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How I finally won my name from domain resellers after nine years of waiting

jerryalex.com

111–120 of 129 posts

Re: How I finally won my name from domain resellers after nine years of waiting

#111

Good for you! I enjoyed reading about your persistence and eventual triumph, knowing how shady the business of domain squatting is. > Generally, these auctions will drive up the price by bidding on their own domains to get you to pay more. This practice feels like a form of fraud, but I guess it's not against any law..? > I had also initially setup the script to auto-purchase the domain, but that failed due to Namech…

Shill bidding is illegal in most places, and if not, would definitely be under the fraud umbrella, although IANAL.

Re: How I finally won my name from domain resellers after nine years of waiting

#112
post #77

I don't think name as domain is important anymore since it's pretty much a numbers game - it is unlikely you'll get your name as a .com domain(the only domain that matters if you want more than a toy website) is going to either be squatted on or already occupied. There needs to be some sort of TLD with authentication. Let's call it .name You only get .name if you do a KYC/register with the government.In case of colli…

It's not terribly unlikely for some combination of first-name|last-name|initials|shortened-name to be available in `.com`. I've registered myself and a few friends/family for emails that way.

I had the best results were with [first initial][second initial][last name], ex:

John Smith Doe --> jsdoe.com

Then you can email with john@jsdoe.com, which makes it more clear that the js are initials.

Re: How I finally won my name from domain resellers after nine years of waiting

#113
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My email is my [first]@[last].com. I constantly have to explain to people that I am indeed saying [first]@[last].com and not [first].[last]@gmail.com. Ughh. Still, worth it. I love my email address!

I have the same thing, and it gets really annoying when your TLD is not, say, .net/.org/.com, and you're interacting with non-tech-savvy people like in your local municipal office, etc. It's funny how so many people assume that your email will be something@gmail or something@yahoo...But then you ask them how their work email is structured, and then they respond: oh, yeah, i never thought private people would have the…

I have $FIRSTNAME@$LASTNAME.me. Not only do I get people being like "...dot me ...dot com?" when I speak it aloud, I've actually encountered one municipal government whose email address validation _actually rejects it_. Thank goodness I also have $NICKNAME$LASTNAME.com, although that has its own problems ($LASTNAME[0] == "Y" and $NICKNAME has a common hypocoristic form ending in "y", so people sometimes misread it as ${NICKNAME}y$LASTNAME.com).

Re: How I finally won my name from domain resellers after nine years of waiting

#114
post #93

Would you mind sharing how much they actually wanted for it? Are we talking 9 years of waiting, vs $500, or 9 years of waiting, vs $10,000? Regardless, congrats on getting it back.

Says $1500 in the post.

Sorry, I missed that -- cheers!

Re: How I finally won my name from domain resellers after nine years of waiting

#115
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If the person is Canadian and the domain isn't for a "generic brand," then no, I'd actually say that .ca is more valuable than .com. It makes the name more personal to the individual and, in an industry where a lot of us have our own domains, uniqueness can be more valuable.

Op's comment says the .com is for 3500 USD so the market thinks a .com is more valuable.

Theses prices are arbitrary. When I was able to get a credit card, the first thing I tried was to buy my username domain name, obviously, the .com was my priority. At the time it was 8k CAD, the .net was a bit better at 1.6k CAD.

Both were renewed at first but the second time .net didn't get renewed, unlike OP it didn't get into an auction (I don't think it was usual in 2011) and I just had to wait until the expiration delay was up and I got it.

Now the .com is worth 38 618,96$ CAD. There's no reason for an inflation that high for the past 8 years. No one needs that domain. I never received any request for mine. Except the fact that it contains "wild" inside, it's pretty much useless for much.

It's not at all related to any market, it's arbitrary.

Re: How I finally won my name from domain resellers after nine years of waiting

#117

Can someone explain why there isn't a rule that if you let a domain lapse then it stops working, but you have a year to renew it again before anybody else can buy it? Even if you really didn't want it anymore and somebody else did (and didn't want to wait the year), they could always just ask/pay you for it.

gandi.net gives you a month after expiry to renew at the regular price, and then another period i think longer than a month to renew at a higher price.

Re: How I finally won my name from domain resellers after nine years of waiting

#118
Curious on what experienced domain buyers would suggest in my case.

After many years of procrastination I decided to see how much would it cost to purchase myfirstname.com (about 5k people in the world have this name).

Turns out it is impossible to even enquire on purchasing this domain.

The domain is not being used.

Archive.org shows 3 hits in the last 15 years, all minimal parked pages, last hit being 2013.

Domain registration is private. My whois-fu is rather weak.

So what can I do to contact the owner?

Some big name reseller is just sitting on this name for 10+ years and waiting for who knows what.

Re: How I finally won my name from domain resellers after nine years of waiting

#119
post #45
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how you can ever have a just society if society can deem at any point that your property is too valuable for you to hold anymore. Of course they happens in society today, but I don't see how making it easier for property to be forcibly reallocated would help create a more just society.

Do you realize that the reason the squatter abandoned the domain (instead of keeping it forever) is the $8/year registry fee? My question is why should the squatter pay only $8 per year, and not, say, $50?

As a Glen Weyl-esque solution, make an owner of x domains pay x dollars for each domain they own. This way personal users get cheap domains, and we extract quite a lot of money from squatters.

Re: How I finally won my name from domain resellers after nine years of waiting

#120
post #118

Curious on what experienced domain buyers would suggest in my case. After many years of procrastination I decided to see how much would it cost to purchase myfirstname.com (about 5k people in the world have this name). Turns out it is impossible to even enquire on purchasing this domain. The domain is not being used. Archive.org shows 3 hits in the last 15 years, all minimal parked pages, last hit being 2013. Domain…

You can either contact them through the privatized email in their whois info, or use a domain name broker who will attempt to purchase it on your behalf. I have never used one myself, but have had them email me about buying my domains.
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