I think a lot of newer domainers really struggle to understand the different factors which drive demand and prices for generic and brandable domains. I offer this post as my very brief attempt to address what is often a costly problem for newer domainers.
Short memorable names with the .com extension are particularly sought after. The best of those are generic .com domains. Generic domains contain one or two words that describe a specific type or category of activity or thing. Travel.com is a one word generic domain name and CreditCard.com is a two word generic domain name. Due to the way many people search on the internet, generic domains receive a specific category of internet traffic called type-in traffic. Type-in traffic comes from people searching for say credit cards or hotels, by typing ‘creditcards.com’ or ‘hotels.com’ directly into the address bar of their internet browser. Far, far fewer people commence their search by typing generic .net domain names, although they might if they have tried the .com first, and did not like what they found. Simply, generic domains are valuable because if I own a hotel in London, England then, LondonHotel.com or LondonHotels.com is far more valuable to me than anything else. This is because people start their search for hotels in Seattle using the address bar of their browser and they will probably type “LondonHotel” followed by the “. com”. Thats free advertising, and its worth a lot of money!
Brandable domain names are different. Domainers will purchase domain names that are not generic, but derive their value from the fact that they can be used as a memorable name for a website. These are domains that can be turned into marketing ‘brands’, mainly because there is something about the domain name that people can remember. Domain names like eFrog.com or MonkeyBiz.com (two domain names I’ve thought up, right now) are never going to get the type of type-in traffic that generic names will get. This is because they have not invented something called an eFrog (as far as I know) and a ‘monkey biz’ ……….. well I’m sure you get the idea! However, these names are memorable and may be sought after as a consequence.
The problem for domainers is that it may be relatively difficult to sell brandable names, compared to generic domain names. This is because you have to wait until you find a buyer who likes the name - don’t forget there may be cheaper or better alternatives which buyers would chose in preference. Nevertheless, there is certainly a place for brandable domains in a domainers portfolio. The best brandable domains are very marketable and a great many are sold for significant sums of money.
