Brandpa sell dot-com domain names that make good names for businesses or products.
Most of our customers are startups, who typically have a budget between $2,000 – $4,000 for a new business or product. We sell a smaller number of higher value domains, typically to well-funded startups or existing companies, usually between $4,000 – $25,000.
We absolutely do NOT accept domains which infringe on existing trademarks, or which could be considered in bad-faith, e.g. a misspelling of a popular brand.
We never accept
- Domains other than .com
Dot-com domains work globally, and are easily the most sought after. - Names with hyphens
e.g. example-domain.com - Names which violate a known trademark
e.g. domains like micros0ft.com or appple.com. We are only interested in selling new and compelling names for businesses, not in cybersquatting. - Highly offensive and pornographic names
We will reject swear words, crude sexual terms etc. Note that we do accept names for marijuana, e.g. astropot.com. - Names using international characters, or only appealing to a non-English audience
For now, domains must use regular letters from the Roman alphabet. We reject international domains like 名がドメイン.com.
We don’t recommend
- Names with more than 2 words
In our experience these rarely sell, and are much harder to make brandable. Three-word names usually include a joining word which makes them effective only in English, e.g. compare “facebook” with “facethebook”. - Names that contain numbers
The most common exceptions are 123, 247 (“24 hours a day / 7 days a week”), 365 and 888 (Chinese for “triple fortune”). We do accept names which work because of a specific number, e.g. “forever21”, but these are rare. - Names starting with a preposition (“a”, “an”, “the”)
These are easily confused with the same name missing the preposition, and can be harder to read when written as a single word. - Names that are hard to pronounce
If we can’t figure out how to say a domain quickly, it probably won’t work as a name, e.g. qrzzt.com. 3-4 letter names can get around this to some extent because they are short enough to spell out. - Names that are hard to spell
We imagine trying to tell somehow how to spell a name without showing it to them. It’s ok to have a simple misspelling, like “flicker but without the ‘e’”. But if the explanation involves more than one non-obvious change, it’s almost certainly not going to work. - Names with no clear audience
We try to guess who might want a domain. Some names have clear audiences, e.g. askhr.com or toylio.com. Other names are strong enough to work for almost any audience, e.g. rectangl.com or eryson.com. But when we can’t imagine either, we will almost always reject the name. - Names with artificially repeated letters
A common domain hack is to repeat a letter, e.g. exammple.com. We see these as low-value domains, which would be hard for any company to brand or protect, and reject nearly all of them. - Plural names
Generally a plural makes a much weaker name than a singular. For example, “Breathes” is a worse name than “Breathe”. This is true for most plurals, but we do make exceptions. - Names we don’t believe people will pay for
There are lots of cool and clever names which we won’t list because we suspect no-one will pay a reasonable amount of money for them ($1,500 is our minimum). For example, music bands, whilst fun to name, are not usually in the market for a premium domain. We have a lot of our own data on what people search for and buy to help determine what is viable.
Bonus criteria
Very few domains have any of these, but those that do are much more likely to be listed:
- Dictionary words
Domains containing 1-2 existing words that people already know how to spell are the easiest to sell. E.g. salechat.com - Hot industry
For example, drone, cryptocurrency, AI, VR and AR names are all in high demand and more likely to be listed. - 5 letters or fewer
These are rare and usually very valuable.
Tips for sellers
If you’re looking for new domains to list on Brandpa, here’s some recommendations:
- Consider 2-word dictionary names
Many of our best selling names combine two dictionary words, with one usually being a valuable keyword, e.g. lightningbet.com or hiredclicks.com. - Consider variants of a single dictionary word
For example, removing a vowel (rectangl.com) or adding a suffix (wanter.com). Check out our separate article on how to invent new names. - Consider inventing whole new words
Fully invented words are tricky to come by, but very valuable if you can create a good one. Examples include clerican.com and zipacity.com. - Think about your audience
Can you imagine a company using this name – say answering the phone (“thank you for calling X”) and giving out their web address? How would someone explain the spelling of their name without writing it down? Is the name easy and appealing to say?
And finally, when submitting names, if your domain has a target market we might not guess, tell us in the comments. It makes it far more likely we’ll accept your domain