Bill Sweetman analyzes his 500 most recent buy requests.
If you want to understand what type of domain names are in demand, a good person to talk with is someone who buys domains on behalf of clients.
One of these people is Bill Sweetman of Name Ninja.
Last week he posted data on the 500 most recent domain names clients have asked him to acquire. The numbers were pretty telling:
- 84% of requests were for .com domain names
- 9% were ccTLDs (not including domains like .co that have become more like gTLDs)
- 2% were new top level domain names
50% of the requests were for one-word domains.
68% were for what Sweetman calls generic terms, such as Robot.com or RobotParts.com. 15% were for invented words, and 6% were phrases. Acronyms and surnames were 6% and 5% respectively.
Keep in mind that, by the time someone reaches out to a buyer broker like Sweetman, they probably have a decent-sized budget and the domain wasn’t easily available to obtain through a registrar sales system. So this skews the results.
Still, this gives a good idea where the money is.
Hi, can you give your definition & difference between generic terms, such as RobotParts.com and phrases please.
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Hi Craig,
Here are examples for how I defined the domains:
generic: robots.com or robotparts.com
– actual dictionary words and/or actual products or services
invented: botzilla.com or fluffyrobot.com
– invented words and/or imaginary products or services
phrase: herecometherobots.com
– a phrase, usually 3+ words (“just do it”)
abbreviations/acronyms: HCTR.com
surnames: asimov.com
Bill
I own RobotParts.com!
>”50% of the requests were for one-word domains.
68% were for what Sweetman calls generic terms, such as Robot.com or RobotParts.com. 15% were for invented words, and 6% were phrases.”
And yet, some people still won’t remove their head from the sand regarding the short-sighted bias about short, short, short, and one word, one word, one word.
“Keep in mind that, by the time someone reaches out to a buyer broker like Sweetman, they probably have a decent-sized budget…”
I wish that was always the case. Just a few hours ago I had to explain to a potential client why the three-letter, one-word ccTLD domain they craved was not going to be acquirable for under $1k. Let’s just say I spend a LOT of time educating buyers about the value of domain names!
Thanks for writing about my findings, Andrew.
Too brief and useful writeup. Really empowered my expectations and research on what buyers are looking forward these days. Thank you for great sharing!
How did .net, and .org rate [ I always heard they were the 2nd and 3rd best choices]?