Domain name investment experts tell you: How to choose a domain name for blockchain startups?

Domain names are the address of Internet products. From a technical point of view, they are just addressing and resolution. Both good and bad domain names have this function. However, as Internet products become more and more abundant, differentiated competition becomes more and more fierce, and Internet traffic costs become higher and higher, the quality of domain names becomes particularly important. At the same time, the brand benefit function of domain names for corporate projects has become increasingly important in the past two years.

In the last Babbitt AMA, we invited Zeng Shengwei (Zhibit), a well-known domain name investor in the digital currency and blockchain industry, to share practical information about blockchain domain names. Zeng Shengwei (Zhibit) is the initiator of the Guangzhou Bitcoin Salon and a founding member of the DACA Blockchain Association. He is currently focusing on digital asset investment (domain names, trademarks and digital currencies). In the past two years, the sales of digital currency-related terminal domain names alone have reached more than 500,000 yuan, with more than half of the net profit. Representative cases of digital currency domain name sales include:
1) Yunbi.com
2) Bikeji.com
3) Bizhongchou.com
4) Qukuaibao.com
5) Btcdice.com

Let's take a look at what suggestions he gave to domain name investors on issues such as how to position the quality of blockchain domain names, how to purchase them, how to negotiate prices, and how to protect enterprises. The following content is compiled by Babbitt Information:

Domain names are more important than brand functions and brand effects

In fact, as far as domain names are concerned, I personally believe that the technical addressing and resolution functions will become increasingly weaker in the future. For corporate terminals, domain names are more of a brand symbol, and the resulting brand value is sometimes far greater than the value of the domain name itself.

Try not to use the company name as the project brand name, such as OKCOIN and Yunbi.com in the currency circle. How many people know their company names without careful investigation? Moreover, there are often multiple projects under the name of a company. How to expose the project name if you only promote the company name? In addition to bringing considerable natural traffic, a premium domain name itself has a strong brand effect. I hope everyone will cherish and make good use of premium domain names.

Considerations on changing corporate domain names

I have emphasized the branding function of domain names. Investors can analyze domestic project websites based on which words are core keywords in digital currency domain names and the word-grouping habits and rules of domain names in this industry to see which ones have room for substitution or replacement.

Here I will just give two examples, 8btc.com and btckan.com. I think they both have room for domain name replacement. For Internet projects, the most valuable things are nothing more than users and traffic. The project is constantly growing and developing. In the process of promoting it to the outside circle, many newcomers are actually not familiar with our project, let alone knowing the website domain name. Suddenly seeing a report about "Babbitt" in a certain media, what domain name will these newcomers subconsciously think of? The most suitable one is of course the pinyin domain name that completely corresponds to the Chinese character name of the project brand. If the domain name is not found correctly, or it takes more time to find the accurate domain name, there will be a certain loss of users and traffic.

Do these companies have to change their domain names immediately? I don’t think so. Sometimes, in addition to considering the cost of purchasing a new domain name, changing the domain name will also have a great impact on the inclusion of existing websites (especially for information-related websites). For companies, these additional risks need to be considered.

Similarly, for investors, if they see that their domain names are not regular, should they buy them first and then store them, and then wait for an opportunity to sell them to them at a high price? This is really hard to say. Investors also need to consider the cost of domain name acquisition and the possibility of the terminal changing the domain name. These all need to be weighed. But I believe that if the terminal enterprise is large enough, such as listed, they will still consider purchasing the brand domain name that fully matches the terminal, because this is their brand and must be protected. At the same time, since it is listed, they will not lack the small amount of money to buy the domain name.

There are still many projects using .org or .io domain names. This is indeed the case with many projects abroad, but I think it may be different in China, where .com is still the main domain name.

Is Bitcoin domain name better or blockchain domain name better?

Whether it is "Bitcoin" or "blockchain", if we divide it by industry, can it be defined as the "digital currency" industry (it seems that no one has an authoritative definition for this industry)? This industry is originally very small, so there is no distinction between "Bitcoin domain names" and "blockchain domain names". The reason why the title is used in this way is simply because the word "blockchain" is indeed too popular recently.
But it does not mean that there is no difference at all. Domain names are sometimes time-sensitive. For example, two years ago, when the concept of blockchain was not yet widely promoted, domain names focused on the word "coin", and the corresponding domain name keywords included "coin", "btc", "bi", "bite", etc. However, as the focus shifted to blockchain, the focus of domain names is now on the word "chain", and the corresponding domain name keywords include "block", "chain", "ledger", "qukuai", "lian", etc.

What is a good domain name? Where can I buy one? How to negotiate when buying one?

What is considered a good domain name? For this question, I will only answer which are considered good blockchain domain names.
1) English: Main keywords include chain, block, ledger (in fact, most foreign media describe blockchain technology as "distributed ledger"), bit, coin, btc, xbt (Bitcoin ISO code), bitcoin, Satoshi, hash, etc., and are best matched with some financial and technical keywords. For example: pay, bank, wallet, cloud, game, etc.;
2) Pinyin: including the double or triple pinyin of "bi" and "lian", and the triple pinyin of "bite";
3) Character + number combination: All the above English and Pinyin keywords, plus a number combination. The better number suffixes are: 123, 100, 360, 114, etc., and the number prefix is ​​only "51" is better.

Which platforms should I go to to buy domain names? Here I will briefly talk about some steps to purchase terminal enterprise domain names:
1) If you have a clear project but are not sure what domain name to use, you can search for your desired domain name on some domain name registration/trading platforms according to some core keywords. The main platforms include: ename.com, ainame, 22.cn, mi.aliyun, 4.cn (non-registrar), or benmi.com (basically a collection of all the domain names displayed on the major platforms);
2) After the target domain name has been determined, or after the target domain name has been found through the above step, you need to query the domain name's whois information and make inquiries or further price negotiations by email; if the domain name is found to be displayed for trading on the above trading platform, you can directly find the contact information through the Mizhu store information for subsequent price negotiations;
3) If you cannot find any contact information of the owner, you can purchase the domain name through some intermediary platforms (usually with a 10% handling fee). Domain name intermediary platforms include Jinming.com http://4.cn/, Jinpai Auction http://www.jinpai.com/, Ename China http://www.ename.com/, Ainame.com https://www.22.cn/ and other small and medium-sized purchasing platforms.

What are the tips for negotiating with rice farmers? This is the most critical part.

I think first of all, terminal enterprises should have a preliminary understanding of the domain name market. You can refer to Babbitt's two posts here: Bitcoin domain name value assessment, collection of blockchain-related domain names, display, sale or analysis. After knowing the approximate price, try to get the domain name at the lowest cost based on your own budget and the seller's psychological price.

Is hoarding domain names profitable? What are the costs and benefits of hoarding domain names each year?

For terminal domain names, I personally think that there should be no distinction between double or triple spellings. It is normal that some triple spellings with good meanings are more expensive than double spellings with bad meanings. The financialization of domain name circles is becoming more and more diverse, and even considering securitization. More and more players are also considering it. For these reasons, the price of domain names has been rising every year in recent years.

This year, the domain name market is not very good, so my income has been greatly reduced, but fortunately I still have relatively many terminal-type domain names. I can sell about 1-2 per month on average. This income can cover all my terminal-type domain name renewal costs. If there is a surplus, I am still constantly acquiring some cost-effective terminal-type domain names.

As for the cost of hoarding domain names, I can only honestly tell you about my domain name positions. I currently hold more than 10,000 hard currency domain names (this year's market has plummeted, and I may need to throw away a lot of them), more than 700 traditional business name domain names (more than 200 double-spellings of cn, nearly 500 triple-spellings of com business names), and more than 500 digital currency-related domain names (most of which have the suffix com). If hard currency domain names are not taken into account, there are currently more than 1,200 terminal-type domain names that need to be held for a long time, and the annual renewal cost is about 70,000.

Is it too late to enter the domain name market now? Are there still investment opportunities for newcomers in the domain name market?

There are opportunities at any time. The key lies in whether investors are interested and willing to put in the effort. In addition to acquiring, registering, and bidding for domain names, a large part of domain name investment comes from news hot events, which requires the ability to obtain information at the fastest speed, and also requires a high degree of sensitivity and attention to these hot events.

It is more difficult to invest in domain names now than before, and it is not easy to make a profit. If you are interested, it is recommended to learn more, read more, and ask more questions in the early stage. There are several mainstream domain name forums, such as Domain City http://club.domain.cn/, Domain Name Forum http://www.dnbbs.com/, and you can also join the domain name QQ group and WeChat group and take the initiative to ask for advice.

Is there a bubble in the domain name market? Is the domain name market suitable for investment or speculation?

I personally think that we need to discuss this topic separately in two markets, namely the terminal market and the speculation market. I personally think that due to the scarcity of domain names, the price of high-quality terminal domain names will only get higher and higher. I think the transaction price of terminal domain names is actually less affected by the overall market of domain names. It depends more on the popularity of Internet development and the number of Internet entrepreneurs, that is, whether the demand for terminal domain names is increasing. If the demand increases, the price will naturally rise. In addition, I think the market price of terminal domain names is actually still within a relatively reasonable range, and it has not yet reached the point where all terminal companies cannot afford or cannot buy suitable domain names.

As for the commodity speculation market, it is inevitable that there will be bubbles, and this year's market situation is particularly obvious. Many categories have grown from nothing to tens of times at their peak, but now many have basically returned to zero. This risk is even higher than the risk of speculating in junk altcoins in the digital currency circle.

As for the future trend, I am still optimistic about the terminal domain name market, but it is not easy to make a profit by investing in terminal domain names, and you need to master more skills. As for the speculative goods market, I personally think that after this year's big reshuffle, there may be some improvement in the future.

Domain name resources like .com are almost exhausted. How about investing in new top-level suffixes?

Regarding the new top-level suffixes, I personally think that only very core popular keywords will have market value, such as bitcoin.vip, blockchain.vip, etc. Other terminal-type domain names should not be registered casually. For example, if you register okcoin.vip, yunbi.vip, etc., ask the owner of the exchange whether he would want such a junk domain name? For enterprises that are not giants, it is already very good to be able to fully protect several mainstream suffixes for domain name protection, including .cn, com.cn, and net. For very large terminal companies, such as baidu.vip and alibaba.vip, there may be investment value, but the risk of such domain names being arbitrated is extremely high and they can be easily arbitrated.

As for the exhaustion of com resources, startups may choose a new top-level domain name instead of com. This phenomenon does exist, but I personally think that the current proportion is still very small. The com suffix is ​​king, just like the status of Bitcoin in digital currency, which cannot be shaken. In fact, I have always emphasized that the application of domain names is more reflected in the brand effect, rather than just addressing and resolution. From this perspective, for domestic startup projects, most of the time, the names are still 2-3 Chinese characters. Those that are more technical (such as the digital currency industry) may choose English phrases. So I personally am still very optimistic about terminal domain names based on com.

At present, the terminal domain name market is not sound enough. If you want to invest in such domain names, most of them may still have to invest according to the rules of speculation. So how to invest in speculation? It depends on whether the registry is proactive, whether the dealer is powerful, and whether there are many players. However, speculation domain names are very risky, so please invest carefully.