Our Perspective

I founded PremiumBrands.com to offer a selected collection of premium domain names, each shown with a starter site, concept imagery and a few business directions, so a founder can see the name at work before deciding. The collection exists because a name is usually the first thing people learn about a company, often before they have seen what it sells, and I would rather see names like these carrying real brands than waiting on a list. Baje.com is here because it is a name I would build on myself.

What Newswire.com taught me

In 2007 I acquired a press release distribution business that was running on i-Newswire.com. I secured iNewswire.com in 2013, but the name I wanted was Newswire.com, and getting it took more than a year of negotiating. I consulted SEO professionals before committing, and in February 2015 the business moved onto the new name. It was a deliberate decision, taken slowly, because moving an established business to a new address is real work.

The morning of the switch, a prospect told one of our sales agents, “Oh yeah, Newswire.com. I’ve heard of you guys.” That was impossible; the business had been on the name for a few hours. I took it as a lesson about first impressions: the right name does part of the introducing before anyone has seen the work.

Buying a name before the plan

PremiumBrands.com came to me before the plan did. I value premium names, and I could see that waiting would most likely cost me this one: by now it could belong to an end user building on it, and once a name is in that position it is rarely offered again. So I bought it first and worked out the business around a name that was already mine.

I buy names as an end user, with one test: would I build on this? The ones I haven’t built on yet are the names I’m open to selling, and Baje.com passes that test without much argument. It is four letters, a real Spanish word, and its meaning, a form of bajar, to lower or come down, suits a consumer brand built around taking things a little slower. An English speaker may need to hear it once before saying it the Spanish way, while a Spanish speaker already knows it, and I like that the founder decides how the brand introduces it.

Why I’d settle the name first

The advice I question most is the fix-it-later mindset: launch on whatever name is free and upgrade once the business has made it. By the time it has, the old name is on the packaging, the email addresses and the shop sign, and it is the name customers already know. Changing it means changing all of that, if the better name is still there at all. The way I see it, that cost weighs more now. With AI, almost anyone can put up a decent product page, a prototype or a first guide in a few weeks, so the product is easier to reproduce than it used to be; a name like Baje.com, once it is yours, is one of the few things another founder can’t copy.

A great name won’t save a bad business; the product, the service and the care behind them are still the founder’s job, and the name is the head start. OnlineBusiness.com, my strategy and development studio, supports the work behind PremiumBrands. If Baje.com is the name you would build on, tell me what you have in mind. If the name you really want is somewhere else, tell me that too; PremiumBrands helps founders acquire names that aren’t in the collection. The About page sets out what the purchase includes. A premium .com is a trust shortcut.