81–90 of 97 posts
I once asked how much a .com domain name was worth. They replied by email, it was about $ 3,000 and I didn't email them back. They had my phone number so they made an international phonecall asking me what I was willing to pay. A few hundred bucks, tops. They didn't sell it to me.
At the risk of seeming spammy, please check out my service Lean Domain Search [1] before buying a premium domain name. It pairs your search term with more than 2,000 other keywords and instantly shows you which are available, making it really, really easy to find great available domain names. Guys like this depend on scarcity to drive up the cost of domains. One of my goals with Lean Domain Search is to show people t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't it just be a return to the days when domains were free? Back in the mid-'90s, when people I knew registered vanity domains, they tended to come up with some ridiculous expansion of the name to make it look official. Nobody ever checked that "foo" really meant "fraternal otter organization" (or whatever), so those would become the top line in whois.
Was that before Network Solutions? I bought a domain in maybe 1996 or 1997 and it was decidedly not free
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Solutions#Registry_and_...
IP space used to be free, too, as long as you could justify it. What times those were.
At the risk of seeming spammy, please check out my service Lean Domain Search [1] before buying a premium domain name. It pairs your search term with more than 2,000 other keywords and instantly shows you which are available, making it really, really easy to find great available domain names. Guys like this depend on scarcity to drive up the cost of domains. One of my goals with Lean Domain Search is to show people t…
Thanks for creating the service!
At the risk of seeming spammy, please check out my service Lean Domain Search [1] before buying a premium domain name. It pairs your search term with more than 2,000 other keywords and instantly shows you which are available, making it really, really easy to find great available domain names. Guys like this depend on scarcity to drive up the cost of domains. One of my goals with Lean Domain Search is to show people t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely, it is legal and indeed a hack. But still, not morally correct!
Why is it not morally correct? He is just speculating as speculators do in all different industries. And kudos to him - it's technically non-trivial, carries a lot of risk and clearly requires a lot of business acumen to work.
Simple solution, just need to make the wholesale cost of domains >$100/yr then it won't be viable for the squatters to sit on "really speculative" names like the ones in this story would be.. and for a real business/service with 1 or 2 domain names, that extra cost means nothing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Man buys 14,962 tickets to a football game in 24 hours. Plans on selling them later at a profit. Man buys 14,962 acres of land in 24 hours and plans on selling it later at a profit. I'm not sure when I am supposed to get mad.
Yes, speculating in general is a zero-value-add activity except in that it sometimes makes markets more efficient/liquid. I would argue that domain squatters don't even make the domain market more liquid at all, because ICANN is an extremely-easily-accessible seller, and the squatters rarely provide the service of buying a domain from someone who has improved it/made it popular/etc. But in general, I have little resp…
By selling the domains closer to their true market value it means when a domain do get bought, it'll be because the domain will be part of a more profitable business.
Imagine if when thefacebook.com wanted to purchase "Facebook.com" domain because their business is expanding quickly and profitably. They ask the owner of "Facebook.com" for the domain.
One of the following two things might happen:
1. The owner is a domain squatter and sells it to thefacebook.com for $5000.
2. The owner is a 13 year old kid who bought the domain and put a couple of pictures of his cat's faces on it. as well a couple of adsense ads. Refuses to sell for anything less than 0.5 million dollars because he really likes the domain name.
Arguably in this case the domain squatter did provide some value to society. The thing with squatters is they are always willing to sell for the right price. Other types of domain owners are not so predictable. In particular, domains with established businesses are unlikely (I'm guessing) to sell for anything less than the value of the entire business, even though that business may be less profitable and less value-adding than a business proposed by a potential acquirer of the domain. If the domain was squatted instead, the less profitable business may not have bought it at all, leaving it for the more profitable business.
Whether this value is significant enough to be respected is another question, but I have no doubt that it does exist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very true. I have 40 or so domains, but none were purchased as an investment. All because of some random idea I had. Always happy to sell them for totally reasonable prices.
As someone who has approached others to buy their domain names, what do you consider as a totally reasonable price for an average domain name?
I do have one exception, and that is I bought sms.me which I had planned on building, but I got a good offer so that sold for many thousands, but that was their offer not mine.
On the flip side, I've bought many domains that I want to use for products ranging from $100 - $30,000 depending on a number of factors.
Has anyone ever actually bought one of these domain names? I tried to once. I had a good idea one day and wanted the domain name for it. It was a somewhat out-of-the-blue idea, so I wasn't really expecting it to be taken, but it was and all the names somewhat close to it were taken as well. I went back to the original name I wanted and e-mailed the squatter asking how much he wanted, hoping it would only be in the lo…
The successful purchases have all been from individuals who registered the domain at some point with an idea that they never developed.
If it's useful to anyone, here's an example of the opening note I send (improvement suggestions welcome). I make an opening offer around 50-75% of what the actual maximum is, make note that the site is inactive and costing them money, make it clear we're considering other options but that we are ready to purchase quickly. Even if the purchase is for personal use I'll reference a "client" as it helps to have a man behind a curtain who just won't budge on his price.
-----
Dear Sir/Madam,
I see that you own DOMAIN.COM but are not currently using it for an active website.
I am currently looking for a domain name for a client of mine, and your name (DOMAIN.COM) is on our short-list.
We have budgeted around $250 for acquiring new domain names and my client looking to close a deal quickly.
Please could you let me know if DOMAIN.COM is for sale, and if so what price?