I want it to be short and / or memorable, then I check whether or not it's been used / abused in the past (bad links, bad content, etc).
I don't really care about TLDs, I love coming up with cool / interesting names for my domains, and this almost always includes non-popular TLDs.
For example, some of the domains that I've had in the past (some of which have expired but I re-purchased last month because I like them too much
) have been...
- greatly.fit (I already purchased this one back a few weeks ago for a few bucks, and I intend to sell it for $100s or $1000s in 1-2 months)
- esoterical.me (also bought this one back, too with the same intent)
- justbeatit.net (I had a website around Clickbank product about beats making software around 2011 I believe)
- pencildrawing.fun (also a CB product about learning how to pencil-draw, I let this one expire, and don't intend to buy it back soon)
- gradeAed.com (had big plans for this domain, but I gave up on it after I had a website on it in the education niche)
- winkycar.com (had an Amazon affiliate site on car headlights on this domain some 10 years ago)
- pinnedup.top (I re-purchased this domain few weeks ago because it was only $5 and I would like to do something with it, I just don't know what yet)
And a few others that I don't remember of...
But anyway, as you can see, my domains are usually short / brandable / catchy / interesting / any combination of these. And I don't give a crap about which TLDs they use as long as the TLDs are part of my words play for these domains.
I do tend to stay away from TLDs like xyz, cyou, sbs, and the alikes. I see absolutely no value in these TLDs even if they are cheap (and I assume that some of these are acronyms anyway, and I don't want to run into trademarking / copyrighting issues, so I tend to avoid really specific and corporate-oriented domains).
Also, the domain's history is important too like I said, I tend to stay away from abused domains as well...
But otherwise yeah, the names themselves and the domain's history are my 2 main criteria for choosing domain names
I’m curious what experienced domainers prioritize most before investing.
oh, you meant domainers....
Well, this changes things because domainers are usually obsessed with having as many short and clean .coms as possible. The fact that they're short and clean I can understand (I want short and clean domains too).
But with regards to the .com part I think most of these domainers are still stuck in the 90s when owning a .com gave you prestige and exclusivity. But nowadays, with people's perceptions being altered, owning a .com is not a big deal anymore, there are WAY better domains out there than many .coms and yet, many domainers will still die on the .com hill like stubborn mules LOL
For example - if I had the money - I would buy in a heartbeat domains like be.pro, up.top, or fine.art instead of 8-10 words long domains just because they're .com
And, sadly, most of these greedy domaining companies, have caught onto this trend in buyer's perception and have now put absurdly high price tags on some of these domains. Sad, really...
Anyway, even though I'm not calling myself a domainer, I have dealt with domain names for over 15 years to know a few things about them, and what I can tell you that domainers are looking for when it comes to domain names are - in no particular order - these things:
- .com
- short (up to 10 letters long usually, but up to 6-7 letters preferably)
- clean history (no google penalties probably, I don't know whether they check for other things too)
- they must also be 1-word English domains
- they must have some type-in traffic
