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This article is posted by our friends at Ukraine.TV .
I am just posting my thoughts on the not so humble '-' in relation to domains. Some call the '-' a hyphen, others a dash.
When configuring or registering a domain, here are the possible characters you may use:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz-1234567890
Now there are so many combinations of domain configuration and 'design' that are possible.
Just some examples (N=Number L=Letter)+ extension at end, eg. .com So, N-N.com could be 5-6.com for example & L-N.com could be K-7.com
NN.com N-N.com NNN.com N-N-N.com N-NN.com NN-N.com NNNN.com
You get the idea many possiblities
Of course you can have the same in the L (Letter) variants:
LL.com L-L.com LLL.com L-LL.com LL-L.com LLLL.com
There are also the mixed combos:
L-N.com NL.com LLNN.com LL-LL.com
and so on...........
Now there are no 'rules' really on what an enduser or company will pay for anything if they want, of course the real premium prices go for the best generics, shortest or highly brandable domains, usually in .com
For the thousands of investors and domainers, pricing can be tricky, and domainers like 'rules' but there are many greay areas and i would like to explore some today, in particular the '-' dash !
There are situations where out of the possible characters available, a '-' can be considered the most premium character.
Lets start at the top.
A-Z.com arguably could be considered even better than AZ.com or A2Z.com All are used by companies using that branding
AZ.com recently sold for $500k
A-Z.com is owned by a company so its value would not be able to be gauged purely on domain terms.
Other examples i will use, I own I-Q.com
Now the version without the dash is owned by a large company and probably will never come up for sale, if it did, the company would have to be bought too.
Now currently i am using as a sales site but really should use for an IQ test site as believe it is a great name for that.
It is quite a unique name, but here the '-' is the most valuable character it could have.
I2Q.com or IRQ.com for example cannot be better, any variant! BUT standard reseller logic may dictate that a LLL.com would be worth more, not so!
This brings us onto other things, with the advancing rate of LLL.com prices. There are only 17,676 combinations, and most are owned by developed companies. Many others are owned and not for sale, many more are for sale but at xx,xxx -xxx,xxx prices. Which they do fetch regularly. The supply and availability and affordability for most citizens has expired really.
There are i believe also some combinations, (not many) that will never find buyers, even in other countries where letters are gauged differently in tyerms of 'premium' appeal.
An example maybe xkq.com for example
It is parked, and probably no enduser out there and even if there were, a very high chance they would not pay even the reseller min of $6.5k , let alone the premium the seller probably wants on top.
Enter into the arena, L-L-L.com, LL-L.com & L-LL.com
All L-L-L.com are registered. 25% are being used as developed sites to endusers.
There are amazingly L-LL.com & LL-L.com still available
Many are developed too. The incredible thing is all approx. half a million LLLL.com (4 letter .com domains) are registered.
Now, most companies globally have 3 letters. It is a given.
My view and many others is that for example:
MHGU.com is registered and for sale. Now this is still a nice domain, do not get me wrong, especially useful with the U on the end for 'Universal' However, it will not come cheap and will be minimum price xxxx, i am sure
MH-U.com for example is free to register for say $7 right now! It's crazy when you think
The MHGU.com may be useful to someone with the MHG acronymj for their country and are happy to elongate with a useful 'U',
But the example i was trying to give was if your company has the acronym MHU, then your first choice is MHU.com
This is parked and not for sale. If it was, then it will be a minumum $10k, probably much more, IF the owner wants to sell and you can contact him
Next is M-H-U.com This is registered too and is for sale. An enduser will have to pay in the $xxxx range also for recent comparable sales.
Most endusers seem to prefer L-L-L.com, howver may still buy the LL-L.com & L-LL.com variant too
So to recap, the available domain of MH-U.com..... the '-' is more premium than any other character in this example to an enduser. Better than an a, r, 5 anything Because the most endusers out there have 3 letter acronyms
In my honest opinion if you can afford to renew for 2-3 years these will be worth many, many times what they are worth in reseller terms and small fortunes to endsuers.
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