3 and 4 Letter or Number Domain Names

LLLL or NNNN domain name values
We hope over time to clearly define, track, and resolve what is true, hype, false and possible in the domain name investment business because as we write today we read and see a lot of thoughts, misunderstandings and maybe a little hopeful thinking when it comes to the shape that a domain name can take on.

We are excited to be able to share what is becoming all of the current rage about being the owner of a 3 or 4 letter or number or combined both letter and number combination domain names.

Letter and Number Domain Name Terminology
The “L” in this article reflects being a letter and the “N” reflects a number. If you see a single or multiple “L” with a “N” this means that the domain name is made of letters and numbers within the same domain name. For an example of a letter and number combination domain name we have selected one of our own being 0vl.com from our portfolio of domain names here Domain Name Portfolio showing the “0” as a number and the “v” and the ‘l’ as letters so we would see this as “NLL.com” because when we are on domain name forums or webmaster forums discussing the letter and number domain names that are for sale or have been sold these L’s and N’s are what they use.

Next we are discussing generic 3 letter or number or any combination of that are .com’s only as well these names and or number combinations do not spell anything like IBM.com or Iraq.com or 1800.com or even 123.com but rather just your basic letter and number domain names like 12re.com rrht.com or 0vl.com.

Domain Name Availability
We realize that readers might not be aware of the types of .com domain names that have been purchased already and are in the hands of a third party today where as you could usually just go and buy a domain name from a register for the average 9.95 dollars each.

This means that to acquire a domain name that is taken you will either find it on one of the domain name broker sites listed for sell or you are going to need to contact the domain name you are seeking on your or hire a company like ViperNames.com at their Domain Name Assistance web site Domain Name Experts to do this for you.

Domain Name combinations that are no longer available
The .com domain names that are completely taken are any letters, numbers or combinations are listed here:
Any one charactor L or N.com
Any two charactor LN.com
Any three charactor LNL.com
Any four charactor LNLN.com
Any five charactor LNLNL.com
Even any six charactor domains are almost all taken today or will be in the near future at least for the 6 NNNNNN.com and the 6 LLLLLL.com combinations.
Any single word names are taken.
Most all two word combinations are taken but please note that the two word domain names that make sense and have value are all taken in fact all three word domain names that make sense when put together are all taken as well and these are known as keyword combinations such as one we own “ManagedWebSiteHosting.com” is a good example of and average three keyword domain name.

3 and 4 Character Domain Name Sells
We monitor through the greatest domain name industry sales reporting agency DNJournal.com and from time to time they will show a sell of a 3 or 4 letter and or number domain name like they are reporting this week the domain name R8R.com sold for 2550.00 dollars here Domain Name Sales DNJOURNAL.com but we all need to realize that the rare sale of a 3 or 4 digit domain name is just that it is that a person either needed it so they sought the name out from its owner or they got into a bidding ware on a dropped domain name auction list.

Logic belongs and has a membership in the three top domain name drop companies POOL.com, ENOM.com and SNAPNAMES.com and they all offer the same list of daily dropped domain names however you would need to enter the names you are wanting into all three of these to guarantee that you are going to be in the bidding that follows 3 days after the list of names are tied up with a minimum deposit from the bidding firm which ViperNames.com is one of.

Domain Name Broker web sites
We went online and visited one of the more popular after market domain name selling web sites being SEDO.com and researched 3 and 4 character domain names and wanted to touch on the pricing of these names and you might like to visit this selling site here Domain Name Buyers and Sellers

The problem with SEDO.com in our opinion is a seller is not obligated to sell the name they post so what we have had happen and what happens a lot at SEDO is the person lists a name they own then when the price is the minimum they are asking they just do not sell the name. So the site is used to see what a domain name owner can get without the obligation to sale the name.

These broker sites sell and buy names for individuals and the concept is great for buyers and for sellers because we have utilized SEDO in the past to buy domain names and it is a safe way to do transactions because you buy a name and you put the money into and account then once the name and the money is with SEDO the transaction is completed safely.

We went onto the SEDO site to view the current bidding for generic 3 and 4 charactor domain names and we see that names with 3 letters are offered for a few 150.00 to 4000.00 dollars and 3 letters and number combinations are offered for around 3 and 400.00 dollars and with 4 letters is offered around 100.00 dollars to 1700.00 dollars and 4 letter and number combinations are around the same 100.00 dollars. These are just some rough pricing bids that we observed and like with any name sells it is all up to the buyer to offer enough to actually close the sale so we just wanted to provide a little insight into some pricing for this article.

3 and 4 charactor monetary conclusion
If we are honest about this rage to own any 3 or 4 charactor domain names we first need to realize several facts about these domain names and the hype behind them. Look at the possible combinations of 3 and 4 letters that are possible and then the add the amount of combinations that using 3 or 4 letter and number combinations and we can safely conclude there are more domain names in just these two domain name charactor combinations then there are sites on the Internet today.

So there is no wonder that there is more buyer/seller hype behind these domain names then demand for them. There would need to be a masive site build out of these names in order to add quality and real value otherwise they are just like having a really great 800 number but not having the line connected because it is just a great 800 number with no current use.

Next we also have to contribute to this article our traditional statement that we have not been able to find a single generic 3 or 4 charactor domain name that is popular and well known when doing searches on the search engines and this needs to happen in order to truly verify the actual value besides the obvious value these names do have in that they in most cases are easy to remember because they are short domain names.

Single Word Domain Names

Does one word really provide enough description
We do not know about you but we think wow it would be really great to have a one word domain name because we all see how much names like Sex.com, Pizza.com and even locations like Bellvue.com sell for large figures like quoted in the DNJournal here Domain Name Sales Figures in resent weeks from 100.000.00 to 10 million dollars allows us all to dream a little. We only wish we had single word names so we could sell them in most cases and more then likely not to develop them for an actual use.

What is a single word domain name
Because Viper Logic holds a variety of domain names and through our knowledge base at Domain name portfolio we define a single word domain name beyond the obvious names like the three we listed above as names like Palm, ECommerce.com, and RealEstate.com also as single word domain names because you are building a location like the city of Palm Springs takes these two words tied together to build a city web site.

One word names that require a two word explanation
When looking at Palm Springs as two words you could say be the owner of Palm.com and Springs.com and the Palm.com could be for the palm operating system and the springs.com could be a spring manufacturer.

These are the actual single words that make up Palm Springs. Palm Springs is a two word domain name but it is actually on the Internet a single name. Niether one of the words palm or springs will get you results for Palm Springs so this leads us to the two words can actually be a one word name in Internet terms. Next in this case Palm Springs has two cities one in Florida and one in California so this is what we call a nondescriptive domain name.

We feel that the best name for each in the future is PalmSpringsCalifornia.com and PalmSpringsFlorida.com but without the state attached the more popular city prevails being the one in California which is where the web site PalmSprings.com’s content was built featuring. You might like to see PalmSprings.com here Palm Springs, California it is owned by a couple of really nice guys and friends of Logic because Logic is based in Palm Springs, California.

Some Domain Name words work better then others online
We believe the future of the Internet search engines while today they are all about relevant content could see the future of targeted domain names with relevant content of course as the best (SERP) Search Engine Results Page which is when a search engine visitor searches for anything by typing what they are looking for into the search box of their favorite search engine.

A great example is lets say a person is going to the beach and they want to know about that beach and the weather they would type in the search box Laguna Beach Weather and in this case the return results would offer them LagunaBeachWeather.com see it here Laguna Beach Weather as the top return result because that content matches the domain name the search engines know it is the best return results or keyword query it can deliver.

Domain Name Investing and in the future
Domain names are clearly here to stay and we believe that the .com is the leader today and will be tomorrow however what we are not sure about is what value these names are going to have looking forward. We know that when offering to send someone to your site on the Internet it is better to have a .com and that the name is very short and short is generally great for single word domain name owners as well as having a name that is memorable and does not require spelling it out.

One word domain name downside
Owning a single word domain name generally is not a real good branding opportunity because lets say you own the domain name Bank.com it really does not say who you are and it clearly does not say what type of bank you are.

Two word domain names that sell well
As of this week we read that DomainRegistration.com sold for 376.000.00 dollars showing us that targeting names are doing really well. A targeting domain name is usually a two word domain name that is more focused or defined to the search engines query return results.

This is really the best news for people like us at Viper Logic where we own so many two keyword combinations that have taken us and other years to accumulate and we believe that the future of two word domain names is going to be a high demand area for domain name investors

To truly understand why some domain names are worth more then others we will explain the name DNJournal.com reported the sell of and when we look at the name it immediately explains that it is for a domain name seller because the starting keyword is Domain then we see that the second keyword is Registration explaining precisely what the domain name selling company does they allow registration of domain names.

Our thoughts about DomainRegistration.com
What is truly amazing is the business model of being a domain name registrar operator is over built meaning in our opinion everybody in the web site hosting business like we are one of at ViperGate.com offer the ability to buy domain names on the hosting site. We sell names to our clients from ViperGate.com to mostly our hosting clients rarely do we just get visitors to our site to come and buy domain names because most domain name buyers buy from their host provider.

The only exception to this rule is the power buyers like ViperNames.com is one of use their own buying tools like ViperGate.com is a domain name registrar.

Domain Name Does and Don’ts

Some really new domain name points of interest
There is really something to be said when we continue to read about the domain name industry and dispite the fact that domain names have been around for a long time now with the first being issued on 03/15/1985 SYMBOLICS.COM.
Since 1985 actually in fact here is a list of the first issued domain names oldest registered domain name so it is really great that after 23 years there is a lot of talk about domain names both online which we expected but in important print media like Forbes Magazine and the Wall Street Journal to mention just a couple.

At Viper Logic we owned our first name around 1995 but we no longer have it because our company name changed and we got rid of it of course this was before we realized you should never sell a domain name because their day or 15 minutes of fame are not upon us yet. We also now know that the longer a domain name is registered with the same owner the stronger point score it received from your favorite search engine as being a stable company and age is important to these engines in their site scoring which all goes towards your sites (SERP) Search Engine Page Rank.

We have been buying domain names before 1997 and we actually looked one up to share it here ItsTheBest.com was bought in April 1997 and just thought we would share this with our friends.

Domain Names you should never buy
Boy after being in the domain name investment world for as long as we have we are still constantly learning some things that can make your business run better and learning things to keep us and you out of harms way. Welcome to a new one for us, new for us because we never buy or register a domain name that uses hyphens (Example here Viper-Logic.com) mainly because we did not want to have to communicate verbally and here is why as and example we have a radio spot that runs and they always say please visit our software engineering sponsor ViperLogic.com Software Engineering but if we had compromised and bought Viper-Logic.com then the radio commercial which is really done very cool and well read like, would have went like this please visit our software engineering sponsor Viper “Hyphen” Logic.com. You can clearly read and see what happens when you compromise.

Next we just found out that people actually buy domain names with two hyphens in them and this is ridiculous for several reasons that come to mind to us. First of all we believe buying a domain name with a hyphen is not wise, it is a compromise. Let logic share that the purchase of a domain name is the absolute first thing you are going to do to be on the Internet and be truly independent even if you have a site with groups or social networks because if you build a site under these organizations you are never truly free from them as they have the ultimate power over your site.

Two Hyphen domain names are not allowed is harsh they are not excepted on the search engines for indexing. The only traffic you are going to receive from owning a two hyphen domain name is going to come from print media, television and radio. Because you were not wise to double compromise by having two hyphens your message in all other then online media is destine to fail because getting someone to remember to type in one hyphen is bad enough, getting them to type in twp hyphens is shall we say impossible.

Example
Imagine that you are Viper--Logic--Software.com and you run an ad campaign on radio here would be the vocals for that radio spot please visit our software engineering sponsor Viper “Hyphen” Hyphen” Logic “Hyphen” Hyphen” Logic.com and you can see this would be a great excuse to use hyphens if your company name is hyphen.

.info domain names are not informative
We have all heard the old adage that if something is too good to be true it probably is and we have another one if it is too cheap there is usually a good reason so we welcome you to the .99 cent .info domain name. Who buys any domain name except a .com is a real mystery to us until we asked people that have them why they bought them on webmaster forums like the DP that stands for Digital Point by in large the most popular forum or playground for web masters there is and you can visit it here Webmaster forums because Logic is a member and my handle on the DP forum is but of course Logic.

Webmaster Forum .info two part Question
Here is where what should have been a straight answer to our question that we posted like this one here “Do you own .info domain names and if so why? Next we said if the .com was available would you have bought the .info instead?” and our straight question got answers that became anything but the straight truth.

Webmaster Forum two part Answer
The reply postings to our questions were anywhere from the .info was cheaper to I could not find a good .com domain name for the first part of the question and they all answered the second part of our two part post with a NO to why would I buy the .info if I could buy the .com.

This is the death of anyone wanting to truly build a reliable site based on the answers the death word in this article is “compromise” because the domain name is the beginning of the site we are going to build and there are over 100 other factors like incoming links, content for the site and (SEO/SEM) Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing to mention a few that also determine a sites success or failure.

We have never seen a single site that utilizing a .info extension and furthermore we have not seen actually any popular or successful sites using anything beyond the .com, .net or .org extensions and we have only seen two sites using a hyphen that are semi successful for now but with the search engine bots constantly getting smarter this may only take a matter of time as we are in the know about how the search engines are suspicious about the use of hyphens.

Domain Name investing fast tips
A great word of advise is to own a domain name that is short two words that go together like ViperAuthority.com or less (one word domain names are expensive) has a .com ending no hyphens and is easy to verbally communicate. Going just a step or two further the two words should have meaning and be easy to spell by your potential visitor as well you need to keep the overall letter count low the shorter the domain name the better and please re-frame from using numbers at all cost.
To learn greater in-depth information about selecting a domain name please visit our Domain Name Education Center. Domain Name Education Center

Domain Name Rental requests are beginning

Our first email request about renting some Viper Names
What and experience this our first of many to come rental request for a couple of our domain names has caused and the experience we encountered is why we were inspired to write this article about the understanding that time is money and what is the value of a domain name.

Yesterday Logic who works and is a resident in the California Desert received an email from a professional marketing company in San Jaun Capistrano, California out by the Pacific Ocean about renting a few of our domain names because they found the names in our portfolio here Domain Name Portfolio where it states that our domain names in our portfolio are not for sale.

Recent article on Domain Name Leasing
To read our article about leasing domain names please see the link at the end our this article.

Domain name inquiries to Viper Logic actually happen more often then we would have ever thought since we only have around 3000 .com names and although this was the first time we received a rental or lease request usually the emails are requesting that we sell a domain name. We would guess that we have enough names and that they are really pretty good keyword domain names and this is why we are found and receive questions every week. We believe that what else makes the portfolio easier to locate on the Internet is in part because they have their own web site categorized and indexed instead of just being found through the WHOIS domain name owner look up here Domain Name owners look-up.

To really be honest we claim our domain names are not for sell but like anything in life everything ultimately has its price so yesterdays experience is in part to why we have put the statement on the web site about not selling our domain names however we did not have a statement about leasing our names out to a third party.

Leasing our names out to any company has been an open agreement because so long as they are being used for a real site and they are not being used for SPAMMING then the leasee wouldn’t hurt the actual quality of the domain name they are leasing and we would ultimately still own the names while making some revenue.

Yesterday’s rental request email reminds us of domain name buyer requests
We really feel it is important to share what had happen to us and more then likely to a lot of other domain name owners in that this person wanted to rent two domain names for in this case only 3 months for some kind of promotion. The two names they wanted to rent were RanchoMirageShopping.com and DesertShopping.com and we replied right away with a yes we are interested and the next morning we sent another email back explaining we would have a price to lease these two names by the end of the day.

Following a meeting early that morning we received and email from the professional marketing company that said since domain name purchases and renewals only cost and average of 9.95 dollars annually each and since they only needed them for 3 months each would we rent them out for around 4.50 dollars total.

Our reply to this was are you completely out of your mind, sending and email to a company to pay a fee of 4.50 dollars is completely a waste of their time but even more a big waste of Viper Logic’s time and just for that reason we have the opening statement on our Viper Names web site about not selling our names. We were actually going to only charge 500.00 dollars per name for a whole year since they only needed the names for a 3 month promotional campaign.

We would normally request around 1000.00 dollars and higher a year to lease each name that we are not planning to use. We offer to lease names for 1, 2 and 5 years so a leasee can be assured their name is theirs use for as long as they would like to lease it for at a fixed price so they can trust Viper Logic about not getting shut off or gauged at future date when their site is really doing well.

Domain Names that have power sell well
Education in the domain name industry really needs to be refined beyond the small goup of us that own a stable of domain names so that there can be some kind of organization into understanding the value of a domain name.

If like in our case we own and the marketing company wanted to rent a name like DesertShopping.com they are not wrong in their thoughts about the price because the price she wanted to pay is what she understands to be the value and this happens to us all of the time where a person sees we own a domain name that we are not currently utilizing so they believe they can buy it for the registration fee or even for a slight surcharge. These rationalizations by the domain name buyer or leasee are both false and this is where there needs to be and education about domain name valuation on a large scale.

There are two real underlying issues that need to be addressed with one being on the topic of Domain Name values and the other (and we address this a lot on this blog) is Time is Money.
Domain Names have a value if someone owns it then they believe it has a future value, or that they need the name for a future Internet project they are going to be building.
We look at these names as you would look at the stock market where one person buys a stock believing it is going to go up and gain in value and there is the one selling the stock that believes the value has been reached.

Understanding some factors that create domain name valuation
You can see that our name DesertShopping.com has four values right off the top:
The first is it is a .com the highest level domain name you can have and this is also known as a (TLD) Top Level Domain.
The second is the name is a two word domain name “Desert” for the site location and “Shopping” for what the site is in the business to offer.
The third is the two words make sense when put together “Desert” and “Shopping”.
The forth is the words “Desert” and “Shopping” are easy to pronounce and this leads to the ease of saying it so others understand it without needing to spell it.

Time is Money
We really do have a hard time with people not understanding the cost of time and as we mentioned above write about this topic a lot but we are going to go ahead and share it again using the lady from the marketing company as a good example.

The marketing company wanted to rent a domain name for 4.50 dollars and the cost to even reply to her email cost more then that. perhaps in her case you might say she was trying to steal the 3 month rental for nothing from us but she did not get the deal however what she showed us is that she is worth about 4.50 dollars and hour because she had to of spent at least one hour on the research of the domain names and the emails to contact us.

We like to say when you go out and apply for a job you are made an offer of say 25.00 dollars per hour then your time is worth 25.00 dollars per hour and it is really just that simple. If we spend time doing something like this marketing company did in there request for a couple of domain names then they are truly only worth 4.50 dollars and hour.

Previous Logic Talk Leasing Domain Article
We had written about the newer business model of leasing domain names on June 01, 2008 and if missed it here it is again Domain Name Leasing and in short the article was based on the toll free phone number leasing as a business and how times since then have changed and the new easy access business is the Internet and the addresses to arrive at these businesses are Domain Names or URL’s (Uniform Resource Locator) and what both the one leasing out the name as well and the leasee should know about this practice like the good and the bad.