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Cruising the boards there are still lots of great debate on the worthiness of LLLL.com domains. When they were flying high, everyone loved them. However, now that they are at a low point, some people are quick to kick them to the curb and state "I told you so". Below are some comments that I made recently on the bulletin boards in defense of LLLL.coms. Why, I felt I had to defend them, I really don't know. My portfolio only consists of about 200 of these, however, I tend to jump at any underdogs defense. So, I went about trying to save the LLLL.coms reputation by posting all sorts of "facts", but, by the end of my post, I had a realization, we are fighting the wrong enemy.
There is 95% less supply of 3letter.coms than 4letter.coms(17,000:450,000). I will even go as far to say there is 97% less supply.....
Actually the ratio is 1/26. So if a LLL.com so if xqz.com sold for $7000, then xqzi.com should sell for $269. So as Bmugsford stated, either Xqz.com should go down, or xqzi.com should go up in time.
When I see a portfolio of a few thousand LLLL.coms being offered on eBay for about $40 each. This jars against the perceived rarity.
Sure, there is an oversupply of LLLL.coms right now, however, all domain types right now are in a slump for about 10 different reasons. It is not just the LLLL.com and in fact I see more people getting rid of their long keywords on the sales venues faster than I see them getting rid of LL.com, LLL.com, and LLLL.com domains.
As far as your comment on rarity goes, it depends upon what you perceive as rare. The fact that all of the 2, 3, and 4 letter domains are all registered makes many believe that they are rare. When you consider that there are over 11,881,376...5 letter domains and 308,915,766...6 letter domains, and 8,031,810,176...7 letter domains,456,976 looks like a pretty small number. Especially when you consider just how many acronyms there are or could be in the future. Acronymfinder.com lists over 600,000 english only acronyms and state that they are still expanding and adding new acronyms all the time. Now consider all the different languages, and every LONG name - Names for companies, organizations, personal names, diseases, cities, states, countries, planets, stars, galaxies, plants, animals, classifications, every long book title, every long word or phrase that may be popular in any book that has ever been published or will be published. There could be millions of uses for just 456,976 LLLL.coms.
Advertising-Cheaper to advertise a short domain. Has very minimal impact on the decision to choose a name for a company or product
Have you looked a the price of print media now days? Further, longer names are harder to spell, write down quickly and memorize for audio advertising. People prefer simple and short. High Definition Television quickly became HDTV. Bank of America now calls itself B of A. Visa International Service Association calls itself VISA. Down the street I have a This Can't Be Yogurt Shop - a very popular franchise which renamed itself to TCBY. The web is full of acronyms IMO, LMAO. Text messaging is becoming a language within itself. Long and formal is quickly being placed by short and fast.
I have left this one to last as I hear this a number of times and I think this is a misnomer. Most business owners with the company name ABC, giving the choice between having ABC.com compared with ABCG.com or ABCI.com and the others you show will pay a huge premium for ABC.com. It is in the human psyche, every time the business owner gives out his web address he’s going to feel subconsciously he’s failed.....
In this tough economy, and with lots of small businesses hurting financially. Saving thousands of dollars can make one feel like a winner as well.
Given all the comments in this thread, I feel there is a consensus developing that 4letter.coms are more risky but offer high returns.....
I disagree on the risk factor. You mentioned ABC.com as an example before. However, it is a trademark by lots of companies, in fact most 3 letter domains are company trademarks. Thus, lots of investors are frightened away from purchasing one due to a UDRP. However, just by adding one extra L, to a LLL.com domain, there are now 26 times more possible acronyms to choose from and far less of a chance that your infringing on someone's TM. Therefore I know that I'd sleep a bit better at if I were a new investor testing out the waters by paying $20 for QZCY.com, than $7000 for QZC.com
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Well, after all of the above comments, I feel as if I defended the LLLL.coms reputation quite well, however, now I'm feeling kind of bad. It's not right to tear apart another rare domain type while proving your point. So, at the bottom of my post I wrote this....
Now, with all that said we have to consider all these new TLD's. I think the time has past for people to debate the merits of LLL.coms vs LLLL.coms and start working together.
Investing in any domain is already a risky business. Wine.com sold for a couple million, although I do not know who bought it, I'd probably be drinking pretty heavily right now if it were me. Will it go up, or down when they come up with a .wine?
There are just so many variables. I can see lots of entrepreneurs paying high dollars for generic words like .car, .house, .bank, etc.. However, many of us are holding onto a great number of LLL.coms, LLLL.coms, LLLLL.coms, LLLL.nets, L-LL.coms, etc.. Now is the time that we need to strengthen our market, or fall apart and start running like chicken little "the sky is falling, the sky is falling"!
We all had reasons to get into short domain investing. Now we need to start thinking of as many reasons as we can why .com, .net and .org should remain the king, queen and uhhh...prime minister?
Here are my top 3 beliefs why short .coms are not at risk.
1. A short domain name and a very short and popular and memorable .com seems like a winning combination as it places all the emphasis on the company name.
2. If I had MCLB.com and I was a mortgage and loan broker. I would stick with the .com domain because the other domain choices like MCLB.Loans, MCLB.Bank, MCLB.Financial or MCLB.Crooks would limit me to the English language, and only to a small segment of my business.
3. My customers would have to use the search engines and surf through millions of sites trying to find me, and perhaps end up on one of my competitors pages because the couldn't remember my TLD.
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What do you think?
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