What to do with this brandable names idea

[crabfoot]

I hear what you're saying - and I may try brandpa later. Thanks for the tip.

I've already changed tack somewhat to get closer to your ideas and ideals. And BrandBucket's linguistic mutterings, although I do have to wonder about some four syllable domains they are listing that I can't see sense in - nothing to like about them.

But looking at this thread, what I haven't made completely clear is that BrandBucket are not currently charging to submit names. They give you 10 free ($1) assessments for a start, and are waiving the $10 submission fee, which they reserve the right to reinstate at any time.

It is evident that BrandBucket are feeling pressure from BrandPa - but right now I'm trying with BrandBucket because there are no costs upfront.

Oh, ah yes, while we're talking about it - the bit where I tried to change the description of Ravenham - yes, it did cause it to miss out on their new listings email.

And I do have some sort of a plan for those names you regard as tricky to sell. I don't want to show my hand right now, but I will later.

 

[crabfoot]

And today - a decision - 12 days down the line from submission, they have decided that they don't like lemlas .com and oyonsou .com, but they do like prentan .com -
"Congratulations! The following domains meet our criteria for listing:
prentan.com, recommended listing price: $3295"

That is more than they recommended for ravenham, which is listed at their current average sale price.
Frankly, I've gone off lemlas lately, there is a guerrilla leader in Aden using it as a pseudonym.

But what don't they like about oyonsou? Yright, answers on a postcard -

I have submitted another one - zuceno .com . That is an old one which is meaningless, AFAIK.

And now I have used up my ten "free goes" I find that my low submission success rate stops me from joining their Slack community until my submissions improve. Oh my, I'm missing the chance to chat with other users and trade domains with them!

A day later, and we have a description for prentan - "A stylish name that has a professional and solid foundation." Evidently they did not care to disclose the fact that it is creole patois for springtime. Whatever, a prime example of talking loud and saying nothing.

 

[crabfoot]

And today, ravenham.com finally hits their mailshot, over 5 weeks after submission, complete with tacky logo and bs description.

Also today, my wife has decided to have a go at this BrandBucket lark. Her 10 free submissions are arafinol .com, bonhein .com, carachic .com, cofetto .com, perfaro .com. gefteg .com, gergale .com, slengas .com, keiswal .com, and saknoti .com - we must wait and see what happens next.

 

[crabfoot]

Yea - no prior notice to me, but I get a mail to say prentan. com has been published - that was much faster than ravenham. I was under the impression that the decision to publish or not was mine, according to the dashboard controls - but these are BrandBucket controls we're talking about.
The tacky logo appears to owe something to a South African airline, to my eyes, like a stylised springbok without front legs. Whatever - progress.

 

[Murray]

I just made up a few, FTR

Benatio
propridge
rivoten
explita

 

[crabfoot]

I could be cruel and suggest you try to put those on Brandbucket.

I'll tell you why I wouldn't -
One rule worth obeying is that you should avoid numbers in domains, either words or digits.
Benatio contains enati, which is ninth if you happen to be Greek. And while rivoten has ten in it, what puts me off it is that it means lewd or salacious in Finnish.

Not that other people haven't made similar cock-ups in the past - Osram has been insulting Poland for years - would you buy a light bulb marked "I will $hit on you" ?

Propridge I don't like - you didn't actually make that up, you just thought you did, like me, earlier. It has been registered before,and I've already found out that they don't like anything that has dropped.

I quite like explita, you could try that - it means (he/she) "explains" in Catalonia. But not quite the meaning you want for a Brand.

 

[JMI]

The whole model is ridiculous - to try and impose some kind of buff logo and dodgy made up word on the off chance a "real" end user going to part with thousands of dollars.. jesus.. sorry I'm lol here in my armchair.. its like some kind of reverse ponzi scheme.

 

[crabfoot]

Errrm -yes, I agree it is a bit silly - but not necessarily ridiculous, because people pay out for those domains. And I haven't any clear idea why - that is part of the reason I'm playing their game.

And what makes a made-up name dodgy? There can be real virtue in a made-up name. A couple of the names mentioned in this thread return less than three specific search results. There is no search noise to break through if you get traffic with a domain like that - straight on to page 1 for your domain name search.

I will let you in on something - only one of those names my wife has submitted to BrandBucket is anything like meaningless - the others all have some meaning. I'm saving the meanings until BB has delivered the accept / reject verdicts, just to see how daft it can get.

 

[aZooZa]

Here's an FTR: drockle(dot)com - keep pressing the snooze button.

 

[crabfoot]

Here's an FTR: drockle(dot)com - keep pressing the snooze button.

I've put a few hundred quid into this stupid game, I've got the grace to share my findings with the members, and all you do is make comments like that? Just because you wasted £20 to find out that you lack sufficient imagination doesn't mean that I'm going to fall on my face.

nenorocit - that's FTR, too.

 

[aZooZa]

I've put a few hundred quid into this stupid game, I've got the grace to share my findings with the members, and all you do is make comments like that? Just because you wasted £20 to find out that you lack sufficient imagination doesn't mean that I'm going to fall on my face.

nenorocit - that's FTR, too.

Why are you so defensive and agitated? Drockle would make a meaningful brand for watches and clocks etc. Have you Googled 'drockle'?

What £20 are you talking about?

I don't need imagination for this. I have the tools to do it. Hint: Get a com.zone download licence from Verisign, then use awk, grep, sed and regex. Throw in a little AI and you have a system.

 

[crabfoot]

Why are you so defensive and agitated?

I'm neither defensive or agitated, but I'm not here for you to take the mickey.
And I'm quite good at meanings -
FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL MEMBERS THE NAME AZOOZA IS A PHONETIC SPELLING OF A SPANISH SLANG WORD WHICH MEANS $HIT-STIRRER.
You can't complain when he tells you upfront what he is about.

Drockle would make a meaningful brand for watches and clocks etc.

I would not dispute that, but it does not roll off the tongue like "Rolex", Rotary" or "Patek".
A name like Drockle reminds me of Crapper, whose name once signified a great advance in sanitary engineering, but has now been devalued.

Have you Googled 'drockle'?

I don't google anything if I can avoid doing so. There are ways around that problem.

What £20 are you talking about?

The money you put into submitting a couple of domains to BrandBucket, to be rejected.

I don't need imagination for this. I have the tools to do it.

That's nice. Perhaps you will come back and tell us when you've had domains accepted by BrandBucket.​

 

[RobM]

Do you really need to get personally insulting over made-up domain names? To me it's like buying a lottery ticket - however I don't think calling people names for refusing to buy into it is the way to go. Good luck with brand(whoever) but not everybody bases their business around such a method.

 

[JMI]

I think there is some value in 'exceptional' made up brand names, but it seems to me trying to come up with the next spotify, instagram, flickr or fivver is a seriously big ask and risk - unless you are naturally gifted or some sort of brand/start-up guru with experience in this sector.

If you study the these names like Flickr etc, looking at their composition etc vs. most of the dross that is on brandbucket, I suspect they are not actually a causal fluke made up on whim.

 

[crabfoot]

Do you really need to get personally insulting over made-up domain names? To me it's like buying a lottery ticket - however I don't think calling people names for refusing to buy into it is the way to go. Good luck with brand(whoever) but not everybody bases their business around such a method.

I haven't been personally insulting. I have revealed the meaning of Mr Hubbard's nickname - there can be no insult when he has chosen it himself.

Good luck with brand(whoever) but not everybody bases their business around such a method.

I think everybody would like to make the high price sales, but it costs money and time to get those sales, and we all resent paying up-front for an uncertain return. Also, it takes a long time to make a sale - Brandbucket say upfront that their sellers should expect to wait a minimum of 90 days before any sale is made. They do tie you in to give them a long period of time with an exclusive listing, and there has to be a reason for that. Everybody in business likes a quick return on their investments. You work with BrandWhatever because they have a proven business model that hopefully gives a good return, but they do not take much risk - in the same way that racehorse trainers rarely own the horses they are training.

IF we could determine how BrandWhatever decide what constitutes a good name, THEN we could ignore their services and sell those domains directly for high prices.

I get the impression, though, that their selection process involves casting aside domains that could be useful, but they have some slight doubts about. And until it is proven otherwise, the current evidence is that they do not like any domains with history, however slight the traces left behind are - which is why I don't think the azooza plan will work.

 

[aZooZa]

Edit...

I'm not going to get into a micturition tournament with this gentleman.

 

[crabfoot]

Some conclusions -
It takes Brandbucket around 14-15 days to make yea/nay decisions, and when they do decide the nay decision is two days before any yea decision.

When you get into the Brandbucket slack channel you can see the ugly side of Brandbucket - people trying to trade off already registered names to get the reg fee back, sharks offering to buy pronounceable 4/5 letter domains, people admitting to trawling the pool to pick up dropped names.

They do not have regard to age (as I thought previously) or any linguistic sense (as they say in their BS hints). They like names with co-sibilance and stick to the old rules of "short is good", "Websters Dictionary is good".

DaveP got it mostly right when he said

Unfortunately completely made up words > 6 characters rarely sell. Above 6 characters you need either a recognisable niche (weed, health, care, crypto, fin, drone etc), two words that go well together to make up a memorable brand (flowfox, jellypepper, dronedriver), or one letter replacement for a popular word (konversion for conversion).

I tried feeding the rejects to Brandpa - they rejected everything, including a couple I haven't mentioned that I threw in to make up the numbers.

Despite what they say, there appears to be no linguistic basis in their assessments, and they do no research beyond running the names past a couple of seasoned domainers using gut feeling to decide.

What they want are short, memorable catchy names or combinations. There are domains I submitted which are gems, in my opinion, but they no likee.

You can tell how little research they do from this week's BB star premium domain, which is daz.com ($450k) - not a Square Deal from where I sit, might be OK if you happen to be called Darryl or Darren, otherwise I can't see it being useful.

I can see that it might be possible to use their marketplace to make money in the long term, but it has to be done as a sideline because they take sooo long to make decisions.
WTH you have to be in it to win it ...

 

[aZooZa]

It is a minefield for sure.

They like names with co-sibilance [sic] and stick to the old rules of "short is good"...

Why not give some thought to some of the good old central non-sibilant fricatives. You could perhaps go with a voiceless alveolar non-sibilant, a voiceless palatal-velar fricative or perhaps even a voiced dental non-sibilant fricative.

You need to find a contact at Brandpa or Brandbucket who's a bit of a cunning linguist and will work with you more closely.

Good luck!

 

[gimpydog]

It is evident that BrandBucket are feeling pressure from BrandPa - but right now I'm trying with BrandBucket because there are no costs upfront.

Wasn't there a bit of a stink last year because they were taking all this money in listing fees & logos, but only promoting their own inventory - all the customers' stock was buried out of site. Maybe that's why they have had to drop the fees?

You can tell how little research they do from this week's BB star premium domain, which is daz.com ($450k)

Which sold for £20k a few weeks ago, iirc? Surprised that a domainer called Darren didn't snap that one up.

 

[RobM]

Oh the irony...