Follow Trendsetters to Find Great Domains

People think all of the best domains were registered in the 1990s, but that’s not true at all.

If you want to get into the domaining business, you’ll need to get ahead of the trends. The key is to figure out what people are talking about and where businesses may be heading.

What are current social concerns? Entertainment trends? New technologies?

Matching current trends with emerging keywords, slang and popular phrases is a great way to choose domain names that you can resell in the future.

Where to Look for New Keywords and Trends

Each of the following domains was registered after 2000: PokemonGo.com, Bitcoin.com, and InternetofThings.com. These domains represent new businesses and trends that didn’t even exist in the 1990s.
So how can you identify the next hot domain trend before others do?

Here are a few places you can watch:

• Social media: Sometimes new buzzwords first appear on services like Twitter or Instagram, and then quickly become a meme or a new definition.
• Trade publications: Industry-specific magazines and online sites tend to use hot new terminology before the mainstream press does.
• Online forums: Even before trade publications start writing about upcoming technologies and popular terms, many are born on domain name forums.
• Academic journals: Many ideas start at universities, and academic journals are a great place to learn about nascent technologies. Skim through these journals and make a note of any names of research phrases that have potential.
• Consider naming patterns: Right now many apps include the word ‘Go’ in the name. Meanwhile, BitcoinWallet.com, which wasn’t registered until two years after Bitcoin.com, sold for $250,000! Pay attention to these patterns and maybe you’ll stumble on the next hot naming convention.
• Google Trends: Google Trends provides the relative search volume of keywords and phrases. The chart below shows Google search interest in the term ‘bitcoin’. As you can see, it didn’t take off until 2011. Someone was paying attention to trends before that and managed to register a domain name that’s now potentially worth over $1 million.

Purchasing Domains

Once you discover a new buzzword or another topic you think will become popular, you search for available domains at Namecheap.

Namecheap offers not only .com and .org versions of popular domains, but other top-level domains (TLDs) such as .design, .club or .online. You’ll want to consider purchasing not just the .com version of your domain but some of the other TLDs that work with the domain.

For example, if you think “WombatGo” might become the next new app craze, consider purchasing wombatgo.com, wombatgo.club, wombatgo.tech and wombatgo.rocks.

Are You Ready to Get Started?

At Namecheap, we offer a huge selection of different domain options. Just go to Namecheap.com, where we have a handy search box right on the home page.

Image source: Wikipedia