Premium Domains

What Are Premium Domains?

In short, premium domains are of much higher value than regular domains. But what makes a domain “premium”?

Perceived Value

The perceived value of a domain in the domain marketplace is a huge factor of whether a domain will be considered premium or not. Generally, a premium domain will fetch at least $1,000 - but usually much, much more. Note that the perceived value of a domain will vary with time, depending on the popularity and current significance of the word/s.

Ease of Remembering

The easier to remember the name is, the more it will be worth. This is because it is more likely that the users will re-type it again in their browser, thereby increasing the potential return visitors.

Domain Brandability

Brandable, easy to spell and pronounce, short domain names are more likely to be premium.

Generic

The more generic a domain name is, the higher the values. Therefore “estate.com” is much more valuable than “dallas-city-estate.com”. Generic domains will have high exact match keyword searches - thousands or millions. A generic domain is almost always a premium domain.

Commercial Potential

The more the commercial potential a domain has, the more likely that it will be considered a premium domain. A domain targeting a high-profit keyword - e.g. “property” or “cars” - has a much higher commercial potential than for e.g. - “roses” or “pens”. But note that roses.com and pens.com are both considered premium domains! However, these will fetch much lower prices than property.com and cars.com.

Domain History

A domain name’s history is an important factor dictating the value of the domain. One which has been blacklisted or associated with spam sites will be of low value and unlikely to be considered ‘premium’. On the other hand, an aged domain with high traffic and a history of high-quality links will have a high value.

TLDs

Premium domains tend to be .com, .net or .org; however, many ‘lesser’ ccTLDs such as .bz or .de have fetched upwards of $1,000. Still, .com is always more profitable than other TLDs.

How can I get a premium domain?

You can get a premium domain either by buying it from one of the various online marketplaces (or from domain brokers) or else if it is still available for registering (i.e. nobody has ever owned it), you can register it at one of the many domain registrars. Note that you should never buy or register a domain which carries trademark issues, e.g. ones which contain the name of a prominent company or make. You may soon end up facing a lawsuit!

How to profit from a premium domain?

There are four main ways to profit from a premium domain. The easiest - and least profitable - is to park it with a parking company. This company will place ads on your domain and you will earn every time someone clicks on these ads.

You can also develop the domain into a site and earn by placing ads or affiliate links on the site.

You can also sell it to someone else - an investor or a main user. Alternatively you can also hire the domain for a specified period of time, generally 1 to 5 years.