A Premium Domain Name Portfolio

A domainer (I also like to refer to myself as a domainant) is someone who invests in, develops and/or speculates on domain names. If you own the rights to a domain name (as the registrant), you are a domainer.

I started out designing a website for myself at college. Someone liked it so much I did one for them. Then the local area school athletic conference had me design their site, so I registered my first domain name, symbioticdesign.com, and I started designing websites for others as a business.

As the business grew, I needed to offer my clients more things to make it easier on both of us. I expanded into hosting, and then domain name registration. Eventually, I expanded my domain and hosting offers in order to cover different options for different clients with different needs. Now, I have a whole bunch of domain registration and web hosting solutions under a variety of brands.

Part of the reason I had to expand into domain name registration, transfers and hosting, is that the registrar I was using was constantly blowing me off (network solutions, aka versign), and as a brand expert, I was both frustrated and alarmed at how silly and flippant they were with absolutely no regard for me as a customer. So I did a little research and signed-up as a reseller. Now I have quite a few domain registration sites because I want to be able to offer everything that is out there, and no one solution provider has everything. By having a few different solutions, I have access to domain extensions and tools from nearly everyone in the business.

Once I finally had a solution to the original problem with netsol, I was confident in my registrar platform(s) and I did start researching and buying domains for myself and others. The good ones were getting snapped-up left and right. I had ideas for websites, and I was working on some for others.

As time marched on, I wound-up selling some of my domains, buying others, holding onto some that I think are good investments. Because I am involved with domains, hosting and webmastery, you will see many such related names in my portfolio. I also researched a hard-to-find dictionary word domain, or two, and registered them. Plus, I have been developing some of my brands, or planning to, for some time.

There are really only two kinds of domain names. The first is a keyword domain that describes the product or service found at the site, like cars.com or radio.com. These are pretty much gone, although people are developing new things everyday. At one time widget was just a funny word. Now it is a Google Android gadget in smart phones, tablets and 2-in-1 nextbooks.  

The second type of domain name is the more common, it is the brand name. It can be your business name, your short, catchy, easy-to-spell website domain name, an easy-to-remember acronym, a Trademark, Service Mark, a brand, even a slogan. This is what most of us have to either register or buy in the aftermarket and build a site upon.

Some domain names in the aftermarket are quite expensive.  Very generic keywords for popular things can be in the millions.  Large corporations and rich domainers tend to register these before the little guy has a chance.

But the brand names are actually the names that people remember because they had to do the hard work to get there by building-up a great and reliable brand.  These are the ones I love the most, because they give the little guy a chance, and as brand names are actually more memorable than generic search terms in the long run because they show inovation and creativity, they wind-up performing much better than generic search terms in the long run.