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Prices, Gouging and Haggling for Internet Domains?
GregStevensLA asks: "I'm considering paying for a 'premium' domain name for a small web start-up I want to form. The company that currently holds the domain name is offering it for $1500, but they made it clear to me that they expect a counter-offer and are 'willing to make a deal.' I've never done this before, and I have no idea what a reasonable counter-offer is. If I say 'I can't go above $1000' am I being too easy? Should I try to push for lower than that? My understanding is that these prices are hugely inflated anyway (i.e. pure profit going to companies that probably scooped up the domains for free). In some sense, paying anything beyond a registration fee is gouging, in my opinion. I don't want to be conned... on the other hand, this is the reality of business, and I don't want to come across as amateurish. Does anyone have any advice for this new-comer to domain name purchasing?"
Please do your best to find an alternative first. Look into alternatives before succumbing and compensating these worthless parasites for their land grabbing.
Hey Greg,
We spoke eralier about you purchasing a domain name from us. In light of recent interest in the domain, we're now asking $2500.
Thanks,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Domain Dealer
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
Don't give these cybersquatting bastards money. If cybersquatting wasn't so profitable, the cybersquatters wouldn't exist.
I refuse to give money to domain squatters. Buy another domain name, be creative. Domain names become less and less important every day. Focus on SEO and other ways of getting people to your website. The domain name just isn't that important unless you're going to do a lot of non web-based advertising (radio, TV, print, etc.). You can pay for a lot of clicks on Google AdWords for $1000.
Bradley Holt
The company that currently holds the domain name is offering it for $1500
I recently received a solicitation for a church domain name. I am the webmaster for my church and another church in North or South Carolina (I forget where), no longer needs one of their domain names. The church I attend has the same name, but is located in another state. Basically, the guy said he wanted to offer us first dibs. When we inquired as to how much he wanted, he said that it had been "appraised" at up to $20,000. Though, he was very nice about it and said that he would give it to us for $8000. Sheesh. I recommended to our pastor that he ignore the request since we already have a well known and establishd domain.
For a small business, that's a serious chunk of money - too serious. You will end up in a "bidding war" with yourself as they try to suck as much cash out of you as possible. It really is overrated to have a .com adress in any case; if you like the name, look for name.us, name.org, name.net, name.whatever. A lot of countries have restrictions on their top-level domains (you need a business address in the country or similar), but there's a whole set of top-level country domains that are offered to any comers for their mnemonic value, like .tv if your business is related to broadcasting, for instance, or .nu, always popular in Scandinavia.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Hope to god they don't read Slashdot! :-)
My motorbike travels in Chile.
Can someone explain price gouging to me? If someone offers to sell you something at a price that you consider too high (gouging), you don't buy it. If someone offers to sell you something at a (high) price, and you agree to pay the person the money, that means that whatever you are buying is worth more to you than the money that you are offering in return (therefore not price gouging). Since (almost) all transactions are voluntary, and people engage voluntarily in transactions only if they think it is to their advantage, how can price gouging exist? Can someone clear this up for me?
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
I know there are people with a lot of disdain for cybersquaters here on slashdot.
..."
I recently put two domain names that I own up for sale. They point to an austere page that says essentially: "Welcome. I do not need this domain anymore and if you would like it, I am willing to sell it for $50. Contact me
There is certainly a difference in amount, but my domain names are fairly obscure and (likely) won't be of much interest to anyone. I'm not going to renew them, and my thought is that if anyone would like to have them sooner than the expiration then they can pay me a small amount for that. Hell, a couple of the big registrars still charge around that much for one year.
Maybe this person isn't a cybersquater per se, perhaps he once used this domain and thinks it is worth something. So far as I know, there isn't even a way to relinquish a domain name that is registered some time out into the future back into the commons. Determine what you will pay for the privilege to use the name now rather than later (or instead of another name), and make an offer. Be upfront -- "This is what it is worth to me, this is what I will pay, final offer, let me know." Depending on your project, maybe it is even worth what he is asking.
If you have a firm value in your mind and do not pay more than that value, you'll win -- regardless of whether you get the domain.
If a good is significantly rare, or the need for that good is significantly high, then the transaction cannot be described as voluntary. If the transaction is not voluntary, your reasoning falls apart.
The question is in this case- do you change the name of your business, or run the risk of your competitor being willing to pay the $1500 to grab this domain and then slander your business or direct business to their site in your name. The risk is great enough that this is not a voluntary transaction- and while the gouging is indeed great (had you grabbed that domain yourself, you would have saved more than two orders of magnitude), the cost of NOT grabbing it is potentially even greater.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I fear that your business is not long for this world. My reasoning is this: You are considering spending a large chunk of change for a domain name from a cybersquatter, rather than striking out to find an unused name you can register for a percent of the money. Given that ALL small businesses starting out are cash-strapped, the fact that you are willing to waste your limited money in this fashion makes me doubt you will spend your other money wisely. The fact that you then turned to Slashdot for advice on this would tend to confirm the hypothesis that you are not really thinking coldly and rationally enough to found a successful business.
I don't want to sound harsh, but I do think you really need to step back and reconsider your plans - perhaps you can locate a local college where you might get a dispassionate third party to help fix you a nice big bowl of Reality Checks.
I've watched too many businesses fail because the founders, while having the best of intentions, made bad decisions because they were not willing to face the harsh, unpleasant facts.
Please - do prove me wrong. Be successful, and when you are successful, feel free to email me and say "Boooya! In your FACE Wowbagger!" If you can be successful you will have earned the right to do so, and I will congratulate you.
But if you keep doing things like seriously considering spending $1500, or even $100 on a domain name when you are just starting out - I don't expect that email.
www.eFax.com are spammers
A lesser value might exist if the name is easy to associate. weather.com for instance is easier to remember as a weather site then sfgsjkdhgfksdfk.com It don't matter to find the site via google but in ads or just remembering the site from previous visits weather.com is just a bit easier.
The last case is if you already got a real world brand name and now want to have that same name on the web. Just recently I wanted to visit the vanguard page. It wasn't the first result on google (a game not coming as the first result for its name is pretty rare) and I actually had to scroll down to see vangaurdsoh.com
Does it matter? Well not much as you can see BUT I have in the past just typed in vanguard and gotten the wrong site.
So the question to you is, does the above apply to you? Is that name really worth 1000 dollars? It sounds like it is a lot of money for you. So most likely not. Try finding another name or one from a different domain like say .net .us or whatever.
Most people will either use a search engine to find your site OR find it by being given the URL in some other form. Focus on something that is simple to remember and doesn't cost a 1000 dollars and do some advertising.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sorry Mr. Question Asker, I tried my best to save your Ask Slashdot from mindless Slashbot mutual reassurance, but judging from the comments so far, which have almost exclusively echoed my frosty piss to the letter without being marked redundant, I have failed you. I apologise sincerely and vow to turn my brain in during the next amnesty on inadequacy.
Buying a Nolo book on legal protection is definitely well worth the $30-$50 investment, and the knowledge gained will carry over to any new businesses you might decide to start. Don't even consider paying a huge chunk of hard-earned money for a domain name without at least understanding the basics of legal rights that do (and don't) convey with it.
Really, you cannot trust anyone who spouts about counter offers. Offer them $150, a good offensive play.
Someone squatted on centurix.com and I asked them how much. $5000 was the reply, so I said $100 is my best offer, if that's not enough then have fun with the domain. They accepted, I had the domain for 2 years and just let it lapse, the same company bought it again after I had it. Good luck to them, my current domain suits us much better.
Task Mangler
Once you have a trademark on the domain that describes your stuff, you can make a cybersquatting complaint. If the domain owner is just parking the domain, under the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy that's considered "use in bad faith". Then you send a letter to the domain owner, threatening a UDRP proceeding.
(If it's a "private registration", the registrar will now "uncloak" the domain so fast your head will spin, because they don't want to be the party to a UDRP proceeding or lawsuit.)
At this point, either the other side will offer to sell you the domain for less than a UDRP costs ($1000), or you go forward to a mandatory UDRP proceeding, which is an instant win when you have the trademark.
We're talking about small change here (less than $1k USD), not "business.com" money. If you're serious about wanting the domain then just buy it. This isn't a "red vs. blue pill" issue, there is no rabbit hole, it's a business decision. Make it and move on to building great software.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
Mostly I agree, but I also have some sites that I started and never went anywhere. I never turned them into spam ad sites and I mostly still own the domains because I keep forgetting to cancel the auto-charge on the domains. I don't want $1500 for these domains but enough to cover what I've spent on them would be nice. Say maybe $150 each? I don't think that's unreasonable given that I'm making no effort to sell them and still wouldn't mind making them work if I found time to make the sites I originally planned.
I also recently considered buying a domain that was in active development by someone else but for which they hadn't had commited strongly to branding. I probably could have bought it for $500 but eventually decided it wasn't really worth it for me. I thought $500 was fair though.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Off them $25 and a bus ticket. If they don't go for it, hack into their servers, download child porn, and report them to the FBI.
Second, priority is an issue. You need to have some rights in the name predating the acquisition of the domain by the current owner. Registering a trademark helps, but the history of its use may matter.
Sorry about that.
And when you pick a name, buy it immediately, as the registrars are known to watch the queries for domain names, and if they see a good one, they'll grab the domain themselves and then offer to sell for a lot more. So today you find reallygooddomainname.com and it's available, but tomorrow it might not be -- tomorrow they want $1000 for it.
Certain registrars and resellers are notorious for selling "recent inquiry lists" to domain kings. I actually lost a domain name this way a few years back, after checking availability. It was very unlikely that specific domain name, which was meant for a personal site for a family member, could have been picked by accident by someone else with the same two-day period (while I was mulling it over).
After that experience, I became very cautious about where to check domain name availability. OpenSRS used to be good for a simultaneous WHOIS search and check of availability, but now they have this annoying captcha. At NameCheap, an Enom reseller which I've used for years for most of my small collection of domain names, I've never lost a prospective domain name after an inquiry and subsequent mulling, although apparently they did recently decide to keep as a "pay for click" empty parked domain name one that I decided to drop as superceded (for a business idea) by a more relevant term. I've not had problems either with GANDI, but haven't used them for new domain names for years.
There are undoubtedly many decent registrars and resellers, and a few bad ones run by slimebags, just as with any type of business.
By the way, a great place to check information on ownership of a domain name is here. Basic membership is free with a simple registration (use fake information and a throwaway email address if you are more comfortable with that), and they have lots of neat tools even for free memberships. Just make certain you only use it for domain names which you know are already taken, because the people who run it are in the business of reselling domain names, and giving them ideas isn't good.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Sorry but most of this discussion is terribly naive. Internet domain investing is very real and very large with billions of dollars in investment capital. Did you know Internet ad revenues have now passed those of local newspapers? If you want to buy Trump Tower you either buy it or not. But you're not going to jawbone Trump into selling for the price he originally paid for raw land and bricks. If don't buy, find something else that suits your budget. Or buy land and build your own. When there are many buyers for a domain name, supply and demand drive the price - after all, there is only one. The original OP question was, "am I getting a fair shake or getting conned"? In real estate, recent comparable sales are used to evaluate this question, and it's the same with Internet Domains. Try the site http://dnsaleprice.com/ to search for recent sales comparable to the domain of interest to determine if you're getting a fair price. Cheers, BidNo
1. Type-in traffic: If the domain is a naturally descriptive phrase - MiamiHotels.com - you will benefit from steady type-in traffic. For every type-in visitor, and they can be considerable in a world of 100s of millions who are online - that's one less click you have to pay for via AdWords, etc. 2. Type-in traffic II: If the domain has a baseline of traffic you will have an "insurance policy" against search engine results volatility, that is, one day you rank and the next day you tank in the search engine. 3. Memorability as brandability: What's branding about? Lots of things, but foremost you want to be remembered - by association. Which is the easier path to remembrance: BostonPlumber.com or BobsPlumbingServicesLLC.com? My vote is on . . . (I'm sure you can guess). 4. If you follow 1-3 then you can see that certain domain names have inherent value and some people were savvy enough (and old enough = had a credit card at the time) to register some pretty neat domain names. Chances are, if you (the naysayers) had the chance and the foresight, you likely would have registered a few yourself. Of course, the purists never would have done that as they knew some day Google would love them and their website - briefly - until the latest algo change. 5. SEO as the alternative remedy? Ya, like that's going to work for the long haul. Especially when everyone and their brother is playing the same game and the search engines are hard at work in an effort to make SEO irrelevant. 6. Overpriced? Inflated? So what? Don't get your shorts all bunched up in a knot. If it makes you feel that you have greater meaning in this world - that you have STRONG opinions - great. OTOH, feel free to devote that energy and attention to something that might really matter. If the guy/gal holding the domain is a bum then a bum's karma will be their lot. Why make your karmic lot that of the whiner, the self-righteous, the judge? Move on. Somebody holds a domain for a cruddy little links page. You got time for that as an issue? (Just kidding, of course, on this point. You can labor about whatever gets you torqued. :-P )
7. OMG - They're doing nothing with the domain! It's parked! Ummmm, ya, but if you notice there's a lot going on in the parking industry. More and more they're turning those domain names into mini-portals. Almost as good as 791/2% of the domains that are actually developed, at least in terms of delivering something that the casual user might find useful.
Truth is, it either gets down to a business decision or a moral/ethical/political issue. I cannot recommend too many political issues for a business, as there is ultimately no answer that will work for everyone, across all ethnicities, religions, cultures, etc. Not to say it's not a legitimate area of focus, just that if one labors to make the politically correct decision on all possible issues chances are that one will never get down to the business of doing business. That's not bad if mom and day are paying the bills, but those days are numbered.
Choose the domain name and pay the price if the domain name has some traffic, is easily brandable, is memorable, works nicely on business cards and letterhead and bills, AND it's worth it to you for those and other business reasons.