Best 4 Letter Domain Names: CVCV .com Brand Builders

Great post Jamie!

There seems to be a major disconnect between domainers and developers when it comes to search results. Most domainers don’t seem to get that more search results means more competition! I’ve long been a fan of CVCVs and you did as good a job as anyone elucidating why.

@Fizz
That is correct. Sony is not a CVCV. It’s pronounceable but not a CVCV IMO. Don’t get me wrong, I clearly like 4L domains similar to Sony that are pronounceable. Several are VCVC or end in Y.

50 people get to rich but tens of thousands will drop and drop again bcause they wont be sold for shit

I view CVCV.com domains as more “domainer-type” names.

Domainers love CVCV’s because of they’re rare and memorable, their wholesale market values are relatively easy to determine (hence they’re “liquidate-able”), and they visually stand out like hotcakes in drop lists. Also, popular drop list analysis tools (DRT, FreshDrop.net, etc.) can weed these out using algorithms any competent programmer could code up in about 15 minutes. For all these reasons, I feel certain that of of all categories (except random LLLL.com’s and CCC.com’s), CVCV.com’s are bid the highest relative to the probability they will sell to endusers down the line.

Yes, one could point to many instances of high-profile CVCV purchases (hulu.com, Kiva.com, etc.), and I’m sure that some bulk LLLL.com portfolio holders sell several CVCV.com’s to endusers every year. But bear in mind that MOST endusers who purchase CVCV.com’s are newly VC-backed startups whose CEO or marketing director thinks that your CVCV.com simply “sounds cool”. Because of this new venture-backing, CVCV.com’s often sell for a lot when they do, but all signs indicate they are highly, HIGHLY speculative investments for domainers targeting endusers, and I’d only recommend domainers with 6+ figure liquid budgets (probably less than 0.01% of us) even consider investing in them. If you examine the 69 sales Jamie mentioned (itself an extremely small quantity relative to the total number of CVCV.com combos), you’ll find nearly all to be domainer-to-domainer flips.

Keyword domains present much better bang for the domainer’s buck. Over the past six months I have flipped over 150 keyword .com’s to endusers for profit out of maybe 600 I’ve acquired within that frame. While keyword .com domain sales are statistically LESS LIKELY to make headlines because the vast majority of keyword .com sales ring up at $2500 or less, a VASTLY HIGHER percentage of well-advised keyword .com & .net domains sell to endusers each year. Interesting duality, isn’t it? 90%+ of domain acquisitions occur by established companies able to draw a straight line from your domain to its revenue potential via savings in PPC capital attained by conversion of sponsored search listings to organic listings. Keyword domains corresponding to a product or service offered by 4+ established companies are, by this very fact, enduser-type domains. And as we all know, enduser sales offer the highest ROI of any flip type.

Invest in keyword domains if you’re looking to covert within the next 3 years. Offer your Tafu.com to and enduser for $15,000 and you’ll have a tough time justifying why they should opt for your CVCV.com over Wafu.com, being offered by its owner for a mere $5,000.

All this being said, I think that enduser acquisition activity will pick up slightly over the next several years as web 2.0 services continue to heat up. But look for CVCV.com prices to crash by around 50-80% at some point before the year 2013 for much the same reason single and double-premiums LLLL.com prices did.

*** NOTE: I don’t place short dictionary domains (wife.com, sale.com, etc.) under the CVCV.com category because the lion’s share of their value lies in word usage / commercial application, not the fact they’re CVCV.coms.

Agreed. If you do choose to invest in LLLL’s (which I don’t recommend, though they might hold water in the very long term), CVCV’s are the way to go. You’re destined to make substantially more money holding 5 CVCV’s than 100 LLLL’s that are triple-premiums or inferior.