
Want to build a side business? buy a great domain name - whalesalad
https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-business/
======
tamask
My 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 out the other options too.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
I laughed out loud at this example, because I run a site with (what I reckon
to be) one of the best domain names for exactly that use-case:

[https://cycle.travel](https://cycle.travel)

~~~
dangwu
Do you think having an unusual TLD (travel) is hurting you at all? If someone
told an average person to go to "Cycle.travel", I'm not sure that they would
understand that to be a web address.

~~~
hobofan
From my experience, such an effect is generally far to small to be a deciding
factor (in the beginning).

If you look at the traffic of most websites, very few visitors come directly
to your website by entering the domain into the address bar (because visitors
are far too lazy to type out an address). The biggest chunk normally comes
from other websites directly linking to you (this includes search engines and
social media sites), or paid advertising (if you do that).

~~~
Scarnface
As a kid I knew every one of my friends phone numbers. I couldn't tell you my
nearest and dearest now because typing this kind of info manually is long
gone.

~~~
cableshaft
I've had to enter in my wife's phone number for various things enough times I
know it better than my own phone number now (Meijer mPerks alone I've done it
probably 300 times). But outside of that, my own, and my parent's phone
number, which has never changed, I don't know any phone numbers.

------
hanoz
The best thing about coming up with and then buying a great domain name for
your new business idea is that thinking of one uses so much creative and
analytical energy, diverted from considering the business itself, and delivers
such a dopamine hit on completing the purchase transaction, that you don't
need to proceed any further with developing the idea whatsoever.

~~~
mdgrech23
lol this perfectly explains why I have a collection of domain names. might as
well be an idea log where you pay for each entry.

~~~
stOneskull
maybe it's synchronicity, the number 23. my favorite number and i thought
yeah, 23bay! short and sweet and sounds like ebay.. that has to work.. but
then what? ha. i let it expire, and it turned into a casino in china. it felt
like i lost a child. eventually got it back and it feels good to just have it
back even if it never does anything. a domain collection that aren't really
that valuable but more like sentimental, too hard to let go, and it's strange.

------
mysterypie
The advice is to buy descriptive domain names and build a business basing your
decision "solely off the domain name" that you're able to find. His About page
claims that he himself does this. But does he actually do that?

Of the examples he gave – ComputerCamp.com, ShippingSupply.com, KobeBeef.com,
CameraBag.com, Pacifiers.com, ZoysiaGrass.com, SouthernCookbook.com,
Ziplines.com, CannedHam.com, SexyBastard.com – every one of them except
ShippingSupply is a parked domain, spam site, or fails to resolve. Since the
article is from January 2017, it seems like the average price of $5388 that
people paid at auction for the 9 unproductive sites has been wasted for the
last 3+ years.

As far as I can tell, his business is buying and selling domain names.
(ShippingSupply, although it looks real enough, does not belong to the author;
he writes "sell shipping supplies [is] exactly what this buyer did".) I can
believe that the author has a profitable business doing what he does (buying &
selling domains), but the artilce does not convince me that _building_ a
business around nice-sounding but arbitary domain names with no expertise in
that business is a good idea. It doesn't seem like he's doing that.

~~~
eightturn
author here. I sell onions on the internet. does that qualify? Check out my
homepage for other developed domain projects.

~~~
JasonCEC
And damn good onions to boot. I'm a very happy customer.

~~~
kovacs
Just got this year's 10lb box about a week ago or so. He does old school
postcard mailers to remind you the upcoming season is arriving. Nice way to
cut through the noise. It worked on me.

~~~
eightturn
many many thanks for your business, kovacs. Postcards FTW! -Peter

------
fuball63
I tried this with a domain. It's related to used beer kegs. The reason is
because I was volunteering at a brewery, and one of the hottest commodities
for small breweries is used kegs from bigger breweries that are replacing
them. Most of the major breweries use keg management services and rent the
kegs, which is overkill for smaller breweries, so owning kegs is important
starting out.

Kegs are also sought after for the homebrewers market too; you can save a ton
of money buying used, and they become available as people fall out of the
hobby.

My plan was to either set up a market place or buy and resell kegs for a small
profit. Even a bulletin board that just shows announcements for used keg sales
would be helpful.

There are a few reasons I haven't pursued this. First, specifically for
homebrewers, is gaining momentum from other marketplaces like Facebook,
Craigslist, and local homebrew shops. For commercial kegs, these sales are
usually announced word of mouth, and I am not well connected enough to be in
the loop, and also, there is really no friction selling these kegs that a
website could reduce. They "fly off the shelves". There are other issues too
with the frequency these sales happen.

My point being, in a long winded way, is that buying a domain name and getting
business ideas from it still requires business acumen, networking (which the
author does mention), and a innate sense of the problem space and what desire
there is for a web based solution. Just like every other way of sourcing
business ideas.

~~~
roop
> For commercial kegs, these sales are usually announced word of mouth, and I
> am not well connected enough to be in the loop

I’d have thought if you had to be “in the loop” to know if something’s for
sale, it means there’s a possible market for that knowledge, which a website
can step in to provide.

------
pot8n
HN trending expectations: how eBPF works

HN trending reality: How I make a zillion dollars a day with a yet another
SEO/web scraping/reselling domains business

~~~
bitpush
I still enjoy reading HN because every once in a while something good comes
up. But you're right, most of the time this site is overrun by a lot of SEO
types and folks who want a quick buck.

In my opinion, most people see a posting and go directly to the comments to
see _what I should feel about this_

~~~
jimbob45
Option 1: I don't really care enough about this to read through the story and
develop an opinion. I'm certainly never going to domain squat since I'm quite
happy in my career anyway.

Option 2: Alright, well I can at least go get a brief overview of the
prevailing sentiment through the comments.

There's nothing wrong with letting experts dictate your opinions on subjects
you don't have even a minor interest in. Of course, that comes with the caveat
that one must judiciously choose which subjects to do this with (thus our
current political climate).

------
david-cako
This is awesome advice. Taking incremental steps towards what you want to do
makes a big difference. If you already have a domain, hosting, and DNS set up,
you’ve got something cool and tangible to work with.

I actually trust less descriptive domain names. When I see biketours.com, I
more often expect blog spam and ads. When I see GoSojourn.com, I expect an
actual business providing bike tours. It’s also peculiar to me when I see
local contractors with domains like MyCityElectrician.com putting “Denver
Electrician” in big text and hiding their brand name. I recommend a branded
domain name and relying on good page titles and descriptions for ads and SEO.

------
mikl
I think this really overstates the importance of domain names.

Owning CameraBag.com isn’t going to do anything for you until you have a
competitive product to sell and getting that lined up is what you should be
focusing your talents on.

Sure, it might make you look a little more impressive to the discerning
consumer who actually reads the URLs. But such users probably also check what
the competition offers anyway.

And with modern browsers with search suggestions and modern Google, owning the
.com doesn’t bring you many extra visitors, either.

So if you want a side business, create something people will want to pay for.
Don’t fret about the domain name, it hardly matters.

------
alexpotato
I think this is a much better article about this from the same guy:
[https://www.deepsouthventures.com/i-sell-onions-on-the-
inter...](https://www.deepsouthventures.com/i-sell-onions-on-the-internet/)

~~~
eightturn
thanks Alex (author here).. that domain article was one of my first, so I was
(and still am) trying to find my writing voice. whatever that means.

~~~
DoreenMichele
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 opinion is somewhat informed by
firsthand experience, fwiw.)

~~~
eightturn
thanks.. just enjoy sharing this domain name world as I see so much
opportunity there for small builders to compete with big corps.

~~~
DoreenMichele
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.

~~~
eightturn
for your nostalgia, here's a video that the GA Dept of Ag just produced on our
farm.. Aries (farm owner) is in vid (I'm not in this one).. notice the domain
at the end : )
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0oNolfKfgc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0oNolfKfgc)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Thanks. It took me a bit to get to it, but I've watched it.

I am something of a fan of onions. They are good lung support, but can be
somewhat hard on the gut. Vidalia's have always been my favorite onion because
they are so mild, so they are easier on my touchy gut.

It's one of the reasons your article caught my eye.

Best of luck with your endeavors, both online (finding your writing voice) and
off (selling onions, or whatever it is you do out in meat space).

------
swanson
I 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.

~~~
eightturn
author here. It is fun to see the differing opinions on domain names.. very
split audience. thanks for sharing.

~~~
swanson
Yeah I didn't do it "domain-first" but love the idea. Still own the domain:
noextrapoints.com, seems good for a football related site.

Just bought "streamerjobs.com" for $13 inspired by your post. Maybe a job
board for Twitch/YouTube people to hire video editors.

~~~
eightturn
that's a good jobs domain. nice grab.

------
rottencupcakes
I thought “goSojourn.com” was a catchier domain name so I had to go back to
browsing Facebook (Hacker News in this case).

~~~
jesuschroist
Right, I felt a little insulted when he suggested me to go back browsing FB.

------
goatherders
This is an excellent roadmap (or the start of one at least) to build a nice
side business with very little effort. People with a tech orientation, like
the audience here, are VERY far removed from how most people use technology.
So austincitytours.com turns you off? Me too. But the VAST majority of people
are not like you. They click on the .COM that has the name/descriptor of what
they want.

No, it isn't like it was 10 years ago where people would type the thing in and
add ".com" BUt it's not that far off either. A LOT of traffic will gravitate
to the trustworthy sounding .com

Additionally, as a guy in the lead gen business I can tell you that every
business out there wants more demand. Finding partners to offer fulfillment
takes almost no time at all.

The hardest part, perhaps the ONLY hard part of this whole model is getting
traffic in the first place. As for me I don't spend any time at all on
dropshipping or service fulfillment but rather on simply selling the leads.
Leads are worth a LOT more money than many people realize.

------
lwneal
You 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
expertsexchange.com)

A tool that generates these kinds of domains is available for your convenience
at [https://startupname.website](https://startupname.website)

~~~
bonestamp2
> [https://startupname.website](https://startupname.website)

The best one I got was roofpotato.com

Sell rooftop potato garden kits? I guess that's my life now...

~~~
klondike_klive
Funnily enough I am growing rooftop potatoes right now, so I'm in the market.

~~~
bonestamp2
Alright, I'll let you have it since you're already living the roof potato
life.

------
macNchz
I own a bunch of domains but don't really follow the expired market...however
the example expired domains in the post seem really expensive for a side
project.

If I were looking to invest $5-$15k cash into marketing a random new side
business and still needed an idea, it seems like it'd make more sense to
follow the post's advice by watching the expired domains come through, then
take the inspiration from, say, 'bakedbeans.com', but buy 'stevesbeans.com'
for $7.95 and put the remaining cash into performance marketing.

~~~
jldugger
> domains in the post seem really expensive for a side project.

It's probably worth considering that the domain is an asset you can resell.
Plus, an auction should, in theory, limit your potential losses to amount you
outbid the previous winner by, since they theoretically would buy it. The math
is probably a little more complicated but you get the idea.

~~~
exclusiv
> It's probably worth considering that the domain is an asset you can resell

Yes this is true. Also, I've met one of the top domainers of all time who got
in early and one of the things he told me was that valuations have gone up
considerably, in good part, due to the interest by foreign entities who want
the .com for its prestige and to be able to tap into the US market, and/or be
the sole branded domain for their worldwide presence.

------
hartator
That's the worst advice ever. Domain parking is a business and if you
specualte randomly you are probably going to lose money.

~~~
mylons
typical HN comment. meanwhile the author is doing pretty well for himself
doing just that.

~~~
Marazan
This is a guy who accidentally spent 4 figures on a domain he didn't want. And
it was no big deal to him because he knew he'd be able to break even on it due
to his expertise

He's an expert domain reseller. Novices would get burned.

~~~
kristopolous
I've been in the room with people spending well over $10,000 on domains. It's
crazy. I could never guess that actually happened until I saw it myself.

I thought those prices were just absurd fantasy

~~~
pavel_lishin
It's just a business expense, right? If you're actually going to be building a
business on a domain name, it doesn't necessarily make sense to cheap out,
just like any other business expense.

~~~
kristopolous
It's not about cheapening out, it's an exorbitant amount without much real
customer value. "news.ycombinator.com" apparently works just as well as if
this was "techtalk.com" or "bizchat.com" or whatever.

Yahoo isn't about cowboys, Amazon isn't about rainforests, uber isn't a firm
from Germany, Google isn't about mathematics... It really doesn't seem to be
correlated with business success.

Any made up name will do. Blorpblip, flipturf, dundrill, yepyip, nodnod,
whatever. Those only look weird because it's your first time seeing it.
Substance comes before brand

The meaning is assigned by the business praxis, not the other way around.

~~~
flatt
Does it though? There's little doubt in my mind that this site would have far
greater reach (the actual desirability of that aside) if it were located at
hackernews.com. I have no idea what the current owner would want for it but
I'm sure it's substantial and rightfully so.

~~~
kristopolous
That's only because of naming cadence.

If they really cared they could come up with something. There's countless
clones and proxy sites with closer and shorter names but they don't have large
audiences because having a 4 (cuil) versus a 10 letter domain (duckdudckgo)
doesn't actually matter - only what you put there.

------
pavel_lishin
> _Read this story about Warren Royal of Bobbleheads.com_

Cool, are there any other stories about lottery winners I should read before I
buy my scratch-offs?

~~~
ponker
Why is Bobbleheads a lottery win? Buy a domain for something people like to
buy. Find a supplier to manufacture them. Build a reputation with good product
and service. Has to be as far from a lottery winner as exists.

------
carapace
I 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!

~~~
robertlagrant
If you sign up for a free Cloudflare account you get HTTPS, and you can point
it at a Github Pages page for FREEEEE :-)

~~~
carapace
Cheers! Thanks for the tip.

They also let you serve a static site over IPFS from your domain with a
DNSlink record, also for free. :-)

~~~
stOneskull
there's a lot of value for $5 though. many, many things you can do with an
ubuntu droplet. digital ocean has excellent tutorials for a lot of them too.
it's fun.

~~~
carapace
Yeah, this. :-)

------
k__
And yet, I still didn't make a single dime from
[http://butt.ventures](http://butt.ventures)

~~~
fxtentacle
The author of the article would probably scold you because it's not
trustworthy. You lack the .com

~~~
somebodythere
butt ventures Dot Com

------
ryanwaggoner
Just a reminder that the type of person who comments on HN is probably not
that representative of the average consumer.

I don't know if the approach outlined in this article is a good one or not,
but I wouldn't be even slightly surprised to find out that the way the typical
person searches for things, selects results, evaluates credibility, and takes
action, bears virtually no resemblance to how many of us here on HN approach
the same things. So take all the withering criticism of this article and
approach with a huge grain of salt. I've made many hundreds of thousands of
dollars online with methods that would never work with many HN users.

------
rsync
I don't think I would have started rsync.net if the domain rsync.net had not
been available.

It sounds ridiculous - a completely artificial stumbling block that would be
easily hurdled ... and yet ... the _entire basis of the business_ was a cloud
storage platform that was so basic you could understand exactly how it worked
just by seeing the domain name.

As an aside, I asked for, and received, explicit permission from the
maintainers of the 'rsync' tool before launching and using the domain name ...

------
dvduval
So many domain names I bought and never used. Haha the idea seems so great at
the time. I suppose you just have to go about trying different things until
you start to have some traction. it's just important to recognize that it's
easy to fall into the trap of thinking something is going to be super simple,
and then starting to execute without any sort of detailed plan. The result ...
Wasted time and money

~~~
d0m
Yeah, but it's a relatively low investment and you often just need one idea
that works to pay for all the crappy ones

~~~
6510
Or just keep telling yourself that

------
DangitBobby
Bit of a tangential rant ahead...

> Shhhhh shhhh. It’s ok. Sure, some domains were. And the buyers aren’t
> scumbags. If someone buys real estate dirt and won’t sell to you for pennies
> 10 years later, do you suck thumb and whine? Nah. Same deal here. While you
> were binge watching Walker, Texas Ranger in 1995, these folks were spending
> hours faxing through domain name orders & risking their own cash on a new
> thing called the Internet. They’re just investors, and smart ones at that.

Every asshole has a way to rationalize his or her behavior. Scalpers, thieves,
scammers, et. al. justify their toxic behavior exactly the same way. Being a
saavy business person doesn't make you not a piece of shit. I see real estate
and come to the exact opposite conclusion of what's written above. It _is_
shitty that you get to bleed money from me just because you showed up 50 years
earlier with $30k before I was even born. How the fuck is that business
accumen? It's profiting off of your position against people who never had the
same opportunity. I would call it predatory.

~~~
havetocharge
Isn't the same true of Bitcoin or much of everything else?

~~~
DangitBobby
I guess it applies to almost anything where arriving first gives you a
significant advantage over those arriving later, and you use that advantage to
extract value from those who have little or no choice but to follow you.

------
SergeAx
> You chose BikeTours.com didn’t you? You better have.

If in a hurry, I am basing my decision on search engine rich snippet. If there
is a lump sum in the game - I'll check both sites.

> If you didn’t, you can close this browser tab

Thank you for saving my time :)

------
lootsauce
"That’s what I’m trying to introduce – that domains can be viewed as a
trustworthy asset."

Totally agree with this, back in print days great typography featuring ample
white-space was a signal to the consumer of a high end / luxury brand. Perhaps
the unstated logic is we make so much money that we can spend much of it on
empty space ina fancy magazine. That is a kind of gravitas in design which
implies success which implies authority / social confirmation. A more
desirable domain name can be seen in the same light, "ohh they must have spent
a lot for that name well can't be some fly-by night operation." Cost limits
creating exclusions serve as signals of authority / reliability / success etc.
all over the place, think of the country club, it's got a very high membership
fee, if you're there you must be wealthy and important, and imagine the
networking. That is the logic anyway.

------
asdff
What is a great domain name? Decades ago it was essential to have an e in your
name (eBay et al), then it was cute to replace that e with i, but the whole
while the golden rule was to definitely whatever you do, do not use a name out
of the dictionary, to make it easier for consumers to identify your product
and to save you legal headaches.

Nowadays, companies seem to love having a real dictionary name. Lemonade:
refers to the drink, the renters insurance startup, and a chain restaurant in
my town, and google couldn't tell you which one I want at a particular time,
because Lemonade is a terrible name for your company. Pretty much any piece of
software or company with an English word for a name is immediately forgettable
in my mind, and impossible to follow up with due to piss poor SEO on the 2020
internet.

~~~
6510
>Decades ago it was essential to have an e in your name

howabout turbobiking2000.com

~~~
zanderwohl
2000 is the most futuristic number, as we know.

------
wtracy
All I can say is that I wouldn't go into this business today without either
lots of automation (someone a while back had a script that flagged single-
dictionary-word dot-coms as they expired) or some statistics-backed way of
identifying keywords likely to pay off down the road.

------
josefresco
For anyone interested, or likes looking at recently deleted/expired domains,
Pool.com has an interface to find these:
[https://www.pool.com/deletingdomains.aspx?ia=DomainsDeleting...](https://www.pool.com/deletingdomains.aspx?ia=DomainsDeletingToday)

I'm not in the business, but occasionally browse to see if any "local" domains
pique my interest. You'd be surprised how many people "let" their domains
expire - if I was a less than ethical hacker, I'd be able to hold many local
organizations and businesses hostage (without infringing on trademarks).

~~~
ericzawo
What a shitty thing to suggest doing—especially at this time.

~~~
MattGaiser
The author acknowledges that it is unethical.

~~~
josefresco
Comment author here: Yeah I don't get it either, I clearly said it was
unethical. Oh well.

------
sideproject
For those who have bought domains but haven't had much time to develop them
(like me..)

[https://www.newsy.co](https://www.newsy.co)

It's something I've been working on to scratch my own itch.

~~~
fxtentacle
Isn't that mostly copyright infringement? From what I understand, it does
automated copying of articles and images from other blogs?

------
novaleaf
I run a ramen profitable SaaS and did this. I don't really have a comparable
but I think it helped my product gain traction.

The problem is, the sexy keyword I used was an OSS product (my product is a
wrapper over it) that was discontinued over the years. My domain+brand still
references this product though I have moved over to the "modern" equivalent
OSS version.

So now, I think my domain name is a liability, implying out of date/obsolete
technology.

I do also own the equivalent domain name for the new OSS software, will use it
for a v2. So if it's an industry you care about, keep up to date :)

------
fxtentacle
While everyone in here seems to disagree, I believe that a good domain name
can be worth a lot of money, if it comes with links and traffic.

For example, purchasing a domain to market my audio app which has 100+ inbound
links and 500+ unique visitors per day from various blogs for relevant
keywords.

If you convert 10% at $9.99, that traffic is worth roughly $15k monthly to
you. But it might have been worth significantly less to the previous owner,
who only used adwords and didn't sell his own product.

~~~
saaaaaam
Can you really convert 10% of that sort of traffic though? I would have
thought 1% would be ambitious. Quite prepared to be wrong though - I suppose
if the relevant keywords are really strong then maybe it would perform higher.

~~~
fxtentacle
It's a niche product and people who search for those keywords usually already
know what it is and that they need it.

That's the beauty of organic search traffic.

When I did paid ads, in the other hand, the best I remember was 2% click rate,
then 20% trial download, then 10% purchase. At those percentages, a $2 cpm
will cost me $5 per acquisition for a $9.99 app, so I have little wriggle room
before it becomes cash flow negative.

~~~
saaaaaam
Interesting! How did you find a relevant domain with backlinks that were going
to work for you? This is something I've looked into in the past, but
discounted as I thought it wouldn't work, so would love to know more about how
you did it...

------
aritraghosh007
Reminded me of the recent corp.com story that Microsoft eventually ended up
paying for to a well known domain gatherer.
[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/02/dangerous-domain-corp-
co...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/02/dangerous-domain-corp-com-goes-up-
for-sale/)

------
joshmn
"That’s what I’m trying to introduce – that domains can be viewed as a
trustworthy asset."

To this point: My name is Josh and I'm from Minnesota (abbreviated MN in the
states), and I have josh.mn. People seem to think I'm a big deal.

I'm not.

------
mirciulica
On the one hand it is harder and harder to find a decent dot com domain name,
on the other hand I see some crazy prices that make absolutely no sense. Even
if you choose to buy a name on the second market why pay these ridiculous
prices?

[https://www.healthinsurance.com](https://www.healthinsurance.com) sold for
over 8M bucks, is the difference between this name and something like
[https://insurancemavens.com](https://insurancemavens.com) (for sale @ $395)
worth 8 million?

~~~
weka
It comes with the expectation that the average user is dumb enough to think
that by going on a "premium domain name" that it, therefor, makes the product
better and marketability even more attractive.

It's stupid.

~~~
asdff
Yet it works, because someone's grandma will always type healthinsurance.com
and get phished before they find the actual website for medicaid.

------
imeron
This article is from 2017.

------
deeblering4
After seeing the prices that these "premium" domain fetch auctions for a side
project it reminds me of a quote: If you want to become rich in the music
business, sell instruments.

Domain squatters are making a killing by selling generic "premium" domains to
startups that odds are will not get off the ground. And then the process
starts all over again with the domains cycling back through the expiration ->
squatter -> auction process.

------
m3kw9
This seem smart but I have a bad feeling about the success rate. The article
seem to imply a lot of survivorship bias by only talking about success.

------
brodouevencode
There's something gross about DNS land grabs.

------
pedalpete
Something that came up with our team the other day, somewhat related. How do
you guys feel about .net when the .com is unavailable?

------
jamisteven
tbh this is far from the reality, not everyone is capable of selecting
industries at random and making turning it into a profitable online
storefront, in fact ide go so far as to say that a physical storefront is
easier these days. Have read the vidalia onion story, its great but the fact
of the matter is without an immense amount of knowledge on things like web
marketing and SEO, you are going nowhere. I use to own the domain name
fixmyfreecreditreport.com, we were piggy backing off of
myfreecreditreport.com, driving traffic was still a massive undertaking, and
then trying to get those visitors to convert into customers for lead
generation, yikes. Shortly after that owned groomzter.com, still own this but
shut it down after 6 months for the same reason, driving traffic. Want to rank
for that common of a keyword? You had better be a fucking ninja at SEO, or
have someone working for you that is.

------
kebman
I tried to register a really cool name. Suddenly it was registered after all.
Funny how that goes... Thought me to never trust a domain name registrar
again. Could I have sued them? Perhaps, but at the time that was way too
economically risky a prospect for me to undertake, while most likely having to
pay court costs even if I won.

~~~
ValentineC
> _I tried to register a really cool name. Suddenly it was registered after
> all. Funny how that goes... Thought me to never trust a domain name
> registrar again._

Let me guess… GoDaddy?

~~~
exclusiv
Yes, don't search for domains at GoDaddy unless you are going to buy it right
away if available.

------
gfodor
if this idea has merit (ironically enough) it means that ideas themselves are
even weaker than one might expect in terms of startup outcomes.

however, i'm skeptical. i think there is a need for _some_ early initial
conditions for startup idea conceptualization that matter other than drawing a
name out of a hat. perhaps its just a multiplier and pure execution wizardry
can get you through anything by just doing lean startup methods. but i can't
get past the idea that the best companies grow out of a seed that originates
in deep domain knowledge, but then lets go of assumptions from that point and
iterates with users from there. you're not gonna get that seed by just picking
up a domain randomly. it feels to me like this is a worthy concept though for
taking the idea of lean startups to its logical extent - if nothing else,
respect the 'purity' of it conceptually.

------
mattmar96
Reminds me of when people say 'you don't need fancy equipment to make music'.
Sure, you don't _need_ it, but a new fancy synthesizer or guitar is investing
in your own ability to make art. More than the instrument itself, knowing I
made an investment in myself helps motivate me I think.

~~~
type0
A tool is a tool, domain name can be a marketing tool, if you can establish a
trademark that is

------
wusatiuk
I think that you are at least 20 years late for building a real domain
business. I have been into in that game for more than 15 years and yes, it is
fun, but it's not a (profitable) business. And if you want to make it
profitable, it's not even close to a sidebusiness.

------
jpswade
This feels like the domainers fallacy.

If this was true, then search.com would be more important than google.com
right?

------
adenta
We've gotten a lot of flack over our domain name, from everyone except our
customers. [https://terusama.com](https://terusama.com).

Has anybody ever experimented with how company names relate to clicks in email
campaigns?

~~~
neil_s
Haha, it's a good point about customers not caring about that stuff.

Side note though, the stock video at the bottom of your homepage made me
irrationally upset at how pointless it was.

------
benzoh
My problem is that I go through spree’s which I was fine so you’re later when
Go Daddy tries to hit me with a $500 bill.

That’s how I lost: Porcelain.com Getreviewed.com Helpmebreathe.com And a few
others well hundreds of others but the stand out

------
mikhailfranco
Reminds me of the infamous milk.com squatter

dishing out the _fu_ while waiting for the _fu money_ :

[http://milk.com/value/](http://milk.com/value/)

------
r0rshrk
This article is very cultural-contextual. Indians are more likely to click on
.in because it's more likely to have Indian languages supported, etc.

------
winrid
Also, pick a value prop that you enjoy fulfilling. You'll do better at it. My
current project has "Fast" in the name. Building fast software is always fun.

------
suyash
What about for non dot com domains, any advice?

------
yuribro
Am I the only one who tried to click all the underlined sentences, which look
very much like a link?

~~~
eightturn
author here.. I need to fix that.. working on it.

------
__m
I don’t expect much from bland domain names like keyword.com

Which one would you visit? search.com Or google.com

------
ngcc_hk
Not sure what is the real business? If you want to start a new business, you
got an idea and then try to find a domain name. Or random like the b head
story, find a name and start a business. Or ... initially that is what I
thought, buy some domain name and then re-sell it once success (but seems odd,
it is very old squatter hat).

What is it?

------
dntbnmpls
Isn't this the basis of domain squatting? Buy up great domain names and sell
it.

------
andreygrehov
I'm the owner of BitHub.com. Who wants to help to make a side-business out of
it? :)

~~~
tryauuum
I could send you some bits

~~~
andreygrehov
Feel free to reach out, would love to chat.

------
kindly_fo
This article sucks. I think author is brain damaged.

------
type0
Sounds like a solution in search of a problem

------
vernie
I hear jet.com might soon be available.

~~~
sgc
I think I might start an airplane brokerage.

------
mdszy
Alright y'all I bought cum.pizza where's my million dollars

------
timvdalen
I feel attacked! I was scrolling HN, not Facebook!

------
iphone_elegance
dongtales.land

------
santoshalper
There is something about this guy's writing that really irritates me. He
writes like he is condescending to millenials by emulating their stereotypical
speech patterns. It's hyper-conversational.

------
wiradikusuma
Domain name is one of the "trends" where being early literally pays (the other
ones are crypto and making fart apps for iOS).

(Un)fortunately, what's left are ridiculouslylongnames.com that somehow still
sells for a few hundred a pop. The long tail.

I'm not a fan of that. Instead, when .id was open for public, I immediately
acquired generic names such as every.id, awesome.id, printed.id, even
ultimate.id (notice a pattern?).

I own a few hundred in total—managing them is a headache. I've lost a handful
of really good names because I forgot to renew (last-minute renewals due to
limited budget and procrastination). Also, sometimes I wonder about the
performance of my assets, and whether I'm profitable.

I'm building an app, Axtiva, to help manage domain names. It's not a unicorn
idea, but I'm scratching my own itch. If you're in a similar situation, take a
lot at [https://s.id/axtiva-android-test](https://s.id/axtiva-android-test) or
just put your email in
[https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/axtiva](https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/axtiva)
so I can update you when it's launched in iOS (it's a Flutter app).

~~~
gccxsse
Domain squatters are the worst

