Quirky.com Being Marketed by Hilco Streambank

Elliot Silver
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When I read about the bankruptcy of Quirky, my first thought was about the Quirky.com domain name owned by the company. My second thought was about what company would be tasked with selling the domain name, and I learned that Hilco Streambank will be responsible for the sale of the domain name and business assets.

In my opinion, Quirky is a neat (and flexible) brand name, and obviously having the matching Quirky.com domain name is important. According to Hilco Streambank CEO Gabe Fried, “the brand stands for new, out-of-the-box, creativity.”

Here’s what is being marketed for sale by Hilco Streambank:

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Glitter Launches on Glitter.club

Elliot Silver
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Whenever I hear about a company or business using a descriptive brand name, I immediately wonder if they got the exact match .com domain name or opted for an alternative. I saw the tweet above referencing  a  TechCrunch article about a new app called Glitter, and when I checked the url, I learned that the startup is using  Glitter.club  for its website.

According to the article, “Glitter is a personal trading cards app, which lets users create mobile, tradable cards that feature all types of ‘ingredients,’ as the company calls it.” Sounds like an interesting concept.

I did some research on the Glitter.club domain name, and I saw that it  was registered to .CLUB Domains, LLC (the.Club Registry) in March of this year. In April, the domain name changed hands and was  registered to Betaworks. I reached out to Jeff Sass,  CMO of the .Club registry, and he informed  

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Sol Orwell and Examine.com Written About on Forbes.com

Elliot Silver
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It’s not every day that I read an article on Forbes.com about someone I know personally! There’s a great article that was published on Forbes.com late last week about Sol Orwell and his Examine.com business.  Elaine Pofeldt’s article is as much about Sol as it is about the burgeoning business he built on Examine.com. From the article:

“Orwell, who lives in downtown Toronto, says he generates seven-figure revenue through Examine.com, a site that sells reports on nutritional supplements. The success of the business, which he runs under the company Enthropia, Inc., enables him to travel three or four months out of the year.”

When Examine.com launched in 2011, I wrote about the domain name (it cost

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.Brand Domain Names: Does Risk Outweigh Reward?

Elliot Silver
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In a post on Google’s Webmaster Central blog a couple of days ago, there were several questions asked and answered about Google’s treatment of websites that use new gTLD domain name extensions. I had already understood how Google treats new gTLD extensions, but I wasn’t really sure about how Google would treat .brand domain names, such as .Google or .Barclays domain names.

In the aforementioned blog post, a question about .brand domain names was posed and answered:

Q: Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com?
A: No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as a other gTLDs. They will require the same geotargeting settings and configuration, and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs.

If a .brand domain name doesn’t have any more weight than any other TLD, what is the advantage of using it? I would imagine  there could be added trust with a .brand domain name because a consumer should know that the brand operates the extension and it’s less likely to be a phishing site or a site offering counterfeit goods. However, at least at this point in time, I don’t think consumers would know enough about the new extensions to understand this yet.

With that being said, I think there are quite a few disadvantages for a brand to use a new gTLD extension:

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Why is .Vegas “Lagging?”

Elliot Silver
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The Las Vegas Sun published an interesting article about the .Vegas new gTLD extension this morning. I would like your thoughts on why there are only about 15,000 .Vegas domain names registered. Compared to other city new gTLD extensions like .NYC, .Berlin, and .London, .Vegas is “lagging” as the article title mentions.

The Las Vegas Sun article cited two local business owners with different perspectives on .Vegas domain names. Anthony Carlitto, a local business consultant, mentioned one major issue people in the domain industry continue to point out: there isn’t much consumer awareness of the new extensions. Michael Kruse, a local real estate agent who switched to a .Vegas domain name, cited an increase in traffic to his website. To be honest, I don’t

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CompanyName.com: New Domain Marketplace Launched

Elliot Silver
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CompanyName.com made a very generous contribution to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a part of my Pan-Mass Challenge fundraising campaign in exchange for the publication of this article.

One of the biggest challenges facing business owners is finding the perfect brand name. This is evidenced by all of the business publication articles discussing brand names and business naming. CompanyName.com was launched to help make the company naming process easier for business owners.

If you visit CompanyName.com and look at the listed inventory, you’ll quickly notice two types of domain name listings – brandable domain names and premium domain names. The brandable domain names are essentially made up words and phrases, while the premium domain names are high value keyword and liquid, short domain names.

The brandable domain names are typically listed for sale in the $2,500 range. I personally find it much easier to sell domain names in the four figure range, and CompanyName.com has priced their brandable domain name inventory right in that wheelhouse. Similar to other brandable domain name marketplaces, a custom logo is included with the purchase. Because of the nature of brandable domain names, customers can easily find other domains that work just as well, so pricing is important.

Examples of brandable domains for sale

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