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

Strongly disagree. As a result of this type of thinking, I find that the majority of "keyword descriptive dotCOM" domains are usually click-bait or shady content marketing.

Sites like "VacuumReviews.com" are almost always full of content focused on SEO not quality, and questionable financial motivations.

But I guess if the general public still likes those types of domains it shouldnt affect their value.

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

FWIW, I used to buy/sell domains and I think it's a terrible investment strategy now. I can't tell you how many thousands of dollars I've wasted.

Unless you're able to pick up one-word / 3L .com's for very cheap and know you can easily flip them, it's just not worth it.

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.

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't yet or never did anything with them. I don't think its a good idea.

Actually, in the spirit of this article, if anyone here is interested in any of these, let me know:

addressauth.com -- Was going to be a physical address verification service using lob.com's postcard sending API.

atomicthings.com -- something vaguely iot related

http://blankpage.press -- a news site that only posted things that were important (but I realized that would mean I'd need to read all the news and figure out what was important).

http://commn.co -- an inventory tracking system for DIY entheusists that allowed you to track your crap, but also see other peoples crap and trade/sell to others if you don't need it anymore.

http://difftos.com -- a tool to watch service's ToS for changes and easily see what actually changed.

hydramatic.net -- ifttt, but for programmers (it's the name of the first automatic transmission)

http://shit.land / http://shit.foundation -- "The Society for a Homogenous Internet of Things Foundation", 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.

virga.link / http://virga.space -- My plans for a fully decentralized IoT 'protocol', there's actually a couple blog posts on here that lay out what I was thinking.

If you have an existing project that's not in risk of dying that one of these would fit, I'll gladly give it to for free. (I just ask that if the project does die you'd give it back to me and not sell it.)

Also, slightly unrelated, but since I'm listing domain names, https://knock.ninja was another one of these, but I'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.)

-There would be a high likelihood of that domain name being available as opposed to buying the KEYWORD domain from a squatter for thousands.

-Having a brand or name would give it more authority and a feeling of a mom and pop store.

-It is still descriptive.

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.

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'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.

[0] read "Before the Startup" 'Game paragraph' on playing house ~ http://paulgraham.com/before.html cf "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's what they've been trained to do for their whole lives up to that point."

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.

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.

Made me realize how uninformed I was about business in general.

don'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.

But what if, instead of buying the domain name, you... didn'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's interest in the business idea you've generated?

That way, if you are getting signups, or even actual customers, then you try to get a better domain name; but if not, you're not out $5K.

Or am I missing something? I guess you can still sell the domain if you don't end up doing something with it, but what if it declines in value?

edit: punctuation

Content is king, and always will be.

Also, even his first example is inadequate, I would actually have chosen the Spanish sounding website, when going to Spain.

Maybe it's just me, but google doesn'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?

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.

It's kind of insurance for the situation where your side project/business either fails to materialize or goes nowhere. A solid domain should at least retain its value so you can view the perceived authority/trust as free (or a dividend) on the initial investment in the domain.

This is the basis I've been using for some of the prospective side-projects I've been mulling. I've been buying some decent domains as investments both in the domains themselves and the value they would bring to my projects.

Here's a specific example:

I've got a few ideas related to energy, eg. a system that'll let IoT devices/smart appliances/software base decisions on the cost and environmental impact of the energy required for an application. So I bought http://energy.io as the eventual home for this. It carries the authority/trust that the author describes, at least as a developer-focused business, and in the worst case I'm sure I can resell it for an amount comparable to what I paid.

We all go on amazon.com to buy books, not on bookstore.com.

Also buying domain names ("great" 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.

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.

Even if you don'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.

I do not agree with the "just" 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 "keyword descriptive" names. I don'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.

Al Ries[0] describes this as the "The Law of Generic": a brand dilutes itself when it tries to refer to a generic category because it doesn'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.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Branding/dp/0060007...

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.

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.

Side note: Kudos also to the author for a lovely, and humorous writing style! (I've subscribed to your mailing list because of it!)

I really should do more with "downside.com". 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.

What should I put on it?

Just look at one of the most hilarious examples: "meundies.com" It has a cute little name that people like, so it's gaining traction. Is there anything innovative or good about the product or business model? Nope. The catchy name is all.