Mark Hunter created a winning domain strategy.
If you think domains are a niche industry, take a look at a true niche: ambigrams. Essentially, an ambigram is word art that can be read from two different view points. For example, the image below shows an ambigram for “Domains”. If you rotate it 180 degrees, it still says “Domains”. (Some ambigrams have completely different words when you view them from a different angle. See FlipScript for examples.)
First, he needed a company name for his technology that would automatically generate an ambigram. He settled on a readily available domain, Glyphusion.com.
“This is not primarily a public site, so the name was less important, but it did need to sound ‘scientific’,” he explains.
But things got tricky from there. He needed a web site to sell his ambigrams and related products online, and also needed a way to get the word out that this form of art existed.
Hunter wanted to call the online store FlipScript, but FlipScript.com was taken. He managed to buy it for $2,000 and picked up 1-866-FLIPSCRIPT as well.
Then he looked for a domain for his site to educate about ambigrams. The obvious choice was Ambigrams.com, but he ran into a bit of a roadblock. The domain was owned by Frank Schilling, who wanted more for the domain than Hunter could pay.
So Hunter settled for the singular version of this niche category-defining domain, Ambigram.com. He picked it up along with 1-877-AMBIGRAM for just under $20,000. The site now hosts an online news site about Ambigrams.
Hunter invested quite a bit of his start up budget into domains. But the investment is paying off. People are starting to “flip” for his product.
Embarrassed to say I hadn’t heard of an ambigram before. What’s interesting is that it’s not just “flips”; the perceptual shift is especially cool (e.g. the light wave/particle duality).
Wishing Mr. Hunter the best of luck. It’s a very nice site.
That might be cool to put on nascar doors, so when the car flips over= hey look DuPont now say Snuggles haha 🙂