Iāve been secretly leading a double life.
You may know me from this newsletter, or maybe from my job leading Growth at Wiz/Google. But what most people donāt know is that I also have a passion project that I think about all the time.
Since 2021, Iāve been buying up domains. And not just a couple. Iām sitting on more than 400 right now - and renewing all of them, every year.
My domain names have literally changed my life. š±
And not for the reason youād think: Yeah, at this point, Iāve sold dozens of them. kavet.com went for $4,500. adpow.com for $4,200. Pretty solid returns for a string of letters I bought for pocket change.
But what has made all the difference for me has been establishing credibility. The best example is the one youāre looking at right now: marketingideas.com
Owning this URL allowed me to rank #1 on Google for āmarketing ideasā:
Thatās the power of a good domain name.
And Iāll tell you: It wasnāt cheap. But negotiating that one might be the single best business decision Iāve made in my career. Itās part of why I get to be The Marketing Ideas Guy instead of just āthat guy with the marketing ideas newsletter.ā
If youāre figuring out the domain name for your company or a new product right now ā you cannot afford to ignore this lesson.
Below is the full masterclass: how to pick a name people remember + how to get the domain for it (without paying stupid money).
Learn from the best š
In 1997, Marc Randolph had a problem: āNetflicksā was taken, āNetPixā too, and replay.com was for sale at $50,000. Way too expensive for a startup, so he passed and settled on āNetflixā - the next available cheap name.
Marc Benioff registered salesforce.com before the company even existed. Heās actually a domain collector (he owns bill.com and you.com), and once gave appstore.com to Steve Jobs as a gift. Jobs told him the App Store āwasnāt going to be very big.ā
Siri was almost called āMiaā (My Intelligent Assistant), until the team learned the owner of mia.com wanted $200K. Co-founder Dag Kittlaus already owned siri.com, and thatās part of why your phone says āHey Siriā today.
And the record for waiting: Elon Musk ran Tesla on teslamotors.com for a decade because an engineer who registered tesla.com in 1992 wouldnāt sell. Tesla finally got it in 2016, for $11 million.
Other companies take the opposite approach and pay the price, later: Instagram spent its early life on instagr.am (yes, Armeniaās domain), and Dropbox launched as GetDropbox.com, both because the .com was taken. Which is why both of them later paid six figures to get the real one back ($100k and $300k).
A domain only gets more expensive as you succeed. Buy early.
Your domain name matters more than ever š
āBut Tomā¦ That was a long time ago,ā you may be saying. āIs this still relevant? Sure, Netflix and Salesforce focused a lot on their domain name, but do we still need to care in 2026?ā
I get it. There are many reasons to doubt:
š The way search works is different. āZero-clickā search means that people get the info they want before even clicking on your site (nearly 70% of Google searches now end without a click).
š„ People are using social, first. Social media posts and App Store profiles have become an increasingly viable way for people to find out about your product. (For users under 35, social media has already overtaken search as the go-to channel for discovering brands.)
š§© People are using AI to find stuff. Between asking ChatGPT or Claude to find a tool for them, or just sending out AI agents to gather the info, persuading humans isnāt the only priority anymore.
So does that mean that domain names donāt matter anymore?
Absolutely not. š§
Right now, AI slop brands are popping up all over the place.
A domain is the cheapest proof that youāre a real business. Everything else that used to prove it (a logo, a website, glowing testimonials) can be produced in an afternoon by anyone with Claude. The address canāt.
Machines check your domain too (and theyāre less forgiving). People ask ChatGPT what to buy, and AI agents read your website before recommending you to anyone. In a market flooded with disposable ā[name]-ai.comā brands - a real domain is how you get counted as a real business.
Still not convinced? HubSpot cofounder Dharmesh Shah bought chat.com for $15.5 million a couple years ago, and then sold it to OpenAI, presumably for even more.
So Iām not saying you should spend $15 million, but you also canāt get away with a $10 afterthought. Thereās a huge middle, and thatās where you want to shop.
This is my masterclass on Names and Domains š§µ
Iāve spent YEARS (as both a marketing leader and passionate domain hunter and seller) working this out, and Iāve compiled everything I know into this guide. Itās super long, but I hope it will be a resource that you can save and keep coming back to. Iāll also keep it up to date, as I continue to monitor this space.
Below the line for paid subscribers, Iām giving you the full playbook:
š·ļø How to pick the right name - detailed step-by-step guide and why most companies pick from the wrong type.
š§ The 3-rule test I run before I commit to any name. One of them comes from the founder of the naming agency behind Apple, Intel, and Vercel.
š¤ The letter-by-letter trick that makes a brand feel fast, or expensive, or safe, before anyone reads a word.
š¾ Everything I know about domains (premium vs. regular, what to do if the .com is taken, how to buy premium WITHOUT paying six figures, fatal mistakes to avoid)
š„ The domain ending trending even harder than .ai right now. Most of the good one-word names are still sitting there unclaimed. Iāll tell you exactly which one.
ā The popular-looking domain ending you must never touch. Big-company IT teams block this domain, and youād lose half your buyers without ever knowing why.
šø Where I actually buy domains. Usually Ā½ the price of GoDaddy.
š¤ My full negotiation playbook. Iāve run it on about 50 premium domains and paid 40-50% of the asking price almost every time.
Letās start with the name, BEFORE you buy anything ā