Tis’ the season for party cruises, barges, and boats…

Alvin Brown
Reading Time | 6 Minutes

As I drove into work the other morning, I was reminded that summer is here.

How? Well, one of the first reasons I knew it was summer was that there were only 5 to 6 cars on my commute.

For the next 3 months, I can say that I’ll have Austin’s traffic beat.

Most of the time, my commute consists of seeing 2-3 school buses, teenage drivers and parents trying to get kids off to daycare and school.

The second reason I knew summer had arrived was that I saw Austin’s Affordable Party Bus, Fly-Rides.com, at the intersection 2769 and Bullock Hollow in route to Volente, which is where I office.

The music was blaring and it looked to be standing room only on the bus. I could make out trunks, bikinis and swimsuits so I know it had to be a high school or college end of school party.

Below is a picture of the bus i snapped on my way home the same day:

Austin's Affordable Party Bus

Nevertheless, I continued towards the office, envying the party bus of youth in their prime just living up the weekday with a lake party.

As I pulled into Volente, passing the Volente Shore Club, the third reason that let me know summer was here was seeing a white banner with blue text.

The text read the following: PremierPartyCruises.com.

Austin's best party boat rentals

My eyes perked up for sure as I quickly pulled off the road to grab a snapshot of a good domain name in use.

You know I couldn’t wait to get in front of a web browser to see what type of website had been developed, and to see how well the domain ranked across major search engines.

And PremierPartyCruises.com’s ranking verdict is…

Needless to say, PremierPartyCruises.com ranked very well for the greater Austin area, ranking on page one and in the top 5 slots for the various searches I performed.

And their website was a reasonably designed website hosted by Weebly. I could see areas for improvement, but all in all, it’s a decent website for the intended audience.

Although PremierPartyCruises.com ranked well in search engines, I noticed that they had quite a bit of competition.

One website in particular caught my eye. Each time I performed a search this website was either number one or two, and they also owned the pay-per-click advertising slot as well.

You guessed it, the website is a geo service domain: AustinPartyCruises.com.

Although only 1 character in length shorter than PremierPartyCruises.com, it’s likely that AustinPartyCruises.com dominates the greater Austin market for party barge rentals.

There are a few other websites that repeatedly appeared in results, but there domains are worth mentioning or batting an eye at.

How visible is your business’ web presence?

Nevertheless, I really like the PremierPartyCruises.com domain name even though it’s a bit long.

Personally, I think the domain makes for a great national brand should they decide to grow the business outside of the Austin market whereas AustinPartyCruises.com is limited to a local market.

Deciding on the reach of your company is something to keep in mind when selecting your company’s domain name.

Many times, company’s back themselves into a corner choosing a domain that doesn’t allow for growth or limits their business operations.

But sometimes company’s select a domain that’s too broad when their business is focused on nothing more than a local market.

So, be mindful to select a domain best aligned to your business’ overall growth strategy.

Are there alternative domains besides PremierPartyCruises.com?

Of course, once I saw AustinPartyCruises.com, my mind started rolling through a variety of domain names registration ideas.

The following questions popped into my mind:

  • Could there be a shorter alternative to PremierPartyCruises.com?
  • Could there be a locally-focused domain available?
  • Could a business focus on a single lake rather than city?
  • Are there other keywords than “party cruises” that could be used?

I searched and searched and searched the web six ways from Sunday in an attempt to provide an answer for each of the questions posed above.

The results are listed below. The domains with an asterisk are available for registration.

Most of the available domains above are worth owning even if you did nothing but redirected domains to your main website or built standalone websites.

The sky is the limit when it’s you and not your competition that owns the right domains.

But what about the new domain extensions?

Okay, I know someone is likely to ask about the new domain extensions of .rent and rentals.

In the case of PremierPartyCruises.com, ALL of the following domains are available using .rentals.:

Personally, I’m not much of a new domain extension fan, also known as new top level domains, ntlds and gtlds.

But just to be clear and transparent with each of you, yes, I do own a handful of new gtlds.

I’ve not developed a one into a website, but I do redirect domains, and track and measure their type-in results.

There are quite a few companies coming online that are effectively using new domain extensions.

In fact, I wrote about a company a few years ago that was an early adopter, and still operates the website and business today using the new gTLD.

What’s interesting and will take some time to sort out is the longevity of the new domain extensions. Will they be around in another 5, 10 or even 15 years?

Will we even use domain names in 15 or more years, or will they be replaced by some other technology yet to introduce itself?

I don’t know the finite answer, but my guess would be that we’ll see a variety of domain extensions used.

In fact, it would surprise me if my kids classify .com as outdated and the non .com extensions as the new norm of interacting via the web.

We’ll have to see when it comes time to cross that bridge, but that’s my best guess right now.

And the party continues on a Monday…

Well, lunch time came around and it just so happened that my wife and boys came for a lunch visit.

As we sat under the canopy, I heard some laughing and music not too far from us.

Within minutes, I noticed that the party barge was headed from the docking station to the “party island”, the name given to a particular lake island by myself and office mates (i.e., party boat on far right and the island far left).

Austin's Favorite Party Island - Lake Travis

My wife was a bit surprised to see approximately 30-40 people partying away on a Monday. I’m not certain if it was the same group I saw riding the Fly-Rides.com party bus.

However, I do know that whoever it was, they were having the times of their lives blaring loud music, jumping and splashing into the lake, and enjoying one another’s company.

And they did all of this just a few hundred yards away from sitting confined to an office and a honest day’s worth of work.

Heck, who am I kidding. We’re all working…

It’s just some of us are dreading it while others of us are living, thriving, and loving every single second of what we do.

I know that I love what I do, how about you?

P.S. Not too far from the PremierBoatParty.com banner was another sign and domain that I found to be interesting, and one that could benefit from a more locally-focused domain name: BeachFrontBoats.com.

Beach Front Boat Rentals - Lake Travis - Austin, Texas

Alvin Brown
Alvin is a serial entrepreneur and digital strategist with an avid love for domain name consulting. As the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of DNAdverts.com, his assignment is to ensure business and personal brands don't suffer the consequences of common domain name pitfalls.

As a domain investor and business consultant, Alvin actively participates in daily domain auctions. Outside of auctions, he passionately shares his views, opinions, and vision for how businesses should and should not use domain names to generate greater customer growth and revenue.
Alvin Brown

Alvin is a serial entrepreneur and digital strategist with an avid love for domain name consulting. As the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of DNAdverts.com, his assignment is to ensure business and personal brands don't suffer the consequences of common domain name pitfalls. As a domain investor and business consultant, Alvin actively participates in daily domain auctions. Outside of auctions, he passionately shares his views, opinions, and vision for how businesses should and should not use domain names to generate greater customer growth and revenue.