FitnessTrainer.com: Why I Stopped Bidding & Some Buying Advice

Fitness TrainerWhen I was looking at Snapnames the other day, I saw an auction for FitnessTrainer.com, and I placed a bid on it. The domain name went to auction on Thursday afternoon, and the auction continued for a couple of hours after its original close time, with 5 minute extensions following last minute bids. FitnessTrainer.com ended up selling for $20,888.

Had I won the domain name, my plan would have been to build it in a similar fashion to DogWalker.com and CatSitter.com. I opted to stop bidding for a couple of reasons. First, the price was more than I wanted to spend on a directory domain name right now. Second, and the reason I am writing this post, is because I wasn’t sure if enough people were called (and known as) fitness trainers.

When buying a great domain name like this, it’s important to dig deep into the numbers and actually think about the usage of the name. There are a lot more listings in Google for “personal trainer” than “fitness trainer,” and the Adwords keyword tool indicates that many more people perform searches for fitness trainers than personal trainers. When you are buying a domain name like this, think about the term and how it is used in every day by the people who will be visiting the site and/or advertising.

I still think FitnessTrainer.com is a solid name, but I couldn’t justify the price because so many people refer to fitness trainers as personal trainers. At the end of the day, there would still be great interest in the FitnessTrainer.com domain name and term, but my model wouldn’t have been able to justify the price.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/positivelyfit/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

15 COMMENTS

  1. Elliot,

    I don’t know if you are interested in fitness industry or training industry, but i have some training related domains (e.g. BrandingTrainer.com and BrandingTrainers.com).

    Priced to sell …

  2. With that kind of $$$, I prefer shoppingmalls dot com.

    There are shopping malls in Iraq but there is no such job as dog walker in most Muslim countries or where dogs are delicacy.

  3. A wise move.

    PersonalTrainer.com $32,000 3,130,000 134,200 1,067,862 low $2.88

    fitnesstrainer.com $12,000 1,290,000 14,762 19,036,265 high $3.11 All Taken

    Way overpaid, and not even close when it comes to searches.

  4. The term “fitness trainer” is used but as you say much less frequently. As you said, why spend that sort of money on a a name with many alternatives? There are many fitness-related websites so trying to rank a site for anything other than the exact match phrase or some longer-tail terms would not be easy. Most importantly, many trainers get their clients from the gyms they train in rather than relying on online sources. i.e. You see Trainer Joe/Jane instructing someone in the gym and ask them if they have any available time slots. Also, trainers will try to target certain gym members they believe might make potential clients – give them a little advice, offer a free session and attempt to upsell their services for a ten-session package etc. I have several exercise-related sites and obviously need to try a different monetization model but the space is not an easy one to compete in.

  5. El-Silver,

    I agree that you stopped bidding at the right time and let it go to a more motivated buyer. However, the domain name still fits a powerful category branding model for buildout, especially for anyone connected with a company that has this brand in mind for their prodservs.

    Those who are saying the domain was bought “overpriced” are wrong. The domain is a power domain for branding, and will be established as such as long as the owners have the capital and wisdom of how to build it out and promote the brand connected to their prodservs.

    I don’t know who bought it, I have no connection to them at all. These are only my opinions based on what I read here.

  6. I was also one of the bidders. I stopped bidding after it reached over $3,000 as I believed it had become end user bidding.

    I am surprised to see the final sale price.

  7. 100% agree with Mr. Silver

    We were the under bidder and decided the domain was not great so we stopped. If we want something the price does not usually matter.

    If it is worth 20K then it is worth 50K. The extra 30K is nothing if we lan to work on the domain.

    Also we would have to have the plural.

  8. Great post – the value of a domain name is in the mind of the buyer.

    There are many so called “crapy” domain names that have sold for Millions of $$.

    Many people say this and that about domain names but it shows that they do not know much about the Industry they are in.

    • @ Damir

      I don’t know of many crappy domain names (the domain name alone) that have sold for millions. There have been plenty of businesses with crappy domain names that have sold for millions, but that doesn’t really count.

  9. Nice thread. A domain name’s value depends on lots of factors, traffic, brandable, keywords. If FitnessTrainer.com is used to build one band, I think 20K is accepted, but for keywords and traffic, I do think there are lots of alternatives available.

  10. With the coming government focus on fighting obesity, and even taxing sugar and unhealthy foods, fitnesstrainer.com and health related niches aren’t a bad idea. It looks as though the interest will be coming courtesy of Washington. As an adwords identified synonym for fitness, it would not be impossible to get SERPs to rank the name for personal trainer as well.

    I noticed that phrase with the word childrens as a prefix to a 3-word long tail in a drop last year and grabbed the singular and plural. No value for type-in, no organic search, but plenty of ad sponsors for the 3-word – and easily targeted to keywords once built out, with a URL that would attract parents.

    …never had time to develop it, though. I do like your Cat Sitter and Dog Walker sites – great idea. It’d be nice to find some 35 or 40 hours days to catch up with :~)

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