MPC

I was inspired by this thread I just purchased a domain. How good/brandable is it? to write the following post:


Value of standalone domains (just a domain name with nothing attached to it). Most standalone domains are worth $10. To have greater value, there's really only four things to consider.

1 - Is the domain name made up with interesting keywords?
2 - Is the domain name short
3 - Is the domain name catchy/easy to remember?
4 - Is it a .com

If you can find something that meets all of these criteria's, you have a really good domain to start with. What is that domain worth? Probably no more than $100 unless someone really really wants it.

Here's the reality - Unless you're doing a mini site, the domain name isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. Take one of my sites for example - mypokercorner.com - Nobody searches for "my poker", "my poker corner" or "poker corner". I wouldn't even consider this a "short" domain, but it is a .com and its easy to remember. I meet 2 out of 4 criteria. I get thousands of visitors every month and it really has nothing to do with the actual domain name, but rather with the content of the site and the link building that went around it. If mypokercorner.com was not registered, I could buy it for $10 and probably resell it for no more than $20 if I'm lucky. There's just nothing special about it.

The third point - memorable name - that's really important if you plan on doing off site advertising. Let's say you were going to do radio ads, mypokercorner.com would work well. Something like my-poker-corner.com wouldn't sound as well. Just imagine hearing "visit my dash poker dash corner dot com". It blows. If you're not going to do offline advertising, it's not AS important to have a memorable domain name, but it never hurts to have one.

regarding mini sites, you would have an advantage of having a domain that matches your primary keyword. I recently sold us-online-poker.com and that has a lot of potential for targeting "us online poker" or other variations of that keyphrase. I never had time to do the required work, which is why I sold it. But someone could do well targetting that keyphrase when the domain matches it. Since mini sites are small in nature and content is limited, having the right domain name is a must. Domain name becomes a lot more important for small sites.

Bottom line, any domain name can be built to accomplish anything. I could buy pokerpizzabananacakeomfglol.com and target any keyphrase. Sure, having a domain name that matches the primary keyphrase helps, but it doesn't help THAT much if you can compensate with quality content that is well coded.