STANDS4 started back in 2001 by husband and wife Yigal and Rinat Ben Efraim. This is the story behind the brand.
What is the story behind STANDS4?
The idea was to create a simple search-engine-like website that would help people decipher the exploding online jargon of acronyms and abbreviations. Over the years STANDS4 grew to become one of the largest reference, education & creativity networks on the Web.
When did you start thinking about your brand name and how did you settle on STANDS4?
Funny enough, it was the other way around – we were fond of the brand name first, and only thought what could fit into it later.
How did you get the domain name Stands4.com for your brand? Why did you select that one exactly?
The domain was available to register at the time. The basic idea was that it could be pretty cool to have an acronym dictionary website operating under the Stands4.com domain name – think: “What TTYL stands for?”.
Here is how the website looked when it was first launched:
How has owning Stands4.com affected your business? Do you own any other domain names?
At a very early stage, we’ve realized that Stands4.com does not actually serve our purpose as the ideal URL for our abbreviations website. We weren’t receiving much generic traffic for our most important keywords from search engines, and foreign customers didn’t really understand the wordplay behind it – so we’ve decided to make our first premium domain name acquisition and upgraded Stands4.com to the category-defining domain name: Abbreviations.com.
In the years to follow we’ve acquired some of the most precious domain names in the industry including gems like: Lyrics.com, Poetry.com, Grammar.com, Symbols.com, Literature.com, and much more online gold real estate – while building one of the most popular online media companies in our vertical.
STANDS4 eventually became the name of the company that now runs our business.
What was the reasoning to invest in such category-defining names? Did you ask yourself if it’s worth it?
Using the category-defining names for our respected brands provided us with an immediate authority, and helped us stand out of the crowd. In addition, it provided us with an SEO advantage over our competitors and spared us the hassle and cost of creating a totally new brand from scratch.
Using the category-defining names for our respected brands provided us with an immediate authority, and helped us stand out of the crowd. In addition, it provided us with an SEO advantage over our competitors and spared us the hassle and cost of creating a totally new brand from scratch.
Yigal and Rinat Ben Efraim
Is there a name you wish you could have but haven’t got to acquire yet?
Absolutely, we make several acquisitions every year, and there are a couple of prospects we’re exploring at the moment.
Do you have a favourite amongst your brands?
Tough one… every brand is like a little plant that we’ve nurtured, continually cared for, and saw it growing into something great – so it’s really hard to pick one as we truly favour them all. From a pure value perspective though, Poetry.com might be our most valuable asset given the strong affection so many poets have for it.
Why should entrepreneurs value their brand?
A lot of ink has been spilled over this subject already, so we can’t add much – but what we can certainly say is that for us, a quite small company with no funding, owning the keyword matching domain name for our respective brands was definitely crucial and allowed us to gain authority and brand recognition without the need to spend a fortune on marketing.
…Owning the keyword matching domain name for our respective brands was definitely crucial and allowed us to gain authority and brand recognition without the need to spend a fortune on marketing.
Has the pandemic affected your company in any way? What has changed since?
Like many other online businesses, we’re seeing significant growth in traffic to our websites cross-network, and primarily to our creativity destinations: Lyrics.com & Poetry.com as people apparently have more spare time to create and share their work with the community.
What do you do to make sure your marketing is effective?
We invest very little in traditional marketing, to be honest – we believe that great products and services are selling themselves, and that is where we’re focusing most of our efforts at: constantly improving our products, tools and services for the benefit of our steadily growing community members.
What would your advice be to entrepreneurs who are just starting out, in general, and when it comes to branding and naming?
It all depends on the specific initiative objectives of course. Some would highly benefit from a category-defining domain, while others may look for a cool brand name with no real meaning.
The only thing you need to realize is that once you’ve made a decision on your desired brand domain name, whether it’s Love.com or Skook.io, remember that there’s a very limited commodity available, as only one of its kind exists.
If the domain is not available, and you can’t reach an agreement with the current owner, there will be no alternative place to acquire it no matter how much you’d pay – so our advice is to be as nice and honest as possible when conducting business in this unique industry.
Where do you see your business in the future and how does your brand name fit into that vision?
We strongly believe that our brands will gain more and more traction in the years to come. We are operating in the literary art field, which is ancient as human civilization itself, and we don’t know many artists that wouldn’t want their song lyrics to be available on Lyrics.com or poets that wouldn’t be happy and excited to have their poetry published on Poetry.com – as to abbreviations, don’t worry, they’ll keep coming!
We hope the above information will help you in making informed decisions about your brand. If you want to say hi or have any questions about naming, branding, and domain names get in touch, we’re always happy to hear from you.
Find out more about STANDS4
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