Guides

What makes a domain "premium" — and what you are actually paying for

Premium means someone got there first and wants paying for it. Everything else is just explaining the number.

How to buy a premium domain without overpaying

Overpaying rarely comes from bad haggling. It comes from turning up without a number and letting the seller supply one.

Exact-match domains: when the keyword is worth it and when it is not

A keyword domain buys attention, not rankings — and it stops describing your business the day you launch the second product line.

One-word .com domains: why they cost what they cost

Every dictionary word .com has an owner, so the only real question is what that owner wants and whether the word earns it.

Category-killer domains and what owning one really does

What the exact-match .com genuinely buys you, what it quietly doesn't, how sellers arrive at a price, and when a brandable name is the smarter cheque.

.com versus the new TLDs, honestly compared

The .com premium is real, and so is the money. Here's what it actually buys, and when the cheaper extension is the stronger brand.

Buying a domain that is not for sale: the owner-direct approach

The best names are rarely for sale, only unasked; here is how to find the registrant, open at the right number, and avoid inflating the price yourself.

Domain escrow: how the money and the name change hands safely

Nobody has to go first: how escrow holds the money while the name moves, what that costs, and the ways it quietly goes wrong.

Leasing a domain instead of buying it: the full mechanics

Renting a name you cannot yet buy is a legitimate move, provided you know exactly whose registrar account it sits in.

Lease-to-own domains: how the path to ownership actually works

Instalment buying with the title handed over late. Simple in theory; the surprises hide in custody, control and the default clause.

Financing a domain purchase over time

Instalment plans and lease-to-own deals let you use a premium name from day one — the awkward part is what happens in month 30 if a payment fails.

Is leasing a domain worth it? The maths, run properly

Leasing looks like the cheap option right up until you price the day you hand the name back.

How premium domains are actually valued

There is no formula. There are factors, reference points, and a short list of checks that stop you paying retail for a wholesale name.

Getting a domain appraised, and what an appraisal is worth

A domain appraisal is an opinion with a decimal point in it: what it measures, what it misses, and when paying for a better one makes sense.

What is my domain worth? A method you can apply yourself

Four inputs, one afternoon, and a number you can defend when an offer arrives at a third of your ask.

Reading comparable sales without fooling yourself

Comparable sales are the closest thing this market has to evidence, which is exactly why they're so easy to bend towards the number you already had in mind.

What a domain broker does, and when you need one

What brokers actually do all day, what they charge, the deals where that fee pays for itself, and the deals where it is simply money you gave away.

Acquiring a domain someone else owns: the process end to end

Most owners of the domain you want have never been asked to sell. The asking is the easy part; everything after it is where money goes missing.

Buying a domain anonymously, and why it changes the price

Sellers price your desperation, not the domain. Here is how buyers keep their identity out of it, what that costs, and when it is a waste of money.

Negotiating a domain purchase: what moves the number

What actually shifts a seller's number, what only wastes your week, and how to run a domain negotiation that ends in a transfer rather than silence.

How to name a company: a process that survives contact with reality

A working sequence for naming a company, built around the checks that kill your favourite before launch rather than after it.

Brandable domain names: what separates the good from the forgettable

What makes an invented name stick — sound, length, spelling, a hint of meaning — and how to stress-test yours before money changes hands.

Why every good .com looks taken — and how to find one that is not

Almost every .com is registered, and has been for years. Which still leaves a workable space, if you know which shapes to look in.

The naming mistakes founders make, and what they cost later

The cheap naming decisions that reappear years later as legal fees, misdirected email and a rebrand nobody budgeted for.

Coined names versus real words: choosing between them

Real words buy comprehension and cost money; invented ones cost less and take longer to explain. The rest is arithmetic about your marketing budget.

Checking a name is genuinely free: domain, trademark and handles

An hour, no money, five databases: how to find out whether a name is actually yours to take, and where free checking quietly gives up.

Renaming a company without losing what you have built

Three of the four things you have built survive a name change intact. The fourth is customer memory, and it's the one nobody budgets for.

A startup name checklist worth actually running through

Naming has a strong pull towards infinite deliberation; an ordered set of tests is how you get out with a decision instead of a mood board.

Selling a premium domain: pricing, listing and closing

Most domains described as premium aren't, and the ones that are still sell on a number you can defend rather than one you'd like.

How to price a domain you own

Your renewal receipts are not a valuation. Here's how to work out what one real buyer will actually pay, and how to ask for it.

Where to sell a domain, and what each venue costs you

Commission is the boring variable. The expensive mistake is listing a five-figure name in a room where only resellers are bidding.

Handling lowball offers without killing the deal

Most low offers aren't insults. They're opening positions, and the seller who answers them well makes more money than the seller who takes offence.

Domain marketplaces compared: fees, reach and who pays them

On almost every marketplace the seller gets the invoice. That doesn't mean the buyer isn't paying it, and the arithmetic is worth doing before you list.

Transferring a domain between registrars, step by step

Moving a domain between registrars is mostly waiting, with one step that will take your email offline if you skip it.

Keeping a valuable domain from being stolen

Valuable domains aren't hacked away from you. They're talked away, usually by someone with a plausible story and your inbox.

Expired and dropped domains: the real odds

By the time a domain is genuinely free to register, the market has already voted on it, and the verdict is usually no.

Short domains: length, memorability and price

Fewer characters cost more per character than anything else in branding. Sometimes that's money well spent. Often it isn't.

Do keyword domains still help SEO?

Keyword domains don't rank you. They quietly make everything else you do to rank a bit cheaper, which is a different claim entirely.

Building a domain portfolio without losing money

The arithmetic that decides whether a domain portfolio pays its own rent, or quietly bills you every year for names nobody wants.

Choosing the first domain for a new business

A one-afternoon process for picking a domain you'll still stand behind in five years, plus how to tell when you're just avoiding launch.

Domain backorders: what you are really paying for, and when they win

Drop-catching is a race decided in milliseconds, and your backorder fee buys you a lane rather than a result.

Drop catching: how good names get caught in the first second

The good names never reach the drop; they get renewed, restored or auctioned in private, and the survivors are the ones professionals declined.

Buying a domain that already has traffic — and checking it is real

Most traffic claims on resale domains are part bot, part ghost — here's how to work out which visitors are real, and which will still be there next quarter.

Choosing a domain registrar: the costs nobody quotes up front

Registrars compete on year one and make their money in year two; here's how to read the bill before it arrives.

Transferring a domain between registrars without breaking anything

Nothing about a transfer should be visible to your visitors, and if you copy the DNS out first, it won't be.

Domain theft: how names get stolen and how owners stop it

Thieves don't crack DNS; they crack your inbox. The routes in, the locks that shut them, and what the first 48 hours after a theft demand.

Parking a domain: what it earns, and what it costs you in brand

What a parked domain actually earns, why the maths almost never works, and how a page of ads quietly damages a name you plan to build on later.

Flipping domains: the numbers behind the success stories

A clear-eyed look at the maths of domain flipping: carrying costs, sell-through, commission, and why most portfolios lose money quietly.

Selling a domain to an end user rather than another investor

How to price, approach and close a sale with the company that will actually use the name, instead of the flipper who wants to resell it.

Two-word .com domains: the last category still widely available

Single dictionary words in .com are gone. Compounds of two ordinary words are not, and that gap is where most good brands now come from.

Naming an AI company without dating it to this year

How to pick a name that survives the next shift in AI fashion, and which of this year's naming habits will read as a date stamp by 2028.

Domain name ideas: a method for generating them that is not guesswork

A repeatable way to produce dozens of viable domain candidates, filter them down to a shortlist worth paying for, and know which ones to drop.

Trademarks and domain names: the check to run before you commit

A practical sequence for checking whether the name you're about to buy will survive contact with someone else's trademark, and what to do when it won't.