Short, memorable, pronounceable and brandable, those are the four factors that many think make the best domain name material. It’s what sets apart Boardwalk and Park Place from Mediterranean Avenue on the real-life Monopoly board of Internet real estate. Many view the best kind of Internet traffic to be type-in domains. These are the short and easy to remember domains with top-level TLDs. Someone searching for a particular topic doesn’t have to go to the search engine to find what they’re looking for. The owner of such a domain won’t have to contend with the constant bumper-car mentality of search engine optimization. The surfer belongs to the domain owner as soon as the domain name is typed in.
Beyond good type in domains, there are the easy to remember ones that will stick with the surfer once they have seen advertising. Even if a domain isn’t useable now, it may be ripe for resale to someone who can use it. When buying and selling domains, it’s not important to develop a whole site around a specific domain name. The goal for domain name resellers is to buy the domain as cheaply as possible and then resell it at the best price.
The best way to stay in the domain business is to predict the future. Short of buying a crystal ball, it’s a difficult feat. New coinages and phrases pop up in the collective consumer mind all the time. Who could have predicted tumblr or pinterest? Clearly someone did. What will the catch phrase or new term be tomorrow? That’s the question that must be addressed. It’s that eye toward the future that an Internet real estate investor must develop to do well in the Internet real estate business.