That is pretty ignorant to say. Anyone's advertising dollars when they first start is nill and really has NOTHING to do with choosing a name for your business.

That's ridiculous. While some determined people may succeed in spite of going into business without so much as a dime to invest in their business, the well-prepared and funded people have much a greater chance of sucecss.

I could have started real estate long ago when I first decided to give it a go like so many other people, but instead I waited until I had startup capital and a solid gameplan before launching. I'm continually amazed at how many people come here and post something like "I got my license and hung it at XYZ Realty, I signed up for floor duty but no one's buying anything from me, now what do I do?"

It's no wonder so many people fail in the first two years.

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Telecom Sales and Service Manager
RE license coming soon

Common nouns will always be more easily confused and forgotten than proper nouns. You want differentiation for people to remember you, you do not get that by using an excess of common nouns in your name. It has to do with getting common nouns confused with other common nouns since they are just that, common.

Wal-mart opposed to General Mart Store, Corner Mart, General Store, etc.
Microsoft opposed to Softare Manufacturer, Computer Software Co., PC Software Inc.

If you all think people remember and differentiate your www.iwillhelpusell.com from the 500 other, www.helpingusell.com, www.sell4u.com, www.selling4u.com... it becomes all blurred.

I suggest that some of you go read up on some fundamentals of branding.

How many of you guys can rattle off most of the names of the original "Dream Team" of:

Michael Jordan
Charles Barkley
Patrick Ewing
Larry Bird
Magic Johnson

Even if you aren't into basketball you probably know who these guys are, but would you be as apt to remember their names if they were all common, easily mixed up and confused common nouns like:

Basketball Guy
Guy B-Ball Player
Basketball Player
Roundball Guy
Guy Basketball

The problem with overuse of the common nouns is just that, OVERUSE and use by everyone, where is the differentiation?

-J

[This message has been edited by Josh Turmel (edited 11-15-2004).]

You missed the point, I don't care that you have $15,000 right now. Does that really have to do with you choosing the name for your business? It shouldn't, and that is my point. And for the most part, in the relative viewpoint, any businesses starting capital is pretty minimal. In the grand scheme of things your $15,000 (combined with all your other expenses) isn't enough to make your name a household name overnight so it should not have any significance in the determining of your name.

Josh, I understand your point on common noun domains. In web language it's called "type in" keywords.

Loan.com has a greater value than JoshT mortgage company. But if you have a few million to brand a name, you can name it anything you want and still get recognition.

For the rest of us, we stick to benefit driven names that work well as direct response tools.

"You missed the point, I don't care that you have $15,000 right now. Does that really have to do with you choosing the name for your business? It shouldn't, and that is my point."

My budget definitely affected many marketing decisions including domain name strategy.

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Telecom Sales and Service Manager
RE license coming soon

the dream team arguement isn't even comparable to a real estate agents situation. how many millions of advertising where spent during the olympics, air time on national tv, espn coverage, nationwide newspaper coverage, selling of merchandise?

second in your attempt to dismiss my response as "ignorant", remember the thread is not about business names, it is about web addresses.

my point is, why choose a your name as an address when you can have instant branding with a name like nyhomes.com? plus you will get a search engine boost with keywords in the domain.

i never once suggested anything like www.helpingusell.com imo those are worse than using your own name as your address.

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Wes Murphree
Investment Realty
http://www.SCInvestmentRealty.com
http://www.3NetLease.com
http://www.MultifamilyListings.com

[This message has been edited by Wes Murphree (edited 11-15-2004).]

[This message has been edited by Wes Murphree (edited 11-15-2004).]

But it should not affect what you choose to name your business. (I have multiple pointers to my site, I'm not talking about that.)

I'm talking about choosing names for branding, not advertising, why are you even bringing in the advertising aspect of marketing? Marketing and advertising are two different things, advertising falls under the umbrella of marketing, but choosing a name has nothing to do with your advertising.

-J


[This message has been edited by Josh Turmel (edited 11-15-2004).]

That part of my post was not directed to you, it was at Xenogenetic and the common name suggestions in his first or second post.

That is one of the greatest falacies on the web, that "type in" domains have this magical "great value." The reality is VERY FEW people actually just type in random domains because they think it might be a site. I have ran many sites (past career) and have spent hundreds of hours analyzing web logs and http referrers have confirmed this time and time again, it was a very rare instance that someone would come to the site from "no where" and that's the bottom line. And out of those few that had no referrer, you have to figure at least a part of those small amount of people were from people who got your domain name from a direct mail piece or were told about by someone else, not because they randomly typed in, www.nyhomes.com, for example.

-J

[This message has been edited by Josh Turmel (edited 11-15-2004).]

Josh,

I actually think this is a very productive discussion even if we all don't agree.

But I lost you a little bit.

So give us some example URL's of what you would say is a good example and a few of what you would say is a bad example.



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Make it a great day!

Brian Rodgers, MBA
Brian Rodgers Seminars, Inc.
www.brseminars.com
1-800-339-8841

i'm not talking about advertising campaigns, you tried to take one word i used, and focused only on it. i mentioned advertising, publicity, and media coverage. point was it is not a fair comparison.

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Wes Murphree
Investment Realty
http://www.SCInvestmentRealty.com
http://www.3NetLease.com
http://www.MultifamilyListings.com



[This message has been edited by Wes Murphree (edited 11-15-2004).]

Brian,

Your domain is good, your initials over power the word seminar, BR makes it stand out, opposed as if you would have just did something like www.realestateseminars.com.

For instance, Pete Reeser is one of Oklahoma City area's top producers for a long time (his whole family actually) his domain is simply, www.petereeser.com, as opposed to getting something like www.e-real-estate-oklahoma.com. Or maybe something like www.stratosrealty.com, instead of just doing www.nw-okc-realestate.com.

I would just like people to come up with some proper nouns in their business names (and therefore there domain names) and not use just a few stringed together common nouns.

I've beat this horse, and to me it's dead now; I'm just trying to help out since this was my field before getting into real estate, if it isn't welcome here, I understand.

-J

I fixed my post to reflect what I really meant to say.