
Ask HN: Buying domains for side projects - ramanujam
I bet many on HN will have the domain buying fetish. i.e) You think of a side project and immediately buy the domain for it. There is also the practice of simply buying a domain just because you thought it was cool. I am one of those people and my reasoning is that if i spend some money and buy the domain, i will have the motivation to get started on the project and it has worked at times.<p>On the other hand, i have accumulated many domains which seem pretty useless now! I do renew some domains hoping that i will work on it some day. How do you tackle this?
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byoung2
It's funny I had this exact conversation with a coworker just this morning.
The company we work for has a portfolio of nearly 1 million domain names, and
most of them point to simple placeholder pages with ads.

I personally own about 50 domain names...most that I bought with the intention
of using for a specific project that never materialized. With a handful of
them I paid a writer in the Philippines to write a dozen articles for each,
and I threw together simple wordpress sites with RSS autoposting and they make
about $10/mo each, which pays for the renewal fees for all of the other
domains.

I suppose in theory I could register 1000 domain names and repeat the process
of paying for content, setting up wordpress RSS autoposting, and possibly make
$10,000 a month, but I never seem to get around to it, and there's the
possibility that it won't be as profitable as I think.

~~~
bond
> I suppose in theory I could register 1000 domain names and repeat the
> process of paying for content, setting up wordpress RSS autoposting, and
> possibly make $10,000 a month, but I never seem to get around to it, and
> there's the possibility that it won't be as profitable as I think.

That's what this kid is doing with 500 domains.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dvkdc/i_pay_for_colleg...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dvkdc/i_pay_for_college_with_adsense_ama/)

~~~
jlmendezbonini
Not exactly. He was a bit smarter. He is mainly using free blog services
(blogger, etc) so he avoids the annual domain and hosting costs. He also notes
that by using blogger he automatically gets more weight from Google searches
(I'm not that sure of that though).

~~~
byoung2
There is a risk with free blog services like Blogger and Wordpress.com...if
someone complains that you are stealing their content, your account can get
shut down instantly. It is also harder to sell your site later (e.g. on
Flippa) because you don't own the domain. There is also a better opportunity
to pass pagerank around to your own sites using a real domain. You can get a
domain for $8/year and considering the small amount of traffic from even a few
hundred sites, you could host them all on a small hosting plan of $10/month.
So the cost per site for domain and hosting would be pennies.

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Andrew_Quentin
I must say, when I was doing some domain research, I though to myself more
than once : "this is, this is criminal".

These were domains dealings with quite serious subjects and just seeing them
sitting there full of ads, making it so very much difficult for me to acquire,
absolute gorgeous domain names, just felt not only immoral but purely and
simply criminal.

Of course I got over it and moved onto domains which were available and
suitable and just as good, but, and this is not to you personally but
companies who buy such domains names en mass hopping to profit, simply, find a
way to make money which allows you to get sleep at night.

~~~
r0s
Squatters are pretty vile. I've never had the opportunity, but I've heard such
domains can be obtained relatively easily if you have an existing legit
company(doing actual business) and can threaten litigation.

That seems extreme, but I think of it like real-estate: If your business buys
a warehouse, you may have to hire an exterminator to clean out all the
parasites that have set up their nests therein.

~~~
rlpb
> ...I think of it like real-estate: If your business buys a warehouse, you
> may have to hire an exterminator to clean out all the parasites that have
> set up their nests therein.

With real-estate I'd think of it more like considering a property that has
squatters in it already, together with the long and uncertain task of evicting
them (or paying them to leave) if you decide you want to commit to buy.

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there
i have a personal domain (jcs.org) and i just create a subdomain for a new
project. it lets me put it online quickly and it also means i'm not tied to
the name if i want to change it.

sometimes i finish a project and it never moves (<http://metra.jcs.org/>)
because i can't find an appropriate domain name.

though as someone else suggested, try <http://hntrades.com/> to buy/sell/trade
unused domain names.

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sammcd
I recently instituted a "no domains after midnight" rule. I've dodged a few
bullets with that one.

~~~
bwooceli
I'm sitting on a 3-month-old gem: theomnomnom.com

Purchased time: 2am.

Hilarious potential: check. Chance that I'll touch it before the renewal
reminder email: 20%

~~~
calloc
Would you be willing to lease the domain to someone with a good idea?

~~~
bwooceli
email me andrew at aawsolutions.com

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bobbywilson0
I only register the domain for a year, and if it expires in the year without
me doing anything I let it go. I mean, it's been an entire year.

~~~
ramanujam
Good thought! I did the same thing and let a few domains expire this year. If
i have not worked on it for a year, there is a good chance that i will never
do it in the future. Better ditch it and focus on other things!

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profquail
I think the important thing is to have some measure of self-control; if you
buy a domain for a project, promise yourself that you won't buy another until
you've either: (a) built the project, or (b) sold/traded the domain or
otherwise used it in some gainful way.

Disclaimer: I've got a bunch of domains that I purchased for personal projects
and never got around to. But at some point, I realized I was just wasting
money and promised myself not to buy any more until I finished at least one of
the projects.

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bryanh
Hmmmm, I have 49 domains. That's costing me $400 a year. I'd say a good two
dozen are active(ish). They just seem to accumulate...

~~~
byoung2
for the 36 that are inactive, put up a quickie site like I did and in theory
you could be making $360 a month (assuming $10/month per site). Even at
$1/month per site you would make $432, or enough to pay for all of your
domains.

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borismus
I am totally guilty of buying domains for side projects and then not following
through.

I own 17 domains, 5 of which are currently actively hosting meaningful content
or webapps. I went through a scrub of the ones that are unused, and realized
that I need to let some go.

Here's a list of ones I'm letting expire. If you have a meaningful project
idea for one of them let me know.

concoctail.com geogames.org gpsrpg.com istherewind.com jamhunt.com runubc.com

~~~
babeKnuth
how in the world do you come up with those names? what was their appeal to
you?

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patrickryan
I've encountered this same problem multiple times.

The fix: don't buy the domain until you are ready to launch the project. This
allows you to build without having to adapt your project to a domain name.
It's much easier to find a domain that describes your project after it has
been completed. It also saves you money if you never carry out your grand
ideas.

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arn
I'm going to be a little contrary and say you should register as many as you
can when u can.

I have over 300 domains, but the value in a good domain is well worth the cost
over the years. TouchArcade.com is one I picked up before I had a solid plan
for its use. Now it's annual revenue dwarfs the "wasted" money on domains.

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irons
I don't really consider it a negative for my years-old untapped ideas to cost
me a token amount of money per annum. If my unused twitter accounts did the
same, I'd probably have a few more active projects, or a few fewer dormant
ones.

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kilian
I recently evaluated all the domains I had accrued, took a critical look at
all the apps I wanted to built for them and at what state they were in (if at
all) and decided to ditch 50% of them.

It felt ...liberating. :)

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bkorte
I've stopped myself from buying domains for projects. I also force myself to
let a domain expire if I don't use it within a year. It's extra motivation to
shit or get off the pot.

~~~
babeKnuth
hopefully the pot gets pretty dirty. :)

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thibaut_barrere
I never start by buying the domain. Instead I spend a bit of time to write
down the concept, see if it sticks.

It's only later that I look for a name for the project itself, and I buy the
domain at the same time (it's a kind of whois brainstorming).

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Isofarro
I've managed to accumulate about 150 domains, almost all of them were bought
with an idea in mind (quite a lot are duplicates/complements/variants to the
main idea).

This year I listed all of the ones that didn't have websites yet on sedo, and
set all of them to a couple of hundred pounds each buy-it-now. The idea is
that either I focus on building an idea quickly, or risk that someone who
thinks he has a better idea than me snaps the domain name up in the meantime.

Hasn't worked. But, so far three of those domains have been sold, so that
essentially covers all my domain name renewal fees this year.

Perhaps I should drop the prices to increase the pressure on myself.

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cliveholloway
You post a large update in a place where you value your integrity stating that
the goal you were going to achieve will be accomplished by a certain date
(that appears reasonable).

In my case, it was to tweet that we'd be selling our latest discs
(<http://twitter.com/Thisoneisonus/status/27176693962>) on a certain date, and
then coding through the night a couple of days before because I didn't want to
look like an idiot to our 5,000 obsessive Twitter followers :D

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uptown
I'm just like you. But I've started winding down my portfolio of ones I know
I'll never get around to building. The interesting thing for me has been to
see some businesses spring up with the same concepts for which my domain names
were bought. That's happened with more than a few of my domain names.

I've also been fortunate to have a couple of my domains result in unsolicited
bids ... generating enough profit to cover the carrying costs for the 20 still
in my portfolio. Just got a completely unexpected offer for one last night.

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jeffwidman
For every three domains I buy, I probably keep one longer htan a year. And
only half of those stay longer than two years (1/6). But those that last
longer than two years are generally gonna stay around for a while--I bought
them because I like the name, not because of a project sitting in my mind. Eg,
AffinityScore.com just has a nice ring to it and would make a nice social
ranking product or services business. (If you google "Affinity score" it's
most often used by people describing EdgeRank...)

------
sriramk
I'm shaking my head right now. Literally 5 seconds before checking out the HN
home page right now, I just finished the checkout process for yet another
sideproject domain :)

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johns
Someone just released this last week: <http://hntrades.com> Post your domains
there and get something for them.

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iworkforthem
I used to buy tons of domains for all the ideas I have or planned to do in the
future. The problem is ... most of the time, I could never get around to work
on it. Either because one idea took up more time then expected, etc. Now I
will just register domain once I'm almost ready to launch.

Looking at the rate startup fail, I guess it's quite alright to not get the
domain I want. If things do work out, I can always rebrand it later.

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ljf
I'm the same, currently just have 3 though - om.gd - we.gd and whi.im - things
planned for all of them, but am also interested in getting something going
with them sooner than latter. Very interesting the money some people are
making from links and basic content... hum...

Tempted to work up some decent ideas into ebooks, and have sites specific to
each - just making sure they don't look spammy/rubbish. No point if they do.

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wisty
You can use a subdomain of your personal website for testing. There will still
be a good domain name available when the project is ready to launch.

~~~
jasonkester
Because your idea is good, but not _seven dollar good?_

I mean really, if you're going to the trouble to fire up the IDE and actually
write code for a new project, aren't you already a little bit committed? Like
committed enough to spend four billable minutes worth of income on the domain
name as insurance that it won't be gone in a few months' time?

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3dFlatLander
I only buy .coms, which means I have to be very creative in thinking up names.
This on its own is a good throttle on buying names. Lately, I've been toying
with the idea of using subdomains from <http://freedns.afraid.org/> to host
small projects that don't warrent a domain name. I do wonder what this would
do to search rank though.

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mrschwabe
Someone just emailed me today about one of these 'side project' domain names.

Back when I was a business noob I would register domains for just about any
bright idea. It got expensive.

What I do now for those, 'on the shelf domains', is simply a white page with
an email and a brief message explaining the domain is for sale.

A few inquiries so far, nothing much, we'll see how today's negotiation pans
out.

~~~
mrschwabe
Bah, it was only a $100 offer! I'm holding out on this one for $1k.

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curt
Actually I have 5 domains left that are all 6-7 letters and make really
sounding words. Bought them 6 years ago, holding on to them and use them
whenever I start up a new company.

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robwgibbons
I consider the purchase price of a new domain to be the first, and one of the
best, barriers when vetting new ideas.

If I come up with a sweet idea, I sit on it. If after a few weeks the idea is
still burning a hole in my pocket, I'll purchase the domain.

