Generic Domain Names

Quick… without taking much time to think, what brand of toothpaste do you use in the morning? What brand of pasta do you use when you make your penne a la vodka?   There are many products and services we use every day without even realizing the brand we use, and this is why generic domain names are important for companies of every size to do their best to acquire.

From my experience in corporate America on the advertising agency side and the client side, I think companies focus far too much on their individual brands and corporate image rather than on how consumers generally remember them. Large corporations have brand managers, whose role it is to manage a particular brand within the company. They have a set budget, and they spend their money frugally on a large variety of strategic tactics. They don’t usually have the knowledge about domain names and their usefulness.

Companies need to worry a little less about their branding and embrace the fact that consumers don’t necessarily know who they are, but they do know what they are, especially in the case of products that can be easily purchased and researched online. Some national brands fully understand that a generic domain name doesn’t need to be used in lieu of its standard branding, and they wouldn’t sell their domain names as they wouldn’t allow another company to use their brands.

A generic domain name can compliment a company’s brand, as demonstrated by Rum.com, Scotch.com, Toothpaste.com, Pasta.com, and many other companies who are using generic domain names to help support their brand.   Whether a consumer looks for rum via Rum.com or Captain Morgan, Diageo is covered. Getting companies to realize the value of generic in assisting their brand is the difficult part, and as domain investors, we need to teach others about the high value of industry and category defining generic domain names.

I was reading about new products at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, and one struck me as something that will probably be very successful and used by many people. The product allows you to charge devices wirelessly on a magnetic pad. I really don’t know the tech details, but it seems very cool.

From a domain POV, this company was very smart. In addition to owning the domain names of their brand, JuicePad.com and JuicePads.com, they also own the generic term for their product, the way consumers will probably come to know them, ChargingMat.com, ChargingMats.com, RechargingMat.com and RechargingMats.com.

The press has been referring to their product as a “charging mat” rather than by their product name, and I think it was a very smart move to buy the generics for this product. Now, whether the public refers to the product directly or via the brand, they have it covered. Additionally, when competitors come on the market with the same or a similar product, the company already owns the .com product vertical.

Although .net names seem to be selling well these days, I don’t particularly like the .net extension. There are a few reasons for this, but what it boils down to is that I would never develop a .net domain name, and I don’t know why someone else would – unless there are extenuating circumstances (like it would be impossible to acquire the .com and nothing else will suffice). Ultimately, I believe the general public knows .com and they generally assume a website is found at the .com. Additionally, I don’t know why someone would park one for PPC revenue, as they may pay a premium for a top keyword, but type-in traffic to .net names is probably tiny.
Recently, I’ve noticed what seems to be an increase in sales and sales prices of domain names in the .net extension. Intuitively, I don’t believe there is going to be much (if any) direct navigation traffic to these names, so I am a bit perplexed as to why .net domain sales have been increasing. Could it be that the prices are such good bargains compared to the gold standard .com names that there is money on speculation? Sure, I can understand developing a huge category killer .net name like Baseball.net or Fishing.net, but I just don’t see buying a .net to park it, like many of the Year to Date sales leaders are.
I really don’t know why people are buying .net domain names. If the plan is to develop, wouldn’t it be smarter to spend money on the .com domain name? If a person is going to spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time developing a domain name with the intention of building a business, why would they start out almost handicapped by having the .net? The amount of money it will take to brand the .net over the course of a few years could be more than it would cost to buy the .com instead. If I am going “balls out” building a website, I would have the confidence in my ability to spend (or finance) the .com domain purchase. Maybe that’s just me, but if I am going to build a website or a business, I would be slightly embarrassed to tell my domain colleagues and non-domain friends, “no, not .com – .net.”
Another thing to keep in mind is that once a website is built on the .net, the owner of the .com just hit a jackpot, as the .net website just made his .com domain name all the more valuable, especially if it is without a doubt generic and doesn’t try to monetize it by taking advantage of the .net (Oversee.com would be stupid to have PPC links for domain-related things for example).
Additionally, for generic domain names, if the .com owner builds a similar website on the .com, I would assume he would be the beneficiary of better search engine optimization rankings, and people would just assume they are on the correct website when they navigate to the .com.
For illustrative purposes, I added a Compete.com traffic chart of Oversee.net vs. Oversee.com, with Fabulous.com used to show that an increase in traffic between the .net and .com weren’t simply related to an increase in Internet traffic. Based on the chart, it would appear that the few spikes in traffic seen by Oversee.net resulted in a lift in traffic for Oversee.com.
While .net domain names are certainly less expensive than .com names (and maybe even .org, too), I think there is a very good reason for it, and that’s why I don’t really buy .net domain names. I would be interested in hearing why others think the .net extension has been doing well recently, and I am interested in knowing what others thinking about building on .net. I am open-minded and interested in learning.