Something that came up with our team the other day, somewhat related. How do you guys feel about .net when the .com is unavailable?
Want to build a side business? buy a great domain name
141–150 of 225 posts
Re: Want to build a side business? buy a great domain name
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> https://startupname.website The best one I got was roofpotato.com Sell rooftop potato garden kits? I guess that's my life now...
Funnily enough I am growing rooftop potatoes right now, so I'm in the market.
Alright, I'll let you have it since you're already living the roof potato life.
Re: Want to build a side business? buy a great domain name
#143I love this article just because so many commenters hate it. I really like the super niche side-projects -- I ran an analytics site for minor league football, built with a couple of Ruby scripts and a free Netlify plan. Was featured on ESPN, famous NFL twitter accounts, and did a million pageviews in 2 months.
I licensed the data to a fantasy football site and it was starting to make money before the league shut down.
The stakes are so low that it's really worth giving it a go.
Re: Want to build a side business? buy a great domain name
#144My mind works exactly the opposite way. If I see a domain like BikeTours.com, I immediately assume that the business is built primarily on the domain name, and the quality of the product or service is inferior. Hence I don’t click it. But I assume the majority of internet users don’t think this way, so it can be a profitable strategy. Edit: Well, thinking about it, it’s not always true, but at the very least I check…
Maybe it's terrible, but when I hear something like "GoSojourn" I think, Ah, VC money! Let's see how subsidized this is....
And I would without hesitation open both but that is not where the money is. If the point is to exploit the asset you want those customers who don't bother to compare your minimalist expensive trip with cheap well thought out stuff available elsewhere.
OT: For techies winning depends more on technology. It would be more interesting to appeal to the serious and properly organize the trips by distance, days, incline, temperature, weather and price in a sortable way. The more advanced the cyclist the more there has to be actual cycling (think repairs, renting high end bikes, massages, spa etc), they care about statistics and leaderboards, there is a whole eco system worth of technology to explore and tap into. (Could upload your entire offering to https://www.bkool.com/en/cycling-simulator ) much fun to make. At that point, if you call it cocainepizza44.ninja people will find it.
Re: Want to build a side business? buy a great domain name
#145You don't need to bid up the price of existing .com domain names. Even in 2020 there are plenty of perfectly good ones that nobody has claimed yet! All you need are two or three words that satisfy the following criteria: 1. The words, when spoken, should be easy to spell. 2. The words, when read, should be easy to pronounce in any English dialect. 3. The words, when concatenated, should not create any ambiguity (a la…
Your startup name is... chlamydosaurusladybird.com pretty catchy.
My first two tries were crylady.com and tooflash.com, both of which I can imagine people actually remembering and typing into an address bar.
Not so sure about the next suggestion of completelyvery.com though :D
Re: Want to build a side business? buy a great domain name
#146My mind works exactly the opposite way. If I see a domain like BikeTours.com, I immediately assume that the business is built primarily on the domain name, and the quality of the product or service is inferior. Hence I don’t click it. But I assume the majority of internet users don’t think this way, so it can be a profitable strategy. Edit: Well, thinking about it, it’s not always true, but at the very least I check…
I agree with you that I'd prefer GoSojourn myself, and that BikeTours sounds spammy. Having now looked at both sites, they both look legit, and at first glance, roughly equivalent in presentation. At this point, I'd base my decision solely on prices, dates available, type of tour, customer service, etc. -- giving no weight to the domain name. I can accept that buyers would pay more for BikeTours.com than for GoSojour…
His argument is that if you do something decent with biketours and advertise it properly you can easily get your 40 k back or more. GoSojourn wont have ROI.
Re: Want to build a side business? buy a great domain name
#147My mind works exactly the opposite way. If I see a domain like BikeTours.com, I immediately assume that the business is built primarily on the domain name, and the quality of the product or service is inferior. Hence I don’t click it. But I assume the majority of internet users don’t think this way, so it can be a profitable strategy. Edit: Well, thinking about it, it’s not always true, but at the very least I check…
Same, more generally, I trust domain name more when they are the name of a company or a product. Not generic words. If biketours.com is not the website of a company called biketours, I will look elsewhere.
Same thing for gosojourn.com
Also the more generic the name, the more I expect to see a large reputable company. For a company named BikeTours, I expect too see many reviews in internet forums, a professional looking, custom built website, maybe even a few financial news articles. For gosojourn, I expect either an official website (ex: tourism office) or a small shop.
I red flag everything that doesn't match my expectations.
Re: Want to build a side business? buy a great domain name
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't sweat it. A runaway hit like the onions piece is like catching lightning in a bottle. It's not really something you can plan and, so far, I haven't found a formula where you can reliably recreate it to any degree. (I've had two posts do about a tenth as well on HN as your onions piece, both on different blogs of mine and that didn't result in follow-up posts on those blogs being similarly successful. So my opin…
thanks.. just enjoy sharing this domain name world as I see so much opportunity there for small builders to compete with big corps.
Feel free to post some of your stuff to r/GigWorks. I'm the mod there and I also run r/ClothingStartups and I am always actively on the lookout for "tipping point" style ideas where a small thing makes a big difference and can be done as a microbusiness, which is smaller than a small business. Small business is typically defined as like 10 to 100 employees and I am looking at tiny teams of more like 1 to 5 people as my target audience.
I was also born and raised in Georgia, so I just loved your onions piece because I'm from the Deep South. For health reasons, I will never again live in the Deep South, so I like nostalgically visitating via internet from time to time.
I may, at some point, post some of your stuff myself on r/GigWorks, but I'm a one woman show here with too many irons in the fire, so lots of stuff either takes me forever to actually get around to or just never happens even though I would like to get to it. Sometimes, life just keeps getting in my way.
Re: Want to build a side business? buy a great domain name
#149I love this article just because so many commenters hate it. I really like the super niche side-projects -- I ran an analytics site for minor league football, built with a couple of Ruby scripts and a free Netlify plan. Was featured on ESPN, famous NFL twitter accounts, and did a million pageviews in 2 months. I licensed the data to a fantasy football site and it was starting to make money before the league shut down…
author here. It is fun to see the differing opinions on domain names.. very split audience. thanks for sharing.
Re: Want to build a side business? buy a great domain name
#150I sort of did this the other day, I've got an idea, I think it's a good one, but it's inchoate. I got a domain name (.live because it was on sale! $6.99!) and spun up a $5/month VM on digital ocean, running Caddy server (https FTW!) to present a bare landing page with a little animated network eyecandy. The point is, it's so motivating! I feel like a real participant now! I'm on the Internet y'all!
Save $5 as well and host it on a Github repo and attach it to Netlify!