One-word Domain Names

"Having the domain we have has really helped us punch above our weight in so many ways. It is something that touches on almost every interaction. And when people come to us, there is an assumption that we are a much bigger operation than we really are. We are a small business (but) we just did a big promotion with Coca Cola, so we had the Wish logo on 14 million cans of Fanta in the UK."

"If you look the part, (with) a name that sounds like where you want to be, you are in so much of a stronger position to take advantage of those kinds of opportunities."

--  Richard Kershaw, Wish.co.uk interviewed at Domain Sherpa

 

Squatbranding, Tradesquatting

Wake Up ... if you can !

People don't complain enough about corporatization, when bandits in business suits encroach on our lives through squat brands:

squatbranding ™ - to incorporate in generic space; to acquire or arrogate a common word or phrase as a corporate brand.

Shortcut-seeking scum too often plonk themselves down in our common space & claim permanence, saying in essence "Fuck you - now move around me!"

Squatbranded regular words are shamelessly hijacked from common history and our general dictionaries:
amazon
apple
total
mars
delta 
caterpillar
intel
orange
target
vail
carrefour ("crossroad")
shell
metro
continental
oracle

They're our words first, not their recent squat brand. The wider community has long prior use of those words - but shortcut-seeking scum try shoving us aside with ® trademark appropriation. We need to push back. Imagine brands such as apple™ paying us more to squat in our common space. We must visualize them sporting the SQUATBRAND mark:  (Not a call to deface their operations!)

Those starting a new venture should coin new terms, as did the creators of Localversity or Google.

Ventures that chose to brand on a novel descriptive phrase seem rather OK: Kentucky Fried Chicken, Japan Railways, Smell Museum

Can't complain too much of firms trading on a family name: McDonalds, Honda, DuPont

But we shouldn't need to tiptoe around squatbranded regular words.

Corrupt officials and smutty nobility, if they could, would sell our kids for meat, renting Our Heritage cheaply to the first shyster paying registration. Too often it's a Squatbrand

Property to Develop

Expanding on the vision of  Domains as Billboards:
I've been surprised by people antagonistic toward domainers (domain developers & salespeople). The folks upset are often misinformed of business reality.

Many have read about someone 'squatting' on a proprietary name, trying to extort a huge sum from a trademark owner. (Why this troubles people is complex - relating more to easy money envy & comeuppance than with true sympathy for behemoth multinationals).

But such frictions are a tiny segment of domaining. Our world has millions of generic words and new-coined names to profitably link customers with information, goods & services. These words and phrases are from all languages -- each now has an internet address you can own, use, rent or sell.

Businesses increasingly use generic domain names as gateway billboards to their commercial services -- also, when purchased, that path is closed to competitors. 

Be the authoritative site for your specialty - buy multiple domains to link your operations with worldwide success.

Get that key real estate now !
help@strongestbrands.com

Domains as Billboards

Memorable domain names are great for attracting multiple people everyday to a product, place or service.

Potent names are billboards -- linking every smartphone, each & all computers to whatever an owner displays.

As with billboards, the footprint is tiny or ethereal. A billboard can be a building wall, or stand mounted in air on a narrow post, but reach millions of consumers and commuters.

With a memorable address, they'll come back for more information.

Get your keywords now -- while still possible -- Buy a memorable catchy domain, and build a stronger brand !

Marketers: Wake Up!

I'm deeply amazed at this late date that so many big corporate marketing departments still don't fundamentally understand the power of internet marketing.

I'll use a few of my own domains as examples. All are generic words & .com domains:

鼻塞

= nasal congestion, stuffy nose (Chinese)
1350 million Chinese people live in dusty, dirty, crowded conditions where colds & sinus problems are continuing difficulties. How many million suffer from 鼻塞 at any one time? Perhaps 50 million people? Maybe 100 million? Maybe more!  Many companies sell congestion treatments such as Vicks®, Contac®, Otrivin®, Clarinase®, Nazal®, Afrin®, Bisaitong®, Mentholatum®, Pabron®, etc. Each of these firms should strongly want 鼻塞.com bringing sufferers to them. Basically, each wants  鼻塞 most associated with their product and not linked to one of their competitors. Great key word!  (also for sale: 鼻炎薬.com)

眠る

= sleep (Japanese)

Each company selling futon, beds or sleeping pills wants this word linked to them. Nishikawa, Sakuramichi, Maruhachi and other futon sellers are now fiercely competing for market share amongst themselves (西川布団, 櫻道, 丸八, など), but also with Francebed (フランスベッド), Tempur, IKEA, Simmons, dreambed, Hästens, etc. Additionally, companies selling insomnia medication (睡眠薬 such as Nytol®, マイスリー®, etc.) want their name linked to sleep. The hotel industry is also concerned with sleep. Many different industries, many more individual companies. Who'll be the successful one...? This is a powerful word at a cheap price (imagine the cost over ten years). Or imagine when a competitor gets 眠る.com before you buy it - what's the cost then per year? They get an image boost and continually many customers will flow to them instead of going to you.

在线娱乐场

= online casino (Chinese)
These people earn lots of money. When people imagine an online casino, why not make sure they come to you, at 在线娱乐场.com  Better than investing in TV commercials, the website keeps working around the clock, every day, year after year.


 >> more to come...
 
 
 

Squat Between the Ears

A recent article in The Local (Sweden) explained about a woman who's owned the website Amazon.se since 1997. Now the mega-retailer wants her site, but she's not yet sold out.

[ First report (here) in Swedish by Daniel Goldberg, IDG / internetworld ]

Swedish readers react in part to the fact the Stockholm-based company is in the ultra-posh district of Östermalm. Thus she gets minimal sympathy.

Responses to the English-language article labeled this woman "a squatter" and "greedy" and also "a gigantic pain in the ass" -- but what's the truth?

The woman, a graphic designer, founded her company named Amazon in 1988, long before Jeff Bezos started his firm. Amazon AB was registered as a graphic design company in Sweden on 1988-Sept-19 and got their web domain amazon.se on 1997-July-03. 

The mega-retailer amazon.com was founded in Washington State, USA in 1994 and registered their domain 1994-Nov-01. First, clearly the founder of Amazon AB did not choose her company name based on the book giant, as she was in business six years earlier.

Of course, both firms are riding a preexisting well-known term (the Amazon women warriors of Greek myth, and the South American river). Taking advantage of popular generic words is not wholly positive commercially, as common usage continues (we needn't have an apple® a day).

Applying for trademark protection is an administrative process within national jurisdictions. There is no automatic worldwide comprehensive protection. Multiple firms can register trademarks and legally operate in parallel when operations are in different classes of goods or services.

It's very unlikely this woman registered her company name as a website with bad faith intent, or tried to infringe on what's now a monster juggernaut. There's no cybersquatting here. If Bezos & Amazon.com want this woman's site, they can pay. Maybe she'd accept two million euro today -- tomorrow may be different.

Colombo Discovers the World

International Domain Names are similar to Christopher Colombus 'discovering' the New World - welcome to narrow anthropocentric vision. IDN are not 'international' any more than English or Romanization - they are words, characters and languages regularly used by billions of people.

Some may say the characters / letters of IDN are coded, and can also be displayed as xn--(etc.). But all internet and computer characters are codes - every domain also has a numeric IP address, and behind that is always a binary string of ones and zeros.

The IDN punycode is rather a workaround aid to people without quick access to direct character input methods. People in the relevant nation simply input native text from their keyboard.

Recognize now that IDN are simply domains. And as using the web gets easier & more vital each day for people worldwide, the Smart investors are buying key domain names today. 

子.com  =  xn--i8s.com  =  http://www.%E5%AD%90.com  =  198.235.133.226

Open more Windows!

This ain't a plea to buy Microsoft Windows 8.1 -- (which I'm just now getting accustomed to; some good new procedures, but disliking repeated attempts to force Microsoft products into my work, and angry to pay for so much surveillance not to my benefit).

Anyhow, this "Open more Windows" is an appeal to LEARN NEW WAYS

Some people still don't know it's possible to open multiple browser tabs simultaneously.

Some people still don't know they can pull traffic to their website with more than one address:

books.com
book.com
bn.com
barnesandnoble.com

Unleash power - build your brand using MULTIPLE domains.
Build new avenues to transport more people to your business.
Get help now:     help@strongestbrands.com

Brand Games

As a domain investor, everyday I imagine how generic keywords can promote marketing. I also seek to develop new brands, and work in assorted languages. My main business is place branding: economic geography and destination marketing. I'm a teacher, investor, and participant.

It's a game. It's creative, and it's fun.

It's usually very profitable for clients. Many are slowly awakening to the realities of the "information superhighway" - during your lifetime, an irresistible internet has developed which offers huge riches. Many types of bricks-and-mortar businesses (shops and business locations) are obsolete. Change or die - which really means ADAPT to the new reality.

Perhaps the old corner bank building can be successfully re-purposed, or the empty offices of the travel agent and those other businesses. Maybe it's better to abandon your dying community and go where people are having fun & prospering.

Place Appeal is essential - choose well!

gTLDs? Thank You!

We're now at the start of a huge expansion of internet addresses, with new gTLDs (generic Top Level Domains) such as .construction, .directory, .zone, .today, and .guru joining the older .com, .net, .gov, .info, etc. domain addresses.

One byproduct is a huge boost in advertising monies for the industry. More people are being exposed to news about domains, and this will attract greater investment in domain names, and ultimately spill-over positively to existing investors. Demand for good .com brand names will rise as sites are upgraded and supplemented. Smaller businesses are beginning to recognize what big firms already learned about keyword & category-killer domains (and what often helped create big firms): a garden-supply company wants garden.com (in addition to their local name). 

But the most interesting possibility with new gTLDs is that new attention will generate innovation and systemic developments. The domain name industry needs better mechanisms for buying and selling, more liquidity , easier ways to offer advertising, better systems to increase parking revenues. Surely in adding many thousands of new investors, we'll also attract a few entrepreneurs with great ideas and better domain investor tools.

"Non-standard" characters?

International domain names, or IDN, use characters outside the normal abc of the English-language keyboard. The IDN has two alternative approaches: one with the "local" characters and one with standard English characters prefixed by "xn--"  For example, the Swedish for easy is "lätt"
lätt.com    (is equal to:)
xn--ltt-qla.com

Option two doesn't seem easy, but those domains are attractive in original form, and type easily on local keyboards where the characters are used constantly.

It's also a kind of clubbishness:
Lätt differs from latt

The uninitiated struggle; the cognoscenti party hearty.

Ever-more-important !

The internet is ever more important. Some details change each few years, but the internet phenomenon is not going away -- it grows central to more businesses, and ever more a key part of daily life.

Position yourself to take advantage of this change.

Develop ambitious brands.