Domain investing has never been a great favorite not even amongst the most experienced marketers. There are various theories to just what domain investing is, but basically they all point at a need for casual traffic which therefore generates a poor return.
The importance played on domain names has never been very high as most people including myself thought that for example that PokkyBoy.Ws was as good as Property.Com if they both had identical content. I have recently discovered that this is just a myth and I will start to reveal all with just a few questions on the subject. Firstly Would you consider Google.com or Cellphones.com to be the the most valuable domain name, but strictly on a valuation basis?
If you said Google.com, which is the obvious answer, you would in fact be wrong, and here’s why… Ignore Google.com the “brand” for a moment, and think of “Google” as a keyword. Repeat after me, when you own the domain name, you own the keyword.
I have several domains like Google.com, all cute, super fun-to-say, and memorable, but with no real definition. None get more than a few visitors a month - accidental, random traffic, at best. And since “Google” doesn’t historically mean anything, there’s almost no way to monetize a name like that without millions and millions of dollars worth of branding, and years of reputation building. At best, a domain like Google.com - but with no existing name recognition - might earn a few dollars a year in click revenue and sell for a few thousand at auction.
But what if you owned CellPhones.com? How many visitors would you get then, and what might they be looking for? Welcome to the wonderful world of type-in traffic, also known as direct navigation. Based on established type-in click-through metrics for the domain industry, and my own personal experience, a domain like CellPhones.com probably gets between 3000 and 5000 type-in visitors a day or about 125,000 visitors a month. (Find out more in part 2)…coming soon.
