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The Wisdom of Buying Many Domain Names
Occasionally, friends of mine ask me if they should consider buying lots and lots of domain names as a marketing strategy to drive more traffic to their web sites. They theorize that many domains names will cast a wider net on the web for prospective site visitors. Is this an effective online marketing strategy? In most cases, no.
Having dozens of domains is like having dozens of wives. It may seem like a good idea, but it's not nearly as satisfying as one truly rich and rewarding relationship.
People who register tons of domains seem to be working from the assumption that they'll cover more online real estate. However, online real estate doesn't work like offline real estate. There is nearly an unlimited amount of available property online in the form of domain names compared to the finite amount of real estate on Earth. The online version of a land grab is limited to only the most obvious domains, which do indeed fetch serious cash.
Take a moment to think about how people generally find web sites. In the vast majority of cases, people find web sites through:
- Searches on Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN
- Links from other web sites
- Typing in a domain they saw in a print ad
Where does randomly typing addresses into the location bar fall on this list? It doesn't. A much better investment of online marketing time and money comes from focusing on strategies that address #1 and #2. It turns out that addressing #2 helps increase your visibility for #1, as described in my previous post, Top Three Search Engine Optimization Tips. It really comes down to link popularity. Having dozens of sites with no inbound links (or only links from other sites in the same network of sites) will lead to dozens of virtually invisible online properties. Taking the same resources and applying them to the marketing of one site through link building, improved sales copy, and some pay per click advertising, will lead to upward movement in search engine results, more people finding the site useful, more bookmarks, more people emailing the site to friends, and more leads or sales. When to buy additional domain names: If you stumble across an available domain that people may type directly into search engines, should you buy it? Sure, they're cheap. Also, buy any common typos of your primary domain name.
PS: While writing this post, I stumbled across a splog ( A blog that is set up to redirect people to another site but has no value of its own. Considered to be spam.) called get-a-domain-name.blogspot.com. The irony of that domain kills me. It looks like this particular spammer also uses good-domain-names.blogspot.com, domains-cheap.blogspot.com, and nu-domains.blogspot.com. Frank Gruber of SomeWhatFrank.com is working to rid the blogosphere of splogs through his take-action site, SplogReporter.com.
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2. Posted by: Ed Kohler on February 1, 2006 9:23 AM:
Fair points, Domainer. There certainly are ways to make money off collections of domains such as the tactic you've explained. The problem I've seen in practice is people buying domains that have little to no chance of receiving any type-in traffic. This seems to be based on the assumption that owning two domains is twice as valuable as just one, like two acres of land is twice as valuable as one.
Without type-in traffic, the value is next to nothing unless they happen to be somewhat catchy names someone may want to use as a brand some day, creating value where it did not exist before.
3. Posted by: Domainer on February 1, 2006 10:26 AM:
Totally agree, many people get caught buying names that have no value thinking that it will be their road to riches when at the end of the day it just ends up being a liability, a quick look at the listings for domain names in eBay will make this painfully clear.
But there is something to be said for buying premium names that have existing type in traffic.
If one can manage to find a domain for sale on the secondary market or unregistered that is generic, in their industry or representative of a product or service they offer, and importantly has traffic, it can be a very wise financial move for them.
Say you find a domain name for sale with 100 uniques a day that is reflective of a term you would bid on in adwords or overture. In this example lets just say the domain name is buywidgets.com and make a couple of assumptions.
Assume you can buy "buywidgets.com" for $1500
Assume the average bid on "buy widgets" in Google is $0.25 per click.
When you buy this domain name and redirect it to your site it is the same as buying 100 clicks from Google. (Possibly the equivalent of buying slightly less as the quality of domain name traffic varies From slightly less qualified as google's search traffic to on par with google's traffic, and in some cases, better than google's search traffic. (according to a staff member of Google, in a presentation made in October))
So say your newly purchased 100 typeins from buywidgets.com works out to say the equivalent of maybe 96 clicks from google's adwords. 96 daily clicks from Google costs you $24.
If the domain name cost you $1500, you're looking at paying off the domain name in roughly two months. The best part is that the only cost after the initial purchase is domain name's renewal fees of less than $9 a year.
Now, it's not easy to find these sorts of names, but they are defiantly out there to be found, and the roi will vary from a couple of months to 8 years + depending on the domain name.
Ultimately from my perspective, it makes a lot of sense for end users to invest in these types of names, while staying well clear of the types of names you mentioned.
4. Posted by: Dookie on February 1, 2006 3:03 PM:
Domainer is right.
Except there are significant volumes of type-in traffic domains in existence. The only problem is that the vast majority are already owned. In the end search engines only have one URL ie. google.com or yahoo.com .. getting listed in their directories (in a prominent location under certain searches) will require money, lots of it, every month. You will pay to play in their sandbox.
Google was not always the most popular search engine and it would be absurd to think they will be the only popular search engine forever. People will eventually try something new, just as they are downloading new browsers such as Firefox and leaving Microsofts IE, interests will shift.
My point is that the only certainty is owning some form of online real estate. Domains are imperative for email, so they are not going away. Good names will only get more expensive. The domain name is 'your' sandbox. It gives you the power to control your destiny.
Can they create new toll free numbers?.. certainly - and they are.. but how much is 800-flowers worth? Will it be worth less because of new competition?.. not likely.
Anybody can argue that the powers that be, could invent a new system.. I say let them, it will only cost a few trillion dollars and decades of work. Until that happens (never) I would advocate buying the domain name of the industry you are in, before the costs triple.
5. Posted by: smart on December 11, 2006 7:34 PM:
This author is retarded... First off, plenty of people type what thy are looking for and add a ".com" to the end. People are stupid.
Second, as for the "splog" (of which I agree they suck) the "splogger" isn’t stupid. What this author fails to realize is that the easiest way to get high google ranking is from keywords in-your-domain-name! For the criminally retarded, the hyphens help search engine spiders separate the words (although they are not necessary needed so much anymore)
Yes, links are big too, but if you have the keyword in your domain name (.com) and have it hosted, google will list you among the first, it is a fact, try it.
This author has no clue how google works...My site has 0 bound links (other than google,yahoo etc. now that its listed) but it is the key word for its subject and is always in the top 3 of ALL Search Engines... It's not dumb luck....its the name!
6. Posted by: Ed Kohler on December 11, 2006 7:50 PM:
"smart" it sounds like you're pretty set in your position, but here's something to consider: it correlation the same as causation? Should Google rank books.com ahead of Amazon for the term "books" because they use the term in their domain name? Search engines will use whatever helps them improve the relevancy of their results, so while a keyword in a domain MAY correlate with the content of the site, so often it does not that it surely can't receive much weight in their ranking algorithms.
It sounds like your site must have a fairly obscure keyword in the domain. The scenario you describe simply would not happen for competitive (an presumably) terms.
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1. Posted by: Domainer on February 1, 2006 7:42 AM:
Hello,
Interesting article, however, your theory is flawed. Many people type in domain names in a similar way people search on Google. Looking for a car? type in cars.com etc.
Myself, I have a couple thousand domain names that generate over 26,000 unique visits a day.
In addition to traffic, they also generate revenue.
The thing is you can't just buy any domain name, ie technologyevangelist.com would receive virtually no traffic if there wasn't a developed site on the domain, but technology.com & evangelist.com both would because those are things people would search for. It's too complicated to really explain in this comment, but thats the general idea in a nutshell.