Insights and data to help domain investors make better decisions to build their brandable domain portfolio.

There’s no question that we’re living in precarious times. The impact of coronavirus on the market has many domain investors re-evaluating their portfolio strategy.

During these times, data and insights are more important than ever. Therefore, we have decided to publish several key data elements and insights from Atom that might be helpful to the Domaining community.

Popular Root Words

We have compiled a list of popular root word themes based upon our analysis of last 6 months of sales. Please note that root words do not necessarily equate to the actual keyword inside the name. For example, for a name such as Intelidata, the associated root word may be “Intelligence”.

It is important to note that using these words does not, by itself, guarantee a higher likelihood of sale. Ultimately, you have to think about how the words in the domain work together. Names like “EnvyFun,” “BreakJoin,” “RareNow,” “BlueDefeat,” or “SafeBlush” combine random power words. Each of these ten words are powerful, but combined as they are, they do not fit together in a meaningful or intriguing way.

That said, incorporating below root word themes in a thoughtful manner can help create brand names that are in demand.

Insight: During the Covid Pandemic, we are seeing an increased demand for keywords such as Remote, Care, Pay, Pure, Clean, Med, Work, Fitness etc

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Syllables

In general names with fewer syllables tend to perform better. The analysis from the past 6 month sales validates this hypothesis. Names that have two or less syllables are much more desirable, compared to names with more syllables.

Insight: Names with 3 or less syllables accounted for over 70% of Atom sales in last 6 months.

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Length of the Name

All else equal, short names are better because many people looking to buy domains prefer short names.  We continue to see a strong demand for shorter domains based upon our sales data. Over 60% of the domains sold during last 6 months were 8 Letters or less.

Insight: Over the past 60 days, we have noticed a significantly higher demand for 4L and 5L domains.

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Sales By Industry

Industries such as Agency & Consulting, Tech, Health continue to lead the overall Atom sales trend.

The global spread of COVID-19 has led to a rapid shift of companies moving to remote work culture. This shift is leading to launch of several new business models that support the new way of life – such as Remote working, Tele-health, Micro Lending, Virtual Fitness. We are seeing an increased demand for these business models in our contests as well as domain sales.

Insight: We are seeing a shift in the trends during Covid Pandemic, with a greater number of domain sales in Health, Remote Working, Education, Fitness and Lending/ Finance categories.

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Average Selling Time

Many domain sellers are concerned about potential delays in selling their domains due to the Covid pandemic. Based upon the last few months of data, we are not seeing an impact to the average selling time of domains. Almost half of sales on Atom.com were from domains that were listed on SH for less than 6 months.

Over 45% of all sales were for domains that were listed on Atom.com for less than 6 months.

Overall Sales Trend

There has been lot of discussion in the industry about the potential long term impact of the Covid Pandemic on domain sales. At Atom, we did see a slight drop in domain sales during the month of March, which can be directly attributed to the worldwide lockdowns related to Covid Pandemic.

However, as companies have been adjusting to the remote working models, we have been seeing a significantly stronger growth in domain sales. In fact, the months of April and May achieved more sales than any other previous months at Atom.

We are seeing a greater number of installment purchases during the past few months (likely because startups are more prudent about their investments during these uncertain times).

Insight: May 2020 resulted in record number of domain sales (40% higher than any previous month)

Conclusion

As with any market uncertainty, the most important thing to remember is to be patient and avoid fear-based decision making and selling. It is important to continue to leverage data and insights to make informed decisions about your portfolio. While some of these insights may not apply to domain sales outside Atom, we hope that they are still useful to most domain investors.