I suppose, we all have our diffferent ways of going about things but what I do is this.

I look for short-ish, easily pronounced names which are unlikely to be mis-spelled and will essentially pass the radio and business card test. Therefore I am not interested in registering magentaaardvark.com or the like. Some of the dual names I have left on my brandelo.com site are the likes of usello.com/uk, upspenda.com/uk, etc. I also try and find unbranded names that have no trademark consequences, such as thorsdale.com. It has to appeal to businesses who are looking to build up a real business with unique branding.

Thats my method anyway. If you think of Google, Yahoo, Cisco, Persil, Domestos, Virgin, Apple, Ryanair, Easyjet and millions of others, these are brands, not keywords (I know I dont need to explain that but you know what I mean). the product becomes associates with the brand. We all know what Persil is, or what Cadbury does. Thats corporate business.

Another example I sold fairly recently was erodos.com, which was bought by a Canadian fashion house. If you look at my former collegues site www.brandbucket.com, you'll see what he is selling.

 

[Rob_F]

Is anyone who is posting about successful brandable sales willing to post ANY brandable domain name that sold? You don't have to post prices, of course. I'm just struggling to understand what you mean by brandable since there are a quasi-infinite number of brands you could make up.

For example, add a colour to the name of an animal and you're already talking thousands of combinations and they're all "brandable" ("red puma", "purple rhino", "green lion", "yellow panther", etc.) and that's just one of countless millions of different permutations of two topics you could come up with. And that's if you stick to "real words" - if you go all web 2.0 and start dropping or substituting letters from existing words, you're talking billions more possibles.

In other words, how do you fish successfully in the infinite brandable ocean, rather than in the tightly bounded pond of generics?

I rarely go for totally made up names eg. Bluelion, zootle, etc. Most of my names will contain at least one keyword so that by simply looking at the domain, you'd have a good idea what the site would be about.

In terms of fishing for drop targets, it comes down to experience, I just study the lists closely (by eye) and select names that way. I then run TM searches and drop any that are TM'd and could only realistically be used in that TM class.

- Rob

 

[Edwin]

All great info, thanks for sharing everyone. And please feel free to chip in if you're pursuing a "brandable" strategy.

 

[aZooZa]

Is anyone who is posting about successful brandable sales willing to post ANY brandable domain name that sold? You don't have to post prices, of course. I'm just struggling to understand what you mean by brandable since there are a quasi-infinite number of brands you could make up.

For example, add a colour to the name of an animal and you're already talking thousands of combinations and they're all "brandable" ("red puma", "purple rhino", "green lion", "yellow panther", etc.) and that's just one of countless millions of different permutations of two topics you could come up with. And that's if you stick to "real words" - if you go all web 2.0 and start dropping or substituting letters from existing words, you're talking billions more possibles.

In other words, how do you fish successfully in the infinite brandable ocean, rather than in the tightly bounded pond of generics?

Azooza.com and .co.uk - sold a good while ago - wish I hadn't now. Short palindromes make excellent brands (and logos).

Latest brand to hit UK TV is 'Zoosk' - go figure.

 

[Bailey]

Brandables are as much random as generics - ie Not/Never/Hardly ever.

I do think it's a mind set thing - My previous attempt at explaining the workable game of brandables hasn't changed.

So to mind-set

Put 10 people in 10 rooms and give them a key concept 'A function (not a word) but a concept that can be an application in the today or tomorrows world. And ask them to associate another word pairing with the concept - the repeated pairings from all groups will have more frequency then most would envisage. Now do that same work alone (and over a period) and Bingo

If words such as fast/quick/my/FB or anything similar dominates your thinking - then your Not trying

 

[theonemanyuri]

Very interesting thread, great first post Edwin you expressed my thoughts exactly. I thought a brandable name without a brand already attached would be (generally) fairly worthless as there are many similar variations of almost any brandable name FTR. I also thought it would appeal to less people than a generic, as generics are words everyone knows whereas brandables aren't necesserily.

But then your last post Bailey is spot on, I've seen experiments before on this kind of thing, asking people in seperation to come up with concepts etc and it turns out many more than you would of thought get the same or similar answers.

I suppose a big part of it is how you define brandable...

Also very interesting to see that some of you guys make the majority of your sales through brandables rather than generics. Do you find you get approached for brandables or do you have to push them? And how does that compare with your sales technique for generics, eg. do you get approached more for generics than brandables or vice versa..?

Sorry if I've waffled a bit there, I had many questions reading the thread and not sure I've expressed them clearly!

 

[Bailey]

It's nice to see this thread develop - hopefully for all of us. I'm very grateful for .co.uk learning curve that has been (for me) Acorn

 

[Bailey]

Is anyone who is posting about successful brandable sales willing to post ANY brandable domain name that sold? ?

Edwin - you of all people shouldn't overly focused- I'd still rather hold your top 1,000 then mine.

I personally loath to see a sale referenced in DNjournal or elsewhere - But each to our own