Should You Invest in Premium Domain Names?

We’ll here’s a question for every business to tackle. Especially small businesses and startups have to think through whether it’s worth spending a quarter of their budget on a premium domain name or not. The answer to that question is rarely a straightforward one, because it depends on what kind of business it’s going to be, along with many other aspects.

A domain name is crucial, because you can’t run a website without it. It will be the name of your website and email address and will play a crucial role in your marketing strategy once you’ve bought it.

In this article, we’re going to look at all there is to know about premium domain names and help you decide whether you should buy one for your business. You might have already dropped your jaw when you came across a domain name that costs $10,000+, while others cost only $10. But that’s how this business rolls and even though that’s a huge load of cash to spend on just a few characters, it might turn out to be one of the best investments you made for your business.

Why a Domain Name Is Considered Premium?

The process of searching for a domain name involves a few disappointing encounters. When you come up with an especially good name, only to search for it and find that it was taken or to find that its price is way up in the sky. Yet these domain names do nothing special. They’re just familiar and bland, with no rocket science involved in coming up with them and that’s the point. Their mediocrity is what makes them so valuable.

Read: COM vs NET vs ORG – Which Domain Extension to Choose?

A premium is exactly what it sounds like. A domain name that is expensive enough that not everyone can afford it. There are numerous reasons why a simple domain name becomes a premium one, but it’s pretty clear that why one domain name can cost more than another. It’s no surprise that Cooking.com will cost a lot more than Makingfood-notsogoodhosting.biz. This shows the tendency pretty clearly, that the more comprehensive a domain name is, the more likely it is that it will cost more.

A more comprehensive domain name will help your site gain more traction a lot faster, which will prove to be one of your best investments if you have chosen wisely. This is the reason why a domain name becomes a premium one.

The Exact Definition of a Domain Name

The price of a domain name will give away that it’s a premium one. Usually a regular premium domain name is a domain name that is already owned by a registry or an individual. Its cost is exponentially higher than a typical domain name and can cost from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands. This is because the perceived value that it might have for a company within a specific industry. This is only because someone believes it so and he/she is proven right if you have ended up searching for that particular domain.

A domain name is considered premium because of its length, brandability and keywords. All of these are highly valuable for a business that wishes to branch out online.

Not every premium domain name price is set by an individual. Sometimes the registry (such as .info or .design) sets the price for it. But that won’t change much when it comes to your buying process.

The Potential Problems With Not So Comprehensive Domains

There are some problems a business might run into if they don’t choose the best domain name they could. Here are the main difficulties:

It Might Get the Customer Confused. If a company or an individual chooses the wrong domain extension, they might get a lot of misdirected clients. Some might think that the service is down or doesn’t even exist, simply because they visited Domain.com instead of the actual Domain.co.

Trust and Branding. In many cases, owning a .com domain is the way to show that a business is trustworthy and serious. A lot of experts say to always go with .com, but there are plenty of other alternatives too, such as .org, .co and so on.

The Potential to Grow. Numerous companies end up thriving after purchasing a premium domain name for about $500,000, especially if it matches their company’s name.

These problems don’t arise for all companies and a domain can definitely succeed if it isn’t a .com one.

What a Premium Domain Name Will Do For Your Website

The good thing about premium domain names is the fact that they’re almost household names already and you don’t have to make further investments in making them so. Which is why:

• You’ll have to spend less money on online PPC advertisements and you’ll get much more organic traffic on your site once you’ve launched it.
• Better SEO and page ranking, which will gain you more quality traffic. People are already searching for your site and will be glad to find it.
• There’s more trust and authority involved with a premium domain name, which will make reputable companies link to your site. Thus further boosting your SEO.
• A short, catchy name works really well on social media and people will remember it a lot more easily. While URL shorteners will only turn your domain name into a meaningless list of characters.
• The domain will give potential clients a strong hint on what they will find on your website, so you don’t have to invest time and money into explaining it to them.

In short, it’s much easier to make a premium domain name popular and you’ll have to spend a lot less money on advertising it.

Is It Worth Buying One When You’re Just Starting Out?

The answer to this question depends on your intent with the domain name. If you’re doing business in an industry where word of mouth is crucial, than premium domain names are definitely something to consider. But small business owners and startups shouldn’t start with a premium domain name. A business can definitely be successful with a less than ideal domain name if it’s catchy enough. If the domain name you’re considering matches your branding, that’s all that you’ll need. It can work well even if it doesn’t match your company’s name.

Read: 10 Best Domain Suggestion Tools

Even if you can’t get the .com extension, you can go with .co or many others. As long as you haven’t got your company off the ground and running smoothly, you shouldn’t make a massive investment in your domain name. But once you’ve hit it big, you might want to look around and get a premium domain name, because there’s a high chance that it will have a large payoff within the next few years.

How To Buy a Premium Domain Name?

The process of buying a premium domain is just about the same as buying a regular one. It goes as follows:

1. Create an account at the domain registrar or sign in.
2. Search for a domain name
3. Add it to your cart.
4. Fill the form with your contact information.
5. Check out.

It’s usually as simple as that, but some services however will require you to fill a lot more paperwork, which can be a bit of a nightmare.

What If a Domain Name Isn’t For Sale?

If it’s not for sale, than it means that the owner isn’t actively looking for a buyer, but you can still reach out to him. You can write him an email and ask him for a price. Just keep in mind that they will usually give you a much higher than average price.

Conclusion

If your business already took off and it is making good revenue, it’s really worth to invest into a premium domain name and take things to the next level. You’ll gain more organic traffic and get more popular, thanks to a comprehensive and mediocre domain name. But if you’re just starting out, it’s best to use your creativity to come up with a unique domain name that matches your brand. Spending only $10 to $50 bucks on it won’t hurt that much either.

I hope that we helped you learn something new about domain names in this article and that we’ll see you again in the next one! Until that, please take a look to GoDaddy’s premium domain name database.