I have to admit, I’m not a huge fan of investing in brandables.

Investing in generics? Sure. Investing in short domains? Yep. But brandables? Totally different ballgame as far as I’m concerned.

To clarify, I want to give examples of each domain category so that you understand what I’m referring to.

A generic would be something like KitchenRemodeling.com. I like this specific domain because it has a lot of obvious uses:

1) the website of a remodeling company or professional

2) a book about remodeling your kitchen

3) a blog, YouTube channel or whatever about kitchen remodeling

… and so on.

I like generics because they’re pretty straightforward. I like investing in domains with which it’s obvious what people can do.

Alright, what about short domains such as LLL dot coms, LLLL dot coms and so on?

What I like about them is that they’re liquid and perhaps the only domain category for which there’s a well-defined reseller market asset value.

In other words, at any point in time, it’s easy to determine how much QYE.com is worth (random example), how much MMNN.com is worth and so on.

… and this brings us to brandables.

What don’t I like about brandables?

Well, as much as I realize they’re becoming more and more popular, I do have to say that I feel like as an investor, I’m getting the *worst* of both worlds.

Let’s assume you have a domain such as PurpleMockingbird.com or BuzzBob.com and so on.

Great.

These are domains that sound good, are memorable and so on.

But compared to generics, what’s the obvious use for PurpleMockingbird.com? Hard to say. What about BuzzBob.com? Well, it’s easier than with the other one for me to get an idea of what it could be used for. Perhaps a PR agency or something along those lines. Still, it’s far harder than with generics to think about the usage dimension. And also, in a lot of cases, end users tend to be less motivated for this precise reason, they they can simply move on to other domains relatively easily.

What about the comparison between brandables and short domains? Unfortunately, brandables don’t look great from this perspective either. For really good ones sure, there is reseller market demand but nothing like with short domains. If your names are mediocre, well, then… things are much more complicated.

I guess that when investing in generics, you’re getting the best of the end user world, whereas when investing in short domains, you’re getting the best of the reseller world.

When investing in brandables… neither.

Now again, I’m not saying investing in brandables can’t work.

My objective was simple: explaining my concerns about them and making it clear than when investing in brandables, you should be even more careful than when buying generics or short domains.