Mistakes Happen, Especially In Domaining
I remember when I first started domaining most of the emphasis was placed on how much traffic a domain name received. These days, the savvy domainer understands that traffic can be classified in a number of different ways. I tend to classify traffic in two categories:
1. Targeted
Targeted traffic tends to directly correlate with the domain name. If you owned a used car domain name and there were a number of people visiting the site, looking for used cars you would have a win, win situation.
2. Untargeted
This tends to be the most common type of traffic. Traffic like this normally comes from foreign countries. For example, I run a proxy site which receives thousands of unique visitors a month. Since proxy sites tend to appeal to users who reside in countries with strict Internet rules, the site tends to receive the majority of its traffic from China. I find it difficult to capitalize on the traffic because the campaigns I tend to run with google adsense are gear towards Americans.
Now getting back to the point. Domainers do not pay as much attention to traffic as they once did. Most of my domaining associates are more concerned with branding. I completely agree with this notion and feel that branding outweighs the majority of the statistical figures out there. When shopping a domain name it is very hard to convey the stats to the end-user. Most end-users will hear a domain name and if they like the way it sounds or the meaning behind the name, they will make an offer to purchase it. If you start rambling off statistical data you are more likely to lose the end-user.
Early on during my domain registration days I made many mistakes. The majority of those mistakes revolved around purely concentrating on the statistical data of a domain. I went as far as registering several typos similar to wwwexample.com, just because I knew the main site received a massive amount of visitors. This definitely backfired on me, most of those domains did not monetize well and were nearly impossible to flip to another domainer. The next step was to let the domain names drop and that is exactly what happened. Over the years, I learned to focus more on branding instead of statistics.
Jason Thompson
PS: Heading over to the bido auction!