Realistically Are Generic 4L.com Names Worth The Hype?

[RedBar]

Ok, I get it, if a 4L.com is available at a price one can afford, buy it. I've bought two recently one was the perfect match 4L.com and bought for USD 130 the other a generic 4L.com bought for USD 99 to use for our own purposes.

A 4l.com can look great and some are very brandable however I'm also pretty sure that a 4L.com in G's algo means almost nothing much for ranking purposes and especially if the site is garbage too.

It is also very noticeable just how many of these 4l.coms are for sale or in auction at very low reserves.

Of course some will say look how "big" the name sales are but how many are those sales, are we talking hundreds, thousands or tens of thousand names a year?

I used to have a link to an annual sales breakdwon analysis, I've lost it:-))

[engine]

4l - four letter?

$130 dollars seems a bargain, but it also matters about whether it's a word, or brand, or if there are competing bids. Otherwise, it's a vanity thing about having a four letter domain.

These days, the four letter domain has negligible value to Google from a search point of view.

[Webwork]

Like everything else "domains" the answer to the value or "what is it worth" question is . . . wait for it . . "it depends".

I have a small collection of 4Ls. Some were "reg fee" buys, years ago. Some were $49. GoD drop catches or GoD "release / resell" buys. Some get type-in traffic and pay for themselves. (Think "paired country code" .Com domains, regged for intl' trade or travel".)

I recently flipped a 4L for $7,5K.

The 4Ls that go for BIG $ tend to be CVCV ~Mojo type domains that entities seek to build a brand around.

Random letter 4Ls probably will get pretty dusty sitting on the retail shelf, waiting for a buyer.

The 4L market was hot a few years back when Chinese buyers waded in, forming a speculative bubble. The motivating idea was probably something like "If 3Ls are worth $$$,$$$+ then 4Ls must eventually be worth . . . "

If you're wading into the 4L pool look for letters that mean something, especially some topic or area that has a future: AI++, VR++, etc.

YMMV. I look at what's dropping, from time to time, but I've yet to make even a low $$$ buy.

[RedBar]

The 4L market was hot a few years back when Chinese buyers waded in

Good memory, I'd completely forgotten about that! I keep an eye on the auctions when they happen and if there's something I fancy I put a bid in over the last couple of hours with a maximum USD 150 on it.

Sure, it can be a fun vanity thing for a promotional t-shirt and with Joe Public being completely oblivious to the domain market can generate some interest especially when linked to a whacky / different / incentive site at a gig / festival / exhibition / fair.

[topr8]

I bought a 4 character domain LLNN which is an exact match for the 'short' version of one of my domains ... i think i paid around USD500
I use it in promotional material and in conversation ... i'm very happy with it, it's very memorable and also easy for someone to type into a phone while i'm talking to them.

in my experience older people - and not just older people - often struggle to type in a domain name to a phone, especially as by default they are actually typing into the seach function ... so with that unique 4 characters, i come up top of search results too, so all bases covered. for this reason i don't use a redirect but actually have a landing page with links through to different parts of the 'actual' website

having said that, my business is primarily a retailer and only secondly a webdeveloper/online-sales. so i'm talking from the perspective of a 'punter' rather than that of a domain trader.

[RedBar]

I use it in promotional material and in conversation

Yep, it's a great bragging / boasting drop into a conversation simply because Joe P has no idea of the value and if, as in your case, you obtain an ideal match-up, even better. I'm trying one of mine at a 3 day gig this weekend using the first letter as a question since it's a "y"!

[topr8]

good luck at the gig.... i don't mean it at all in a bragging/boasting sense! i literally meant that in conversation a 4 character domain is very memorable and easy for a person to put it into their phone while i'm talking to them!

[not that i'm shy of bragging in principle!]

[RedBar]

i don't mean it at all in a bragging/boasting sense!

Oh, I do :-) It's 2022 and even after nearly 20 years of our hotel / pub / gig site I still regularly have people commenting about its speed, ease-of-use etc and the fun we have in using promotional sites.

I mention this simply because in the early days of Twitter we could "do" stuff on Twitter and it would get promoted and followed by others, since aboy 2015/16 Twitter has no longer been of any use to us, post-pandemic FB has also fallen off our customers' radar therefore for some fun I came up with the idea of a "cartoon" style promotion and it has worked extremely well so far with good interaction and suggestions being posted ... The 4L name is ideal for this rather than mylongbusinessnamenandtown!

And, as an aside, my grandson gets to show-off his natural artistic talents:-)

[csdude55]

From an offline marketing point of view, both size and readability are important.

Imagine a billboard at 60mph. A big sign that says ABCD.com is a lot easier to read and visually understand than AlwaysBeChillingDude.com.

But at the same time, a radio ad where the DJ says "Always Be Chilling Dude dot com" might be easier for the listener to understand and remember.

Knowing this, I tend to buy a few varieties (including misspellings) to cover all of my bases.

[Dimitri]

All is a matter of marketability.

[Webwork]

The latest data shows that 4Ls are going up in price. Remember that it's reported sales of 4Ls. What would really help would be a list of all 4Ls sold (NameBio will help) and to compare that to all 4Ls not reported "as sold", i.e., speculative regs that likely will never sell and sales that closed "below the radar".

As stated above I recently closed a 4L sale for . . a useful amount of dinero. Prior to that sale the last 4 character I sold was a 4N sale ~5 years ago for ~3Xs a useful amount.

4Ls are hit and miss. The 4N was a lovely repeating pattern 4N which, by recently activity, likely would have sold for a much higher amount today. C'est la vie domainer. #NoRegrets

See the report linked here: [webmasterworld.com ]

[tangor]

Realistically Are Generic 4L.com Names Worth The Hype?

Hype is one thing. Dollars is another. Pick and choose what works best for you!

Me? wordbaseddomains makes more sense... but is a bit more difficult to type on small devices.