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How and why we acquired our .com domain

advaitruia.com

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Re: How and why we acquired our .com domain

#61

Post by JohnFen »

pronoiac wrote: post #24
mtmail wrote: post #3

That is a great and very transparent write-up, I'd say the best I've read in years. Usually companies don't disclose the final price. My dream .com domain name is squatted by somebody in Korea owning 10.000s of domains. One year they forgot to pay their registration, 'whois' printed 'overdue' (can't remember the exact words). I tried to register, backorder, everything. Nothing worked sadly.

I've been looking at the domain lifecycle lately, and it can take a couple of months after the expiration date for it to actually become available for registration. I'd check with whois on the command line.

I've had my domains for decades now, and once or twice I've accidentally failed to renew in time. My registrar has a grace period during which they won't release the domain for others to register it, just to let people who accidentally let it lapse have a chance to renew it first.

In my case, I failed to notice the renewal notice and only realized that I missed it once the domains stopped resolving. The grace period let me avoid losing them.

Re: How and why we acquired our .com domain

#62

Post by rationalist »

jonathantf2 wrote: post #58

Domain for a project I used to run was snapped up by a domain squatter, I've contacted a few times but they want 4 figures and I'm not prepared to pay that. Guess I'll just keep watching every few months to see if it's expired?

Check the ICANN WHOIS, find the expiration date, set a calendar event for it. If they renew it, change the calendar event for the following year, rinse and repeat.

Re: How and why we acquired our .com domain

#63

Post by [deleted] »

pimlottc wrote: post #39

Based on the URL, and being completely unfamiliar with the author, I assumed this was about advaitruia.com, so I was surprised that anyone would be squatting on such an unusual name in the first place. You might want to put the actual supertokens.com domain name in the title to avoid this confusion. HN is certainly not the only site that highlights the domain name of submitted URLs.

[deleted]

Re: How and why we acquired our .com domain

#65

Post by advaitruia »

russellbeattie wrote: post #41

The resale value of domains has fallen through the floor, especially .io. I assume because of the huge number of TLDs now available and the familiarity of them by the general populace. I tried selling, then auctioning my domain rb.io for months and finally accepted an offer of $2k. A few years ago a two letter domain like that would have gotten 5 to 10 times as much. I know because I was an early adopter of .io domai…

Thats a really interesting anecdote.. Most squatters sit on domains for 10+ years though. Both the 'good' .com domains I've bought were held unused by squatters for almost 20 years. Maybe thats what you need to do when you have a domain like that?

Re: How and why we acquired our .com domain

#66

Post by ryan29 »

evanmoran wrote: post #43

Curious for fellow founders with the .com, how many of you defensively buy the .net, .org names as well? I find it hard to resist getting at least those three if I'm settled on a name/brand.

I was trying to decide this a few years ago when I found the best .com I'll ever own. It's only 8 characters and I was able to get matching social media handles everywhere but Twitter.

My main concern was that someone with more money than me could come along, start using it, trademark it, and make it unusable for me. I've been thinking about trying to trademark it, but it's expensive and complicated, especially if I can't get a trademark personally and transfer it to a business in the future

In the meantime I decided it was worth the money to buy every decent TLD as a way of discouraging someone else from trying to use the same name. It's not cheap, but it's cheap in the context of what people like the OP pay for a decent .com.

I pay about $200 / year in total to renew about a dozen matching domains. I can hold onto those for 20 years and it'll still cost less than the asking price of a half decent .com.

Think of the .net and .org as a $3 month expense for brand protection. I'm from Canada where .com and .ca are used pretty equally. I remember about 10 years ago when a local computer store only registered one of them and ended up with an unhappy customer redirecting the other to a porn site. Would you pay $3 / month to avoid dealing with that?

Re: How and why we acquired our .com domain

#67

Post by yde23 »

Wouldn't it have been easier if you had the trademark rights to get the domain name without forking over the $8k through legal means. I guess you'd still be looking at around $4k for the legal fees but wouldn't that be a better option?

Re: How and why we acquired our .com domain

#68

Post by JohnFen »

evanmoran wrote: post #43

Curious for fellow founders with the .com, how many of you defensively buy the .net, .org names as well? I find it hard to resist getting at least those three if I'm settled on a name/brand.

I always do that. I also proactively register possible domains before the product/company name is even firmly decided on. If I'm certain of the name, I'll also register the common misspellings and typos.

Re: How and why we acquired our .com domain

#69

Post by pronoiac »

advaitruia wrote: post #51
advaitruia wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! Took me a long time to actually get myself to publish it

Why not reach out to a domain broker to acquire it? Or even reach out yourself?

I think you hit reply to the wrong comment.

Re: How and why we acquired our .com domain

#70

Post by JohnFen »

ryan29 wrote: post #66
evanmoran wrote: post #43

Curious for fellow founders with the .com, how many of you defensively buy the .net, .org names as well? I find it hard to resist getting at least those three if I'm settled on a name/brand.

I was trying to decide this a few years ago when I found the best .com I'll ever own. It's only 8 characters and I was able to get matching social media handles everywhere but Twitter. My main concern was that someone with more money than me could come along, start using it, trademark it, and make it unusable for me. I've been thinking about trying to trademark it, but it's expensive and complicated, especially if I…

> I've been thinking about trying to trademark it, but it's expensive and complicated, especially if I can't get a trademark personally and transfer it to a business in the future

Trademarks are a bit of a pain, but you totally can get the trademark registered to you personally and transfer it to a different entity later.

The main things people miss about trademarks is that they're category-specific (If I have trademark "Foo" for a food product, that doesn't prevent someone else from getting trademark "Foo" for sporting goods), and that you have to actively be doing business (in that category) using the trademark first. You can't register the trademark until after you've been engaging in commerce with it.

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