Adding a color to a word can make a memorable brand.
A brand like RedBull provides a brand icon known around the world.
The color purple could mean many things, but the mattress company Purple has acquired the name in the
A pink elephant is a name anyone will remember, even if you never see one in reality. Check out the company that uses PinkElephant.com.
The company perhaps most associated with the color pink is VictoriasSecret.com, and the domain name pink.com redirects to their pink collection.
In this article, I take a look at how different colors have sold as part of domain names, and how often they appear in business names and on brandable marketplaces. Part 2 will look at the psychology and marketing aspects of colors, as well as data for additional colors.
Primary and Secondary Colors
The primary colors are based on the physics of light, as well as the color response of the human eye. The primary colors are normally considered red, green and blue. They are primary in the sense that one cannot be made from a combination of the others.
You perhaps saw a demonstration in high school where color beams are added. Equal amounts of red, blue and green produce white light. A surface which does not reflect any color of light is black.
If an artist or print specialist, you are probably more familiar with subtractive colors, or pigments. For example, ink-jet printers use yellow, cyan and magenta, along with black, to replicate any color.
The List
In this first article, I look at data for the primary colors red, green and blue, along with white, as well as the pigment, or subtractive, primary colors yellow, cyan, and magenta, along with black.
I have added popular secondary and additional colors pink, purple, orange, and violet. There are many other colors, some of which will be considered in the second article.
NameBio-Recorded Sales
I used NameBio data, but instead of the Anywhere setting used As A Prefix[ and As A Suffix. This is particularly important for red, since numerous words not associated with the color contain the word red, such as powered, hundred, tempered, etc. If you use the Ends With these would be included, even though they have nothing to do with the color red.
NameBio records a combination of wholesale and retail transactions. I set a $500 minimum price to focus mainly on retail sales. From my list of colors, the eight with highest number of sales are shown below.
Green is clearly the most popular color, probably because of its environmental association. Blue, red and black are the next most popular.
It is much more frequent to have the color as the first word, as in RedBull or WhiteSwan.
Number of sales can be misleading, so I also looked at the dollar volume, that data shown below. Yellow edges out purple in this list.
I also looked at sales involving the exact word, with sales in different extensions. Here are the top sellers given as number of sales in that color, average price.
Number of TLDs
The number of top level domains (TLDs), or extensions, in which the color is registered is very high for almost all of the considered colors. I measured this using dotDB, with results shown below.
BrandBucket Listings
Colors are frequently found in names listed at brandable marketplaces. The search engine at BrandBucket makes it possible to search for names that begin or end with a color.
For reasons noted earlier, for red I had to go through the list by hand to not count names which ended in red, but did not refer to the color.
Note that these are percentages from the set of ten colors shown, not from all names involving any color.
In Business Names
It is important to know how frequently different colors were used in business names. For this I used OpenCorporates, including only names of active businesses and organizations.
Green is the clear leader, with blue and red next. Black and white are not far behind.
Black is a common surname, so many of the listings probably reflect that, or organizations associated with black culture, rather than the color per se.
Violet, magenta and cyan do not find relative to other colors nearly as much use. There are still significant numbers of listings, for example, 4037 for violet, 2182 for magenta, and 864 for cyan.
Color Extensions
A number of colors have been released as new gTLD extensions. None of these have had many $500+ aftermarket sales yet. Here is the list with the number of sales and average price.
Sales Exact Colors
I checked the current status in the
Final Thoughts
There are many additional colors not considered here. Gold and silver are popular, although have meanings other than color. Brown and gray are two other common colors not considered.
Please suggest in the comments colors you would like me to analyze in the second article in this series. Need some inspiration? Here is a compact list of colors.
Thanks to NameBio, BrandBucket, dotDB and OpenCorporates that I used in this analsis.
A brand like RedBull provides a brand icon known around the world.
The color purple could mean many things, but the mattress company Purple has acquired the name in the
.com
extension, and spent the advertising dollars, so you now probably think of their signature purple mattresses.A pink elephant is a name anyone will remember, even if you never see one in reality. Check out the company that uses PinkElephant.com.
The company perhaps most associated with the color pink is VictoriasSecret.com, and the domain name pink.com redirects to their pink collection.
In this article, I take a look at how different colors have sold as part of domain names, and how often they appear in business names and on brandable marketplaces. Part 2 will look at the psychology and marketing aspects of colors, as well as data for additional colors.
Primary and Secondary Colors
The primary colors are based on the physics of light, as well as the color response of the human eye. The primary colors are normally considered red, green and blue. They are primary in the sense that one cannot be made from a combination of the others.
You perhaps saw a demonstration in high school where color beams are added. Equal amounts of red, blue and green produce white light. A surface which does not reflect any color of light is black.
If an artist or print specialist, you are probably more familiar with subtractive colors, or pigments. For example, ink-jet printers use yellow, cyan and magenta, along with black, to replicate any color.
The List
In this first article, I look at data for the primary colors red, green and blue, along with white, as well as the pigment, or subtractive, primary colors yellow, cyan, and magenta, along with black.
I have added popular secondary and additional colors pink, purple, orange, and violet. There are many other colors, some of which will be considered in the second article.
NameBio-Recorded Sales
I used NameBio data, but instead of the Anywhere setting used As A Prefix[ and As A Suffix. This is particularly important for red, since numerous words not associated with the color contain the word red, such as powered, hundred, tempered, etc. If you use the Ends With these would be included, even though they have nothing to do with the color red.
NameBio records a combination of wholesale and retail transactions. I set a $500 minimum price to focus mainly on retail sales. From my list of colors, the eight with highest number of sales are shown below.
The number of $500 plus sales for that color as a prefix and as a suffix. All extensions and all time, NameBio data.
Green is clearly the most popular color, probably because of its environmental association. Blue, red and black are the next most popular.
It is much more frequent to have the color as the first word, as in RedBull or WhiteSwan.
Number of sales can be misleading, so I also looked at the dollar volume, that data shown below. Yellow edges out purple in this list.
The total dollar volume for each color as a prefix and a suffix. $500 plus sales only. NameBio data.
I also looked at sales involving the exact word, with sales in different extensions. Here are the top sellers given as number of sales in that color, average price.
- green 13, $5280
- red 10, $14,600
- black 10, $3907
- pink 8, $5186
- white 6, $3831
- purple 4, $265,200
purple.com
for $900,000.Number of TLDs
The number of top level domains (TLDs), or extensions, in which the color is registered is very high for almost all of the considered colors. I measured this using dotDB, with results shown below.
BrandBucket Listings
Colors are frequently found in names listed at brandable marketplaces. The search engine at BrandBucket makes it possible to search for names that begin or end with a color.
For reasons noted earlier, for red I had to go through the list by hand to not count names which ended in red, but did not refer to the color.
Note that these are percentages from the set of ten colors shown, not from all names involving any color.
In Business Names
It is important to know how frequently different colors were used in business names. For this I used OpenCorporates, including only names of active businesses and organizations.
Green is the clear leader, with blue and red next. Black and white are not far behind.
Black is a common surname, so many of the listings probably reflect that, or organizations associated with black culture, rather than the color per se.
Violet, magenta and cyan do not find relative to other colors nearly as much use. There are still significant numbers of listings, for example, 4037 for violet, 2182 for magenta, and 864 for cyan.
Color Extensions
A number of colors have been released as new gTLD extensions. None of these have had many $500+ aftermarket sales yet. Here is the list with the number of sales and average price.
- black 7, $7166
- blue 7, $1645
- green 11, $5799
- pink 4, $829
- red 4, $6880
Sales Exact Colors
I checked the current status in the
.com
extension for each of the colors.green.com
– not operationalred.com
– cinematic camerasblue.com
– parked, for salewhite.com
– for saleblack.com
– cryptoyellow.com
– digital asset tradingorange.com
– network technologyviolet.com
– for salepurple.com
– mattressespink.com
– redirect to Victoria’s Secretmagenta.com
– redirect to Love Magenta fashioncyan.com
– gaming
Final Thoughts
There are many additional colors not considered here. Gold and silver are popular, although have meanings other than color. Brown and gray are two other common colors not considered.
Please suggest in the comments colors you would like me to analyze in the second article in this series. Need some inspiration? Here is a compact list of colors.
Thanks to NameBio, BrandBucket, dotDB and OpenCorporates that I used in this analsis.
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