A recent domain inquiry I received for a two word .com, affirmed one thing: end users will go for the cheaper of two TLDs.
The domain’s second word is “graphics,” and as an aged .com domain asset I value it very close to five figures.
As there are several businesses that use both keywords in various TLDs and ccTLDs, I examined the background of the person inquiring, who had a $40 dollar budget.
For a hard-working artist in the Midwest, forty bucks can go a long way. There was no point in me quoting a price for the .com, and instead of playing Grinch, I pointed him to the matching .Graphics domain – a new gTLD that can be acquired for about $25 per year.
A couple of days later, our friend registered the domain, put together an one page site with his contact info, and I’m glad that he was able to get his business going on a shoestring budget.
New gTLDs that match the scope of a business are a perfect fit, and rather affordable to register and renew. They make great alternatives to the .com, are three characters shorter, and quite often, thousands of dollars cheaper. 😀
Theo – Sorry you didn’t sale the domain, but grateful for your insight. It would be interesting to see if there is traffic bleeding from their chosen gTLD domain to your .com domain.
Alvin – The way I see it, is that I gave the guy direction to a meaningful (I might say, great) domain alternative, which he put to good use right away.
The brand is still generic enough to be used by other businesses.
Regardless, end users still quite often don’t understand the branding power of a short, memorable .COM domain name. I had an inquiry recently for an aged two-word .COM. The buyer comes up to $1000 but does not seem to be willing to go higher. I am seeking low $xxxx but not $1000. But even though the .Net, .Co and numerous nTLDs are available, the buyer seems to only be interested in the .COM.
Leonard – In this particular case, with the old school TLDs taken, the buyer went for the exact match keyword+gTLD. I don’t regret prompting him in that direction. Did I lose a sale? Not really, his budget wasn’t even close. But I think it’s important to help others when possible, even if its via giving direction and providing alternatives.
I think that’s a pretty accurate assessment in 85% of end-user cases, where 15% have more or unlimited capital to invest in the perfect domain. I’ve been seeing people and companies going for cost-effective over premium since 2009 and they seem to be doing it more nowadays than back then. It might be interesting to see some statistics on this that spans the last decade (If anyone’s got some).