Want to Build a Side Business? Just Buy Great Domain Name

&gt;I immediately gravitate towards the keyword descriptive dotCOM. It instantly exudes trust &amp; authority<p>Strongly disagree. As a result of this type of thinking, I find that the majority of &quot;keyword descriptive dotCOM&quot; domains are usually click-bait or shady content marketing.<p>Sites like &quot;VacuumReviews.com&quot; are almost always full of content focused on SEO not quality, and questionable financial motivations.<p>But I guess if the general public still likes those types of domains it shouldnt affect their value.

I sometimes buy domain names on my phone, late at night, in my bed. Usually after hours of laying in bed building out a business in my mind and iterating over and over to see where it leads. Buying the domain name seems to be the last step in the processes, it helps me sleep.<p>I look at the list of my domains every once in a while and pick ideas to work on, but sometimes I have no idea what drove me to buy them, like parttimehuman.tips

Not to burst your bubble but I&#x27;m convinced we&#x27;re moving into an era where your domain name and TLD are becoming less and less relevant. Google and Social are all that matter. Had you asked me 4 years ago if I&#x27;d ever consider building a business on .io or .co I would have laughed in your face. Now I&#x27;m building products on both of them.<p>FWIW, I used to buy&#x2F;sell domains and I think it&#x27;s a terrible investment strategy now. I can&#x27;t tell you how many thousands of dollars I&#x27;ve wasted.<p>Unless you&#x27;re able to pick up one-word &#x2F; 3L .com&#x27;s for very cheap and know you can easily flip them, it&#x27;s just not worth it.

Personally, I think of buying a domain as a form of procrastination rather than the first step of starting a business. It gives a feeling of achievement while staying in your comfort zone (seriously, it&#x27;s just choosing a name and paying ten bucks, how difficult is that?).<p>What I noticed to work is reaching out to people, telling them about your business or project and getting their interest. Getting the first clients puts more pressure on you, but also gives a huge motivation to continue working on it.

This is rubbish.<p>I am (was) a serial domain buyer. Now, I guess its somewhat true that buying a domain to go with your idea can really inspire you, I have a lot of domains I let expire or still hold on to because I haven&#x27;t yet or never did anything with them. I don&#x27;t think its a good idea.

Maybe it&#x27;s just that I lack follow through, but I disagree. I have a horrible habit of buying domain names thinking that I have this great idea, I play with it for a day or two and then abandon it.<p>Actually, in the spirit of this article, if anyone here is interested in any of these, let me know:<p>addressauth.com -- Was going to be a physical address verification service using lob.com&#x27;s postcard sending API.<p>atomicthings.com -- something vaguely iot related<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blankpage.press" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blankpage.press</a> -- a news site that only posted things that were important (but I realized that would mean I&#x27;d need to read all the news and figure out what was important).<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;commn.co" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;commn.co</a> -- an inventory tracking system for DIY entheusists that allowed you to track your crap, but also see other peoples crap and trade&#x2F;sell to others if you don&#x27;t need it anymore.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;difftos.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;difftos.com</a> -- a tool to watch service&#x27;s ToS for changes and easily see what actually changed.<p>hydramatic.net -- ifttt, but for programmers (it&#x27;s the name of the first automatic transmission)<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;shit.land" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;shit.land</a> &#x2F; <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;shit.foundation" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;shit.foundation</a> -- &quot;The Society for a Homogenous Internet of Things Foundation&quot;, an obviously dumb name for a website that I was going to setup a wiki to track IoT stuff, mostly protocols and maybe eventually something with security vulns.<p>virga.link &#x2F; <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;virga.space" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;virga.space</a> -- My plans for a fully decentralized IoT &#x27;protocol&#x27;, there&#x27;s actually a couple blog posts on here that lay out what I was thinking.<p>If you have an existing project that&#x27;s not in risk of dying that one of these would fit, I&#x27;ll gladly give it to for free. (I just ask that if the project does die you&#x27;d give it back to me and not sell it.)<p>Also, slightly unrelated, but since I&#x27;m listing domain names, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;knock.ninja" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;knock.ninja</a> was another one of these, but I&#x27;ve actually gotten myself to keep working on that on, if a bit slowly. I actually am pretty proud of coming up with that name. (Although the content on that site it pretty shit, btw. I need to come up with better ways of describing it with fewer words.)

I built <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.findlectures.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.findlectures.com</a> entirely without having a domain; my experience has been that having a domain too early locks you too much to the concept it references.

I would pick a third option: SojournBikeTours.com<p>-There would be a high likelihood of that domain name being available as opposed to buying the KEYWORD domain from a squatter for thousands.<p>-Having a brand or name would give it more authority and a feeling of a mom and pop store.<p>-It is still descriptive.<p>Not to mention that if you do decide to go through the KEYWORD domain route you will be competing with a lot of people that are scouting for KEYWORD domains to build spammy affiliate websites or if by any chance the website has some history and backlinks then you will be competing with people who want to snatch it to build PBNs.

<i>&quot;The next big step is combing through the 100k domains that expire every day. And creating a process to scan and filter so you don’t go cross-eyed.&quot;</i><p>For me the title gives away the idea of the post. I read it. Not impressed. [0] The following line gave me the impression the writer didn&#x27;t realise the value of the above statement. Want a ^potential^ business, build a tool that allows you a better way to solve the above problem.<p>[0] read &quot;Before the Startup&quot; &#x27;Game paragraph&#x27; on playing house ~ <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paulgraham.com&#x2F;before.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paulgraham.com&#x2F;before.html</a> cf <i>&quot;We saw this happen so often that we made up a name for it: playing house. Eventually I realized why it was happening. The reason young founders go through the motions of starting a startup is because that&#x27;s what they&#x27;ve been trained to do for their whole lives up to that point.&quot;</i>

I&#x27;ve been casually interested in small time domain name &quot;investing&quot; (with and without intention to develop) since the early days and when it so happened that during a stint at GoDaddy, I was charged with the UX of the domain auction product, imagine my surprise to discover were a handful of very big players, some of whom ran bespoke software (not unlike a Bloomberg terminal) and were so profitable for the company that they essentially had their own in-house concierge.<p>That certainly dampened my enthusiasm when I realized it had long since become more like commercial real estate investment than the American West land rush.<p>Similarly illuminating was working at a regional bank and learning how much of their growth was based on investing in a patch of dirt as it was in the operation of the branch location that sat on that dirt.<p>Made me realize how uninformed I was about business in general.

wow, I&#x27;ve run a domain registrar since 1999. Most domain name purchases are crap, domains are not assets but for a tiny tiny fraction of the top sites.<p>don&#x27;t be a fool and give your money to a registrar. Build a business by solving problem that many folks have. After you solved a problem buy a domain to market your solution.

I like the idea of using expiring domain names to generate business ideas (especially domain names that are fetching a good price).<p>But what if, instead of buying the domain name, you... didn&#x27;t buy it? What if, instead of dropping $5K on an exact match, you spent $10 on a B+ domain name, where you can set up a landing page to see if there&#x27;s interest in the business idea you&#x27;ve generated?<p>That way, if you are getting signups, or even actual customers, <i>then</i> you try to get a better domain name; but if not, you&#x27;re not out $5K.<p>Or am I missing something? I guess you can still sell the domain if you don&#x27;t end up doing something with it, but what if it declines in value?<p><i>edit:</i> punctuation

I still haven&#x27;t figured out how to make money with butt.ventures

Have a bunch of good domains in my portfolio and this article is just crap.<p>Content is king, and always will be.<p>Also, even his first example is inadequate, I would actually have chosen the Spanish sounding website, when going to Spain.

Sorry, but i really dont like the style of the article, i always feel like the author wants to tell me one little trick, doctors hate him for, which enlarges your penis by two inches.

For the amount of money he&#x27;s spending on auctioned domains, wouldn&#x27;t it make more sense to find a &#x27;related&#x27; (eg. backyardziplines.com vs ziplines.com) name and do exactly the same thing (set up a site, contact a partner, etc) and spend the thousands of dollars on advertising?<p>Maybe it&#x27;s just me, but google doesn&#x27;t really put that much stock in the url itself, does it? A non-scammy site and some good lead ins will put you high in the search results regardless, no?

&gt; I’m talking about viewing domain names as an asset<p>Another way to read this, which the author indirectly touches on in his listing of expired domain auction results, is the $$$ value of the domain itself.<p>It&#x27;s kind of insurance for the situation where your <i>side</i> project&#x2F;business either fails to materialize or goes nowhere. A solid domain should at least retain its value so you can view the perceived authority&#x2F;trust as free (or a dividend) on the initial investment in the domain.<p>This is the basis I&#x27;ve been using for some of the prospective side-projects I&#x27;ve been mulling. I&#x27;ve been buying some decent domains as investments both in the domains themselves and the value they would bring to my projects.<p>Here&#x27;s a specific example:<p>I&#x27;ve got a few ideas related to energy, eg. a system that&#x27;ll let IoT devices&#x2F;smart appliances&#x2F;software base decisions on the cost and environmental impact of the energy required for an application. So I bought <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;energy.io" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;energy.io</a> as the eventual home for this. It carries the authority&#x2F;trust that the author describes, at least as a developer-focused business, and in the worst case I&#x27;m sure I can resell it for an amount comparable to what I paid.

In the long run, I tend to think it&#x27;s better to have a good brand name rather than a descriptive domain name with keywords.<p>We all go on amazon.com to buy books, not on bookstore.com.

Descriptive URL&#x27;s like &quot;BikeTours.com&quot; convey the opposite to me. It&#x27;s going to be swimming in ads and malware and full of BS reviews hoping for some affiliate link clicks.<p>Also buying domain names (&quot;great&quot; or not) is a bad way to get started. There are a million things that need to happen to launch a side business and a domain is literally one of the least important things. You can always buy getX.com, Xapp.com, Xnow.com, etc and buy X.com when, if, you make it big. Buying domain names is fun, I used to do it regularly but it just gives a short rush where you play through different scenarios and then you forget about it until you get the notification to renew it a year later. You want to build a side business? Then build a side business. Want to fantasize? Buy a domain.

Aren&#x27;t there bidding networks for expiring domains that practically guarantee you won&#x27;t get the domain unless you pay one of them?

If you&#x27;re buying expired domains you&#x27;d be wise to learn a little bit about how to spot google penalties.<p>It would suck to buy a domain where a bunch of shady SEO had been done by the previous owner. It will make ranking in google that much harder.

Offers.com (at the time a record-breaking price paid for a domain name) is still getting peanuts in traffic compared to retailmenot, which has the <i>dumbest</i> name ever. And I&#x27;d argue offers.com has marginally superior content, except for the odd exclusive deal that retailmenot is able to swing based on their identity. But retailmenot got there first, and it hit the ground running building marketshare, and that has made all the difference.

I agree that if you think of a good domain name and it is available, then you should buy it. It&#x27;s a very cheap investment. But be sure to write a super brief business plan explaining what this is for. You might forget by next year.<p>Even if you don&#x27;t end up using it, you may be pleasantly surprised (as has happened to me) that in a few years someone offers you ten or twenty thousand for it.<p>I do not agree with the &quot;just&quot; buy a great domain. The domain name has very little to with the success of your business. I also, as others have said, disagree with &quot;keyword descriptive&quot; names. I don&#x27;t think that search engines reward your for descriptive names, and they are poor choices for brand names. You want people to be able to Google your brand, and have your page come up first.

Wrong, very wrong. Generic names say that you are generic, not special.<p>Al Ries[0] describes this as the &quot;The Law of Generic&quot;: a brand dilutes itself when it tries to refer to a generic category because it doesn&#x27;t distinguish itself from competition. He gives 2 examples. There was a company making biscuits that called themselves National Biscuits Company. They abbreviated that to Nabisco and became a brand. There was a company making electrical appliances that used to call themselves General Electric Company. They abbreviated that to GE and became a brand.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;22-Immutable-Laws-Branding&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0060007737" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;22-Immutable-Laws-Branding&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0060007...</a>

Now that we know for more than 15 years that domain names are a crappy business we are back at it? Why? I mean in the 90s it makes sense because there were still reasonable domain names not taken. But everything is taken now, despite a few creative ideas that only work for a short time. And domain names are also not as important any more since people tend to click on the first google link more often than the second, and they don&#x27;t switch that pattern because the second link is dotCOM.<p>I would say having a random string as domain name that ranks highly for certain keywords is a much better investment than a cool, creative domain name.<p>So, why start the whole thing again? If you have money to lose, I can also give you my paypal ID and you just send it to me.

The exact keyword match domain name business tanked years ago when google updated their algorithms. Back then, if you had the domain freepoker.com and someone googled for &quot;free poker&quot; your site would get a huge ranking boost due to the domain name.

Great domain names are not going to save most. It&#x27;s going to save one depending on how great the domain name is. But figuring out what is great is as hard as figuring out what products are great.

I own over 50,000 domains, mostly generics or short 3-6 letter .com. Sales revenues last year was few millions US$ and we had over 20M in offers, offers which we decided to wait on. Good .Com domains aren&#x27;t cheap, anything decent is over 10K and anything good is over 50K. You can always start with .Junk (that&#x27;s what they really are) but when you make it, in all likelihood you&#x27;ll end up upgrading to a good .Com. I know because I see it every single day.

I made <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;istodaywednesday.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;istodaywednesday.com</a> for the express purpose of a joke, and I have no regrets.

There are still some good domain names out there for niches. For promoting practical cycling, I bought <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;familybikecamping.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;familybikecamping.com</a> <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bikemove.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bikemove.org</a> (move you house by bike) and <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bikes-as-transportation.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bikes-as-transportation.com&#x2F;</a>

It&#x27;s a zero sum game. You&#x27;re not creating value, and you&#x27;re paying rent to play the game. For most people the game is, by design, a losing one.

I like this idea! Yeah, I could see some folks using it to get into shadier practices. But i could also see it as being a trigger&#x2F;catalyst for prompting me to get into a decent-enough business that I (might be good at but) would never have gone into otherwise. I think i&#x27;ll give this a try.<p>Side note: Kudos also to the author for a lovely, and humorous writing style! (I&#x27;ve subscribed to your mailing list because of it!)

And put ads on it? That&#x27;s so 2005.<p>I really should do more with &quot;downside.com&quot;. It had the first search engine for companies that returned financial data from SEC filings, back in 2000. But now everybody has that. The SEC data updater stopped working at the beginning of 2017 because the SEC shut down FTP access in favor of HTTP, so I either have to fix the ancient Perl code or turn that off.

But could we all agree that a shorter, easily spelled, &#x27;radio-friendly&#x27; (unambiguous) .com domain can save a load on marketing costs? I work backwards from my startup ideas and check the drop daily for domains that match my keywords. It doesn&#x27;t take a lot of time and occasionally I find something perfect.

Sometimes they sit there as unfinished side projects and you wonder if you should just sell it ? searchlint.com (going going not gone yet ) :P

I bought qkbuck.com as a compliment to my web app <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qKast.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qKast.com</a><p>What should I put on it?

Halfway through reading, I was going to criticize the author for lack of quantitative evidence, but he partially redeemed himself by using actual numbers in the Expired Domains section. Anyone can write an article saying &quot;X is important!&quot; but a business owner will not give attention unless dollar values are assigned to the importance. Still, I&#x27;d like to see some more evidence in this article than the Bobblehead case study that using keyword domains actually increases sales in that market.

This feels like advice from 2010. I&#x27;m just not sure how much of it is relevant any more.

&quot;...so cut out some vices and divert that cash...&quot; GOLD

until google stops marking keywords in the domain and urls as bold I won&#x27;t believe domain names (and paths) matter less than page titles and contents.

Waiting to do something useful with: go0gl3.com

It speaks volumes about human psychology. The fact that sometimes all it takes is a catchy name to build a company from nothing that has not one single innovation.<p>Just look at one of the most hilarious examples: &quot;meundies.com&quot; It has a cute little name that people like, so it&#x27;s gaining traction. Is there anything innovative or good about the product or business model? Nope. The catchy name is all.

This is exactly what I do. It might not be for everyone but when I find a domain that I subjectively really like, I instinctively know what I&#x27;m going to build on it.

This is ignorant and does not help anybody. You do not create value.