What Kind of Domains Do I Like To Buy?

Buying good to great domain names can be hard, especially when you are new to the industry. I’ve gotten several emails from people wondering if the domain name that they just registered was a good choice.

Unfortunately, most of the time…it’s a bad choice.

I remember how excited I was when I got my first domain name. It was a .ORG and was 2 words (that right there, is not a good domain to register as your first). After I bought the domain I thought I was going to sell it for big bucks based off all of the articles I read about domaining.

Boy was I wrong…

You see, no one wanted my domain name. I didn’t truly understand that it is not only about what domain name YOU value or “think” is good, it’s mainly about what the MARKET values and how they feel about that specific domain name. This is an extremely important point when it comes to the domain name industry or anything else quite frankly.

It’s NOT about what you like. If you are trying to sell something, you must consider what and how the market feels about your domain name. Believe it or not, I was able to sell that 2 word .ORG domain for around $79 or so.

So I actually made some money on my first domain name but a lot of it was luck! Granted, luck will always play some type of role in anything but putting yourself in the best position to continually make sales is what it’s all about. I believe the best way to accomplish that is my building a solid portfolio of domain names.

You do not do that overnight. It will take time.

So what are some things I personally look for when buying a domain name?

Domain Extension – This is possibly the most important thing to consider when buying a domain name. When you are first starting out, I HIGHLY suggest that you stick with the .COM extension. Why? Simply because no matter how many different extensions their may be in 2020, .COM still continues to outsell all of them by a large margin. Remember how I mentioned previously about listening to the market, well the market continues to tell us that .COM still remains KING. If I dive into other extensions such as .NET or .ORG I am mainly looking for strong 1 word keyword domains.

AGE – The age of a domain name is not massively important but after you’ve looked through hundreds of thousands of domains names over the years such as I have, you will notice something. A large portion of the domain names that are more sought after, have the most bids and go for the highest prices, generally are the domain names with age. What do I mean by age? Simply, how long the domain name has been registered. You can easily find this information for free by using a website such as Whois.com. Just type the domain on the right top side and click the WHOIS button. From there, you can see the Registered On: date, which will show you when the domain name was registered. Keep in mind, if a domain shows it has been registered since 2012 that doesn’t actually mean it was created in 2012. It’s a little confusing but it basically means that the domain name has been getting renewed since 2012. Think about it, if a domain name continues to get renewed and never dropped, it’s probably because the owner of the domain views it as valuable for some reason.

TLD’s Registered – This is a important one. What I like to look for is how many other domain names in other extensions are taken for the specific domain I am looking for. For example, if I am looking to buy LetsTalkDomains.com, I first want to see if anyone else owns the .NET, .ORG versions etc. Why? As I mentioned above .COM currently still remains king and If I have the option to purchase the .COM version of a good domain name that other people have the matching .NET’s and .ORGs, etc, I believe have the best version of the domain name! It puts you in a great position if the owners of the other domain names want to upgrade, they have to come knocking on your door with an offer to buy.

Length – The shorter the better typically. When I look back on my domain sales over the years, I notice that most of my sales were for .COM domains in the 2 word range. No one wants a long domain name. It happens and you may make a sale from a long 4 word domain but I am all about putting the odds in my favor and buying the best quality domains possible. That usually falls in the range of a solid 2 word domain.

Search Volume – This one can be important but it isn’t the end all be all variable. I know a lot of other domainers love domains with high search volume keywords because generally, those are better quality domain names. I personally like to see some search volume associated with the keywords in the domain I want to purchase but I have sold several domain names that had almost NO search volume at all. So this one can be tricky.

When it comes to the type of domain names that I like to purchase, the criteria I’ve listed above is what I go by when analyzing a domain name list. I’m sure other people have different views on what they find important and that’s fine. That’s what makes domaining interesting, we all may have different ways to get to the end result.

What about you?

What are some of the different things you look for when looking to acquire domain names?