Well, first of all most of the personal imports would be games and that's no longer smart choise: - can't be done for console games - NTSC vs PAL - isn't that much of a deal - even if you save 30$ on a purchase (a max on PC titles) that would only cover more expensive shipping and tax at best
Of course there are companies that import games from US and Asia and offer them at roughly 60-80% of the local retail price.
Well, so ones that do will earn more. How long do you think it will take: a) US based companies to realise that there is some decent money to be made selling windows 7 to EU customers b) EU based companies figure out it's better to cut the middle man, buy windows 7 wholesale in US, import it and sell to their customers
Also there is no import duty for all personal imports of value up to 150 euro (so all windows seven oem, most retail), and AFAIK there is no import duty on software at all (or it's very low: 3-5% - adding an extra 5-10 bucks).
And it will end with yet another suit from EU against M$ being a nasty monopoly and guess what, they'll have to pay up - It's an economy crisis: eu budget could surely use come extra $$$;-)
What you have here is a name-jacker, not a domainer, but taxonomy aside here's my advice:
From what I have been able to check quickly your main problem is that your webpage did not suck and had some nice content. It has incoming links, at least 1 post has been noticed on digg etc. long story short it had and still has some traffic which is currently being monetized by the "new owner". Since Alexa ranking isn't reliable for such small numbers my best guess is that it's getting 20-80 hits a day (you can safely assume 1/4 of the previous traffic excluding from search engines) and is making less than $15 a month. If don't give away your real name before transaction (make up a story - it's needed for a joke or something) you should be able to get it back for under $250 - an optimistic approximate 2-year income. Don't open with a high offer, ask for a quote - the income might be close to 0, so you might even get it for 30 bucks.
Well.. it does make sense if there is a serious performance difference between platforms. As I don't want to start 'which console is the best' flamewar I'll stick with the previous console generation:
Playstation 2 had way less power than it's direct competitor - Xbox - but was on the market first and had a large share of it. Games were made to look the same on both systems, while they could look better if developer had chosen to allow differences between platforms (and Sony wouldn't agree to that) or not release for that platform.
I was under the impression it was the other way round - that EU countries were getting their own DMCA + cutting you off the Internet (French idea, what a suprise;-) )
As it was calculated somewhere in this post we break even around $200 per average. Considering that there are 250 million domains already taken use common sense to place your domain below or over that number.
What the heck do you mean you don't agree the definition of cybersquatting? Cybersquatting is very clearly defined. If you buy a domain you have no intention of using, other than to resell at a higher price, you are cybersquatting.
Well, as far as definition goes I agree with this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting and consider buying domains with an intend to sell them with profit (sell with profit not extorting money, which cybersquatting, as defined in wikipedia, is) equal to buying real estate while it's cheap. The only major difference is that buying real estate is more expensive than owning it, while with domains it's the other way round.
note that, as I stated previously, I do not deal global domains my numbers might be sligtly off. 4 letter unpronaucable gibberish - people buy those @ $250-500, so that's what I would accept no problem, while honestly I don't have the slightest idea how you could use it. 4 letter pronauncabe gibberish that can be coined into a word (take veoh.com for example) - $500-1500 4 letter word, that nicely sells, like geek.com - huh, that would be a problem, but in six digits range.
As for fair offers read this thread - by 3 orders of magnitude I mean mostly $0.99 offers. And the average profit margin is WAY lower than you think - see below.
That's more or less accurate, giving a 33% earned over 2 years if domains are sold @ $250 average. Not such sweet money if you consider, that some domains are failed investments and some day you just don't renew it.
Domain prices are based on supply and demand, just as with any other goods (putting aside the argument that domain names are not goods). ICANN does nothing but drops the prices, while they should be increased to adapt to the demand. At the same time they are considering ofering privately owned custom tlds, actually selling more and more of the Internet to the highest bidder. The real problem is they have a monopoly. We don't - with a quater of the billion domains registered globally no single domainer (or a group) owns even a fraction of a percent - where is my monopoly?
Over 50% domains do not earn (with ads) the cost of renewal - there's not enough traffic unless you are typo-squatting or registering trademarks (and I don't). Less than 10% are sold within 2 years from registration. Do the math.
Does it really matter? Think how much you are willing to pay and how much you would consider a fair price (what's the price you would pay and not feal bad with it). Odds are that those 2 prices are not far apart and first one is 2-3 times higher then the second one. Make an offer within that range and if you don't receive an answer that means it was too expensive anyways.
Domain prices change. Financial crisis resulted in very, very high demand for loan refinancing related domains, alternative investing etc boosting the prices sky-high. You could update prices on weekly basis if you own 100 domains. What if it's 10k?
Cybersquatting is one of the most loosely used terms related to domain name intellectual property law and is often incorrectly used to refer to the sale or purchase of generic domain names such as example.com.
Well.. consider you have a really nice domain name, let's say it's bookstore.com Every day you have 200 messages in your inbox asking if you would sell it for $0.99, "because that's what godaddy is charging for new.com domains", 50 messages with a $10-25 offer and once every 2-3 months one that you could consider.
If someone has bought a domain name to sell it with profit he will not consider any offers below $100-150 unless he has a bazilion domains registered by copy-pasting a whole english dictionary in mass domain registration form (and yes, there are folks who work that way). An average for a long domain name (6-7 letters+), not related directly to making money is $200-500. If it's business related the more money is to be made online the more will it cost.
While I don't agree with your definition of cybersquatting (and therefore I don't consider myself a cybersquatter) I certainly see why you don't like what I do. Any business that makes you pay more for a services or goods that are served on first comes first served basis will make people angry. It's exactly the same with gold phone numers, except that there is no central control of the market (like the phone company).
First of all what you are describing is not cybersquating - it's no trademark, not a domain typo - there is no bad faith. The domain has been registered by a domainer - a domain trader that buys premium domains treating them as an investment. When you type in the domain name you will see a domain parking page - a website filled with some adds in order to earn some money to finance the cost of domain renewal plus sometimes a few bucks extra. The domain is not indexed by google - it's a mutual agreement between large domain parkings and google - not in index, yet with google ads.
As the domain is not registered as a clear example of cybersquating (and so is not getting a lot of traffic) you can be pretty sure it's for sale - that's where we earn money.
The domain value is based on (in no particular order): 1. domain length - the shorter the more expensive. 2. tld -.com is the most expensive 3. the acctual domain name - if it is just a bunch of unpronaucable letters it will be cheap, if it's a word it will cost ya, especially if it means something. some random examples ghdn.com < geen.com < geek.com
If you want to buy the domain make an offer, but a fair one or you will be added to ignore list after the first message. We get loads of offers which are too low by two-three orders of magnitude and reading all off them is not really an option.
Once you agree on the price do use one of the domain markets that offers escrow - sorry I can't really point you to a speciffic site, as I deal exlusively in eastern european tlds and we have some local markets.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, first of all most of the personal imports would be games and that's no longer smart choise:
- can't be done for console games - NTSC vs PAL
- isn't that much of a deal - even if you save 30$ on a purchase (a max on PC titles) that would only cover more expensive shipping and tax at best
Of course there are companies that import games from US and Asia and offer them at roughly 60-80% of the local retail price.
Well, so ones that do will earn more. How long do you think it will take:
a) US based companies to realise that there is some decent money to be made selling windows 7 to EU customers
b) EU based companies figure out it's better to cut the middle man, buy windows 7 wholesale in US, import it and sell to their customers
Also there is no import duty for all personal imports of value up to 150 euro (so all windows seven oem, most retail), and AFAIK there is no import duty on software at all (or it's very low: 3-5% - adding an extra 5-10 bucks).
And it will end with yet another suit from EU against M$ being a nasty monopoly and guess what, they'll have to pay up - It's an economy crisis: eu budget could surely use come extra $$$ ;-)
$199 + ~$20 shipping + 17-23% VAT - a single imported windows seven pro would be no more than $270, or 192 euro. You save 97 euro or $135 PER licence.
let's say your company has 100 PCs...
It looks like M$ makes users get the non-EU windows 7 by making it cheaper - what do you think will the companies selling PCs with "Free windows" do?
What you have here is a name-jacker, not a domainer, but taxonomy aside here's my advice:
From what I have been able to check quickly your main problem is that your webpage did not suck and had some nice content. It has incoming links, at least 1 post has been noticed on digg etc. long story short it had and still has some traffic which is currently being monetized by the "new owner".
Since Alexa ranking isn't reliable for such small numbers my best guess is that it's getting 20-80 hits a day (you can safely assume 1/4 of the previous traffic excluding from search engines) and is making less than $15 a month. If don't give away your real name before transaction (make up a story - it's needed for a joke or something) you should be able to get it back for under $250 - an optimistic approximate 2-year income. Don't open with a high offer, ask for a quote - the income might be close to 0, so you might even get it for 30 bucks.
Well.. it does make sense if there is a serious performance difference between platforms. As I don't want to start 'which console is the best' flamewar I'll stick with the previous console generation:
Playstation 2 had way less power than it's direct competitor - Xbox - but was on the market first and had a large share of it. Games were made to look the same on both systems, while they could look better if developer had chosen to allow differences between platforms (and Sony wouldn't agree to that) or not release for that platform.
I was under the impression it was the other way round - that EU countries were getting their own DMCA + cutting you off the Internet (French idea, what a suprise ;-) )
As it was calculated somewhere in this post we break even around $200 per average. Considering that there are 250 million domains already taken use common sense to place your domain below or over that number.
What the heck do you mean you don't agree the definition of cybersquatting? Cybersquatting is very clearly defined. If you buy a domain you have no intention of using, other than to resell at a higher price, you are cybersquatting.
Well, as far as definition goes I agree with this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting
and consider buying domains with an intend to sell them with profit (sell with profit not extorting money, which cybersquatting, as defined in wikipedia, is) equal to buying real estate while it's cheap. The only major difference is that buying real estate is more expensive than owning it, while with domains it's the other way round.
note that, as I stated previously, I do not deal global domains my numbers might be sligtly off.
4 letter unpronaucable gibberish - people buy those @ $250-500, so that's what I would accept no problem, while honestly I don't have the slightest idea how you could use it.
4 letter pronauncabe gibberish that can be coined into a word (take veoh.com for example) - $500-1500
4 letter word, that nicely sells, like geek.com - huh, that would be a problem, but in six digits range.
As for fair offers read this thread - by 3 orders of magnitude I mean mostly $0.99 offers. And the average profit margin is WAY lower than you think - see below.
They are doing the oposite. You will be able to buy your own tld if you have about $100k
That's more or less accurate, giving a 33% earned over 2 years if domains are sold @ $250 average. Not such sweet money if you consider, that some domains are failed investments and some day you just don't renew it.
What trade does?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting
Last line before table of contents.
Domain prices are based on supply and demand, just as with any other goods (putting aside the argument that domain names are not goods).
ICANN does nothing but drops the prices, while they should be increased to adapt to the demand. At the same time they are considering ofering privately owned custom tlds, actually selling more and more of the Internet to the highest bidder.
The real problem is they have a monopoly. We don't - with a quater of the billion domains registered globally no single domainer (or a group) owns even a fraction of a percent - where is my monopoly?
Over 50% domains do not earn (with ads) the cost of renewal - there's not enough traffic unless you are typo-squatting or registering trademarks (and I don't). Less than 10% are sold within 2 years from registration. Do the math.
Does it really matter? Think how much you are willing to pay and how much you would consider a fair price (what's the price you would pay and not feal bad with it).
Odds are that those 2 prices are not far apart and first one is 2-3 times higher then the second one.
Make an offer within that range and if you don't receive an answer that means it was too expensive anyways.
Domain prices change. Financial crisis resulted in very, very high demand for loan refinancing related domains, alternative investing etc boosting the prices sky-high.
You could update prices on weekly basis if you own 100 domains. What if it's 10k?
quote form wikipedia:
Cybersquatting is one of the most loosely used terms related to domain name intellectual property law and is often incorrectly used to refer to the sale or purchase of generic domain names such as example.com.
Would you sell spoon.com for $3? It cost you $0.99 to register it - $3 means a 200% profit margin.
Well.. consider you have a really nice domain name, let's say it's bookstore.com .com domains", 50 messages with a $10-25 offer and once every 2-3 months one that you could consider.
Every day you have 200 messages in your inbox asking if you would sell it for $0.99, "because that's what godaddy is charging for new
If someone has bought a domain name to sell it with profit he will not consider any offers below $100-150 unless he has a bazilion domains registered by copy-pasting a whole english dictionary in mass domain registration form (and yes, there are folks who work that way). An average for a long domain name (6-7 letters+), not related directly to making money is $200-500. If it's business related the more money is to be made online the more will it cost.
While I don't agree with your definition of cybersquatting (and therefore I don't consider myself a cybersquatter) I certainly see why you don't like what I do. Any business that makes you pay more for a services or goods that are served on first comes first served basis will make people angry. It's exactly the same with gold phone numers, except that there is no central control of the market (like the phone company).
First of all what you are describing is not cybersquating - it's no trademark, not a domain typo - there is no bad faith. The domain has been registered by a domainer - a domain trader that buys premium domains treating them as an investment.
When you type in the domain name you will see a domain parking page - a website filled with some adds in order to earn some money to finance the cost of domain renewal plus sometimes a few bucks extra. The domain is not indexed by google - it's a mutual agreement between large domain parkings and google - not in index, yet with google ads.
As the domain is not registered as a clear example of cybersquating (and so is not getting a lot of traffic) you can be pretty sure it's for sale - that's where we earn money.
The domain value is based on (in no particular order): .com is the most expensive
1. domain length - the shorter the more expensive.
2. tld -
3. the acctual domain name - if it is just a bunch of unpronaucable letters it will be cheap, if it's a word it will cost ya, especially if it means something. some random examples ghdn.com < geen.com < geek.com
If you want to buy the domain make an offer, but a fair one or you will be added to ignore list after the first message. We get loads of offers which are too low by two-three orders of magnitude and reading all off them is not really an option.
Once you agree on the price do use one of the domain markets that offers escrow - sorry I can't really point you to a speciffic site, as I deal exlusively in eastern european tlds and we have some local markets.
We'd end up clicking on anything with tits all the time.