Wanted: Domain Appraisal Free-Hosting.co.uk

[DaveP]

Hi all,

Have actually caught this with development in mind but still interested to see what you all think? Does the hyphen kill this one?

3,600 local exacts. £2.39 CPC.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[philiporchard]

Nice name - worth developing IMHO

 

[julian]

imho completely worthless - it doesn't even have any decent archive etc.. is it really worth developing properly?

- why is it better than say 'fastfreehosting.co.uk which is free to reg, has no hyphen, is already more memorable, contains the required keywords.. and if you made it into a business would probably be more saleable long term.

I'm probably missing something obvious about the value..

 

[Systreg]

Regardless of the hyphen, I think it's a nice name for developing, and compared to fastfreehosting.co.uk, I'd prefer yours to that one any day of the week, nothing wrong with hyphens, it's mostly domain snobs who don't like them.

 

[julian]

Regardless of the hyphen, I think it's a nice name for developing, and compared to fastfreehosting.co.uk, I'd prefer yours to that one any day of the week, nothing wrong with hyphens, it's mostly domain snobs who don't like them.

..ok point taken, but just 'prefering' and being guided by personal taste rather than a solid business model, imho I don't think is a good way to build a business.

A hyphen can be ok sometimes but obviously not good long term when you built something only to possibly lose out to nonhyphendomain.co.uk.

Other than that why is it better than brandfreehosting.co.uk (fasthosts/co/uk etc), and why did someone let it drop if it has so much potential?

 

[murph]

Hyphen would put me off dev thesedays, certainly if decent resources are to be applied.

 

[Alien]

Personally I think it's low value. I wouldn't develop it either.

 

[namealot]

Hostings cut throat entering an established market with a hyphen and a word that sort of excludes paying clients to me seams a uphill battle as a business?

 

[boxfish]

What would be the monetisation method when developing this name?

 

[domsaleuk]

Hyphen would put me off dev thesedays, certainly if decent resources are to be applied.

Why ?

 

[domsaleuk]

Regardless of the hyphen, I think it's a nice name for developing, and compared to fastfreehosting.co.uk, I'd prefer yours to that one any day of the week, nothing wrong with hyphens, it's mostly domain snobs who don't like them.

Hi - I don't know if I would call them domain snobs but I see Systreg's point and generally agree with it - I think the hyphen and non hyphen argument is one that really needs to be thrashed out as in development terms I don't believe hyphens have an adverse effect. I think the only issue is if you are trying to create a big offline brand which generally people won't be. Having said that check out the adverts that are starting to be seen on TV these days with hyphen domains - there are a few I noticed.

Anyway I think this is a very good name for development as long as there are companies that actually offer free hosting which I expect there are but I haven't looked. This name gets good exact match of 3600 and even better phrase and broad making development potential vast and much better than fastfreehosting.

Personally after the sale of webhosting.co.uk of over £300k I think strong two word generic hosting names in general are good - obviously they will not all be worth anywhere near this but still they should get a reasonable price especially if developed into a good little site

 

[julian]

It's not about being a domain snob..

please humour me for my general retarded understanding of the internet and domaining - why is it better than brandfreehosting.co.uk, and why did someone let it drop if it has so much potential?

If I was going to develop a free hosting site right now, and put some time and effort in (+dosh) why couldn't I get the same result with brandfreehosting.co.uk?

Hi - I don't know if I would call them domain snobs but I see Systreg's point and generally agree with it - I think the hyphen and non hyphen argument is one that really needs to be thrashed out as in development terms I don't believe hyphens have an adverse effect. I think the only issue is if you are trying to create a big offline brand which generally people won't be. Having said that check out the adverts that are starting to be seen on TV these days with hyphen domains - there are a few I noticed.

Anyway I think this is a very good name for development as long as there are companies that actually offer free hosting which I expect there are but I haven't looked. This name gets good exact match of 3600 and even better phrase and broad making development potential vast and much better than fastfreehosting.

Personally after the sale of webhosting.co.uk of over £300k I think strong two word generic hosting names in general are good - obviously they will not all be worth anywhere near this but still they should get a reasonable price especially if developed into a good little site

 

[murph]

Why ?

Personal opinion: Mainly because of the potential leakage to the non hyphenated, and if it really takes off, I'd be kicking myself over the hyphen from a branding perspective. The EMD bonus not being what it is was, I tend now to think in terms of brand if any real effort is involved. The game changed with G's EMD update.

 

[Systreg]

..ok point taken, but just 'prefering' and being guided by personal taste rather than a solid business model, imho I don't think is a good way to build a business.

Just to be clear, when I say prefer, I mean there's no way I would take fastfreehosting.co.uk over free-hosting.co.uk, the latter is far better in my eyes even with the hyphen, I don't like the look of the other name at all.

It's also nothing to do with my being guided by personal taste, I just don't like the alternative name you offered, nor is it anything to do with business models, I don't automatically think business models when I see a domain, I just see a domain, no thought of building a business for myself with it, but if I did, I would still prefer the hyphenated name.

A hyphen can be ok sometimes but obviously not good long term when you built something only to possibly lose out to nonhyphendomain.co.uk.

Things like that don't bother me as I'm not a developer, but as above, it wouldn't bother me even if I was, and you don't have to build a business to develop a domain, never really understood it when people go on about buisness models or building a business, if free-hosting.co.uk was mine, and I knew how to develop, I would stick a site on it.

Other than that why is it better than brandfreehosting.co.uk (fasthosts/co/uk etc), and why did someone let it drop if it has so much potential?

People let good domains with potential drop every day of the week, why do they all do that?

What would be the monetisation method when developing this name?

Many hosts offer free hosting plans, they do so in the knowledge that x amount of people on those free plans will upgrade to paid plans, person starts of small, builds a site, it gets more traffic, too much for the free plan, so they have to upgrade.

I think a site listing all the hosting providors and ratings for them would probably generate some income, they all seem to do aff programs, so there's no shortage of possible monetising options.

 

[domsaleuk]

It's not about being a domain snob..

please humour me for my general retarded understanding of the internet and domaining - why is it better than brandfreehosting.co.uk, and why did someone let it drop if it has so much potential?

If I was going to develop a free hosting site right now, and put some time and effort in (+dosh) why couldn't I get the same result with brandfreehosting.co.uk?

Hi

I will take your comment about your understanding of domaining etc with a pinch of salt based on the number of posts you have done

In answer to your question why has someone let it drop ? - I think this is a good question as I believe a lot of domainers are letting a lot of very good names drop at the moment and I cannot understand why!! I have been involved in the digital industry for many years and have a lot of experience in many areas including domains, digital marketing, development and SEO. In SEO you ride the storm as it were so SEO has seen many algorythm changes over the years etc and people involved in this sector will tend to just adapt. The same thing does not appear to apply in domain circles as to me it appears that the EMD and .UK issue seems to have thrown the domain industry into turmoil with many domainers dropping good names and not buying good names at the moment.

In answer to your other question

1) free-hosting.co.uk is a pure strong generic - brandfreehosting.co.uk is not

2) free-hosting.co.uk should benefit from the exact match searches - I doubt the same will apply to brandfreehosting.co.uk

3) In my mind - probably the most important factor is that free-hosting.co.uk should benefit from the phrase/broad match opportunities which are the metrics I believe should be looked at for development purposes - and I don't think the same will generally apply for brandfreehosting.co.uk as it has an additional word and in a competitive sector like this then it probably would not get listed (although this is debatable to an extent as there are still keywords in the term and it depends what additional SEO is done, but I am extremely confident it would be a lot less successful than free-hosting.co.uk)

In terms of the hyphen - one school of SEO thought says these could even be better than non hyphen as Google may read the hyphen as a space

If you were going to develop a site in this sector you would want all the help possible so looking at phrase and broad match potential for development is again in my mind a vital consideration for anyone to develop properly. Therefore to get a strong generic in this sector (hyphen or non hyphen) with high phrase/ broad match searches should be very helpful.

Last but not least I made a point about the "free" issue - i.e. if developing this I think you would need to find enough sites providing a free service to list them and create a site with good content - but in terms of monetisation (a) I am guessing there are probably a few of these around that offer upgrade services that are paid from which revenue could be earnt on sales and affiliate revenue in the hosting sector tends to be high (b) the whole site would not need to be about free hosting - it could have this as the main focus but have other areas and products etc promoted complimenting this to make more revenue(c) The actual PPC rate for the term free hosting is £1.74 according to keywordspy with lots of advertisers in PPC so revenue from this should be good anyway.

Those are my thoughts on why I think it is a good name.

 

[DaveP]

Wow thank you everyone for your input. Dom has pretty much hit the nail on the head with my thoughts as to why I like this name too.

 

[namealot]

Of the publicised sales for co.uk last year that I could find – one Secured-Loan $1,763 in the past 8 years 300 - 400 highest ever 23k above 5k 6 of those only three developed.
In the 90.s there was an Ill-informed opinion to the bullshit people couldn’t read them without the - ? They are sometimes used in TV ads but you’ll often see the company has had the name years and the expansion to more traditional is because the net alone is not working for them? The often magic word used with – is “seo“ followed by the normal bumf
I’m not against them (for my sins I have some) but realistic as to there viability and if you must then a tld with a bigger potential audience, less competitive fields and not having a selling point of “Free” would seam a more sensible option.

 

[stellar73]

Anyway I think this is a very good name for development as long as there are companies that actually offer free hosting which I expect there are but I haven't looked.

http://www.000webhost.com is the obvious one that springs to mind.

Tons of hosts (such at Site 5) who offer free trials which I guess could loosely qualify for your purpose.

Re the hyphen debate I always have mental battles re my own opinion of hyphens. The logical part of my brain wants to like them (at least for development) and the emotional part of my brain still cringes when I see them.....I've only ever owned a handful of them which all were sold or deleted largely so I didn't have to look at them.

(Logically speaking) it is a good name though!

 

[devilsrefugee]

Hypen would put me off and also free hosting is so competitive, you would have to put a lot of work into it, just to get a decent serp. Its the ugly sister of freehosting.co.uk (which has no development, which could be a lucky stroke for you in this instance).

 

[Marcoose]

I don't see any real problems with the hyphen. Quite a few hosting companies use them as well as typically unpopular extensions. It is a competitive market though and ranking well, even with the EMD will be a long term process. I'd be thinking that my time could be better spent.