Updated: Sep 11, 2022
One of the ways to describe the importance of keywords is to talk about movie titles. Mention a particular movie, and people who have seen it too will remember it or what it is about. The title alone usually provokes a reaction from anyone involved in such a conversation.
Besides big movie stars who might be the most crucial draw for a blockbuster production, it's the title itself, revealing what the movie is all about. Gone with the Wind, Star Wars, The Sound of Music, E.T., and Titanic are potent titles crafted to fit the story precisely. The titles couldn't have been anything else, or could they?
Without any seriousness and just for its fun, we could change Gone with the Wind to 'How the South was lost.' Stars Wars could have been called 'Choobakka and the Princess.' The Sound of Music could have been shortened to 'The Nanny.' E.T 'To love an Alien' and Titanic would have been just as high a success if it had been called 'The Iceberg.'
Now, if you think that's silly, you are right. Whoever created the movie titles, or wrote the book for those blockbusters and every other movie ever made, was looking to achieve (besides getting rich) only one thing: The title has to tell the story, the plot, set the mood, tension level, implying love, romance, and adventure.
It all has to be in the title.
Sometimes that's achieved in an excellent nailed-down-to-a-single-word title, as we see in Avatar, Terminator, and Jaws, but that's not always that easy.
Looking at the top 25 highest-grossing films, we see that it takes over a one-word title to craft the message: Beauty and the Beast, The Fate of the Furious, The Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight Rises, and Pirates of the Caribbean.
The headline leaves no doubt as to what the movie is all about. However, if all words but one is taken from those titles, the film's anticipation would not have been the same.
So it goes with domains and your title for the correct website address. Keep that in mind when choosing a content-matching website address. Your title domain should leave no doubt that the following content is precisely what the title promises.
Agree? Comments? I love to hear from you.
Updated: Mar 16, 2023
When checking domain prices published by DNJournal and others, a pattern often repeats itself.
Way on top, we have one or more sales of .com domains above $100,000, followed by many secondary transactions below $100,000.
The March 2018 listings caught my attention in the domain price bracket for two-word domains.
The highest price paid, as reported, is a two-word domain, CrosswordPuzzles.com, which is sold for USD 269,980.
What's impressive is that many other two-word domains have changed hands in the past for above USD 10,000.
SmartWatches.com - $55,000
Careeropportunities.com - $30,000
Europewatch.com - $25,000
Turkeyrealestate.com - $20,647 (a three-word domain)
Cleaningproducts.com - $15,000
Giftformom.com -$15,000 (a three-word domain)
Many additional two-word domains were sold for USD 10,000 or above among them, such names as hurricanedamage.com, comfybed.com, and woohoogames.com.
While some domains went back into the for-sale section of domain-brokers, others have thrived and are still active website addresses even many years later.
I couldn't find any hyphenated names this time, but a few with numbers being part of the URL.
om2.com - $27,002
10yoni5nnnn.com - $24,000
c7.com - $14,750
kk5.com - $14,750
mp3cutter.com - $12,500
6hg.com - $10,000
Surprisingly at the bottom of the Non .com gTLDs Top 20 Sales Chart, there is a .tel, namely a.tel, sold for $5,500.
Price variation for similar domains is exemplified in two names sold, GroceryBox.com - $37,700 and MeatBox.com $14,985.
Reported and confirmed domain sales are a momentary indication of market condition and value and make it easier to judge whether a requested price might be too high or an offer too low.
The above might make it easier to put a price ticket on a domain and serve as a realization of where the domain market is standing today.