Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I saved $39,420 by not buying a domain without a prototype

adamduvander.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 38 posts

Re: How I saved $39,420 by not buying a domain without a prototype

#11

Post by joelrunyon »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #9
ryanthejuggler wrote: post #4

I actually made $500 by buying a domain without a prototype. Back in college I started working on a personal project I decided to call "Silicon Brain". As soon as I had my first 5 lines of JavaScript I bought the domain name "sibrain.com". Fast forward a few months... I've lost interest in the project. Someone contacts me looking to buy the domain, I accept, payment is made within a week, and I am $500 richer. [EDIT:…

and now its just a parked 'for sale' godaddy domain. The early web pioneers thought domains would help produce more websites. Instead they're abused as investment vehicles while we keep stripping away vowels to find one that isn't taken.

Are you arguing that domains haven't helped produce more websites?

Re: How I saved $39,420 by not buying a domain without a prototype

#12

Post by wikwocket »

The reasoning here is a little silly; even those who pursue ideas without prototypes or validation probably don't buy up three domains every single day, so of course it's not a matter of saving forty thousand dollars.

However, this does bring to mind two good points:

* Consider validating an idea, or at least making a paper prototype, before spending lot of time or money chasing it.

* Getting the perfect domain name for an idea is not crucial to its success. Look at Dropbox, they used getdropbox.com early on, presumably until they were big enough to buy dropbox.com.

Re: How I saved $39,420 by not buying a domain without a prototype

#14

Post by kryptiskt »

michael_nielsen wrote: post #2

Why, just this morning I saved myself 360 million dollars by not buying a Boeing-747! http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commercial/prices/

It warms my heart that Boeing has pricing information available, even if it's just average prices. I hate that "Call Us" where the price should be and needing to go through excruciating pitching by sales droid to get further, I'll ask them how their product is more special than a 747 next time....

Re: How I saved $39,420 by not buying a domain without a prototype

#15

Post by logn »

swalsh wrote: post #13

> Just about every day I have at least one new idea. Jeez, and here I am having trouble coming up with just one.

The best way to overcome this is to keep a running list of any business or project you think of that's even remotely worthwhile. Continually groom and sort this list. It's like how comedians and writers come up with material, a lot of them carry around a notebook. Your brain gets used to having this background thread that is coming up with ideas and seeing all your ideas laid out in writing spurs new ones.

Re: How I saved $39,420 by not buying a domain without a prototype

#16

Post by Nurdok »

> 1 Year - 365 Ideas.

I don't believe someone can buy domains for a spur-of-the-moment idea back-to-back even 3 days before he'll realize he has a problem. I would think that you can at least remember than you bought a domain yesterday and try to work on it a little.

Re: How I saved $39,420 by not buying a domain without a prototype

#17

Post by swalsh »

logn wrote: post #15
swalsh wrote: post #13

> Just about every day I have at least one new idea. Jeez, and here I am having trouble coming up with just one.

The best way to overcome this is to keep a running list of any business or project you think of that's even remotely worthwhile. Continually groom and sort this list. It's like how comedians and writers come up with material, a lot of them carry around a notebook. Your brain gets used to having this background thread that is coming up with ideas and seeing all your ideas laid out in writing spurs new ones.

I think the main problem (for me) is that I live in a vacuum. I work in a tech company that engineers products for engineers. I've surrounded myself with so much tech savvy people, and places that I don't have inspiration for problems I am capable of solving. My desire is to create a product for "normal people"... but i don't know what "normal people" have issues with.

Re: How I saved $39,420 by not buying a domain without a prototype

#18

Post by therealarmen »

kryptiskt wrote: post #14
michael_nielsen wrote: post #2

Why, just this morning I saved myself 360 million dollars by not buying a Boeing-747! http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commercial/prices/

It warms my heart that Boeing has pricing information available, even if it's just average prices. I hate that "Call Us" where the price should be and needing to go through excruciating pitching by sales droid to get further, I'll ask them how their product is more special than a 747 next time....

Without providing an easy way to pay they are losing lots of potential customers. If they just added a simple Stripe form, their conversions would double overnight.

Re: How I saved $39,420 by not buying a domain without a prototype

#20

Post by CookWithMe »

> When the domain version of the name is available

When did that ever happen?

For every prototype I have build, I (or we in some cases) spend days looking for good name-domain combinations.

In my experience it is a real pain to find a domain worth buying for a specific idea, let alone 3 per day.

Post reply on HN