All For You

90% of domain names are essentially worthless. This is especially true if you’ve had to substitute numbers for letters or abbreviated words like go4broke or Luv4U or if your domain name relies on multiple hyphens, like a-long-domain-name.com. And in the adult market more than anything supply far, far exceeds demand for a decent or even good domain name.

So what is a good domain name?

• Well Cars.com may be worth enough to retire on.
• SportsCars.com may be worth enough to buy a second-hand car on.
• PerformanceSportsCars.com may be worth a few hundred dollars.
• ePerformanceSportsCars.com is worth nothing (undeveloped).

Of course, you can always generate value in a domain name by developing it into a website so that no matter how “bad” the original domain name was, the site will still have some value. A domain name with a history as an established site, with incoming links, archives, search engine listings and steady traffic, will be worth more than the same site left undeveloped. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. First we need to determine what a good domain name really is ….

Domain names are a lot like real estate. It’s where an Internet business sets up shop to do business. In real estate they say only three things matter … location, location, location! That applies to a domain name as well.

Sure we all wished we were living on easy street or had a shop on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills (those are the love.com and sex.com type domains) but in reality, most of us aren’t. But just because you don’t have a domain worth $20 million dollars, doesn’t mean you can’t still have a decent location (aka Domain name).

When picking a domain name you need to keep 5 key things in mind as they are the things that make up the value of your domain.

• The extension
• The length of the domain
• Word Count
• Digits, Dashes and Abbreviations
• Brandability

When picking a domain you should always try and go for the .com version of it before anything else. I always get a good laugh when I hear things like “I heard .cc was the .com of the future”. Umm no you it’s not. .com is the .com of the future. .cc is just a cheap, valueless copy. The same goes for .eu, .org, tk, .ws and so on and so on. If it’s not a .com, it’s just not that great. .net is the second most valuable extension but anything beyond that is really just a waste of space.

Think of domain name extensions like a family. COM is the perfect child that everyone loves and adores. NET is like the step child you only put up with because you have to. ORG is like the creepy uncle who’s been in and out of jail most of your life that nobody really wants to talk about or even acknowledge he’s part of the family. The rest of the extensions like INFO, TK, NAME, WS are all weird members of the family that at times have their place but for the most part we spend our lives trying to avoid them.

The length of the domain name is an obvious. Long domains are worth less than short domains. Anything more than 10 characters is considered to long and greatly devalues the domain name.

Character count often goes hand in hand with word count. Word count means how many words are in your domain? BigHardCocks.com is a three word domain. One word is best, two words is 2nd best and three words is of less value than that. You really don’t want to go over three words.

Digits, dashes and abbreviations will kill the value of a domain quicker than anything HOWEVER if you are not purchasing a domain with the sole purpose of reselling it, then it may not be that big of a deal since then the value of your domain will be based on the development of your site. But for the most part, try and avoid domain names with dashes and digits. For example Love-4-U.com. When at all possible, it is best to avoid having any digits or dashes in your domain name and never, ever use an abbreviation.

Brandability is the final basic factor that goes into the value of a domain. By this I mean, how easy would it be for you to put your domain name in a commercial? Will people remember it? Are the letters that make up your domain a real word or something that sounds like a real word? For example, RRFGXG.com is obviously not a real word and as such has no real brandability factor. But how about Gobu.com? Gobu isn’t really a word but they are characters that make up what could be a word that someone could name a product or service after.

Another common practice when purchasing domain names is called Keyword Stuffed Domains. But when doing this, make sure the words flow together. For example: LiveNakedMen.com - Live Naked Men obviously go together. But what about LiveComputerXXX.com. Does Live computer xxx really make much sense? It may not seem that important to you but what if you do work hard to get the traffic and then what? You have such a crap ass domain, who would want to come back to it, or remember what it was to return without a hard coded bookmark? ALWAYS THINK LONG TERM.

Overall finding a good domain name may not be easy but it can be done. Just be patient and consider every factor discussed above before making your purchase.

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