One of my favorite interviews on Indie Hackers is HTML Color Codes.
The founders conducted extensive research and realized the keyword search volume for html color codes was high but there was a also a ton of competition. In the past, this is exactly when I would move on. However, competition did not deter them. It it shouldn't deter you either. They decided to pick something that had already been done and do it better. How?
Color Codes is technically very similar to a whole bunch of other web tools out there, but — and this is important — its differentiator is an intense focus on design.
After some more research they discovered that the domain htmlcolorcodes.com was available and snagged it for $600. At the time of the original interview, Color Codes was bringing in 1.3k a month. I’d say that domain purchase was a solid investment.
This got me thinking, what if I created a list of ideas based on how undervalued a high volume keyword matching domain was? Or based on how valuable I thought the potential idea behind the domain was?
Focusing on the product behind the domain could also uncover names that don’t match high volume keywords but are extremely memorable or catchy.
After going through a similar process as Dixon and Moe I stumbled upon a few domains that got my wheels turning...
- calculatorindex.com
- productrivals.com
- rumor.today
Calculator Index is very interesting. It’s listed on Sedo for $600 and GoDaddy values it at ~$1300 but it could be worth even more when you take a look at the incumbents.
- calculator.net is getting ~12m month visits
- calculatorsoup.com is pulling in ~6m a month
Neither one of those reference sites are designed well. Also, Calculator is an insanely popular keyword. Kind of smells like HTML Color Codes all over again.
This year, a personal goal of mine is to ship ideas early and often. As a programmer, products are easy for me to build but marketing blows if ideas have not been validated. You end up shipping to no one and I've already made that painful mistake.
Instead of dropping everything and building Calculator Index, I wondered if other Indie Hackers could benefit from the research I had done.
This inspired me to ship the idea Domain Pairing: a free e-mail round-up of undervalued domain names paired product ideas.
If you’d like to learn more, Sign Up on Product Hunt for early access and let me know if there’s some additional insight / metric you’d love to see.
Not to sound spammy, but this is the exact reason why I'm building IdeaZap. It truly is painful.
As for your idea, I can definitely see the value behind it. I'm going to sign up for early access 👍
I dig it, just signed up... thanks for sharing.
you validate an idea with your early adopters not with other entrepreneurs.
you validate your execution plan with other entrepreneurs
my 2cent
Agreed. Future updates will include the ability to pitch ideas to users who are subscribed to specific topics (ex. Web Design), and asking if they'd be willing to pay for it.
be careful. IMO there is no way that domain is getting that kind of traffic.
I totally agree, and apologies if I it appears that I'm suggesting it would get 6m+ views a month. Just wanted to highlight one example of what's out there. For the community, it would be great if you could share your opinion in detail, so we all can learn.
This comment was deleted a year ago.