
Finding And Buying A Domain Name - vdondeti
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/finding-and-buying-a-domain-name.html
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dclaysmith
I think the rent-to-own idea is pretty clever but how would you structure the
control of the domain--DNS, etc. I would be reluctant to build a business
around a domain which an unscrupulous domain "land-lord" could then redirect
to a different site at his whim. I understand that there would be a contract
to prevent this sort of thing but while the issue is in courts, your business
just died.

~~~
acrum
>> I would be reluctant to build a business around a domain which an
unscrupulous domain "land-lord" could then redirect to a different site at his
whim.

That was my first thought when reading that option. You'd definitely need some
legal coverage if you decide to enter into that kind of agreement.

~~~
dclaysmith
If the demand was high enough, someone could make a company that held domains
in escrow during these sorts of arrangements.

~~~
ojilles
Is already there, see:
[https://www.escrow.com/solutions/domain_name/domain_name_hol...](https://www.escrow.com/solutions/domain_name/domain_name_holding_services.asp)

~~~
mthoms
Unless I missed something, it doesn't appear that the buyer can "use" the
domain while in Escrow.

~~~
ojilles
My apologies -- you seem to be correct.

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ilamont
On the subject of using words with no meaning, Aaron Patzer had a different
philosophy:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1219141>

When I saw him speak at WebbyConnect a few years back, he said that he felt
the competition's use of hard-to-spell and hard-to-remember names like Wesabe
and Geezeo really hurt them (and helped Mint). While it doesn't seem to have
hurt Zynga, there is a difference in that the name of Zynga's products are
quite easy to spell and remember.

~~~
jplewicke
There seems to be a major divide between two-syllable non-meaningful words and
three+ syllable ones. Etsy, Zynga, and Google don't sound that hard to
remember compared to Wesabe or Geezeo. I suggest a simple test for domain name
desirability: the value of a domain name is inversely related to its score in
Scrabble.

How do people feel about longer combinations of meaningful words, like
BingoCardCreator, SecondMarket, or AppointmentReminder? I see a tradeoff
between the number of total words and the complexity of each individual word,
e.g. CreditKarma vs. HotOrNot.

~~~
derrida
Then Zynga(18) is worth less than Geezeo(16), which ain't the case!

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atacrawl
I tend to agree with 37Signals on this -- they basically say that the name of
your product matters a lot more than that product's domain name, so long as
you get a domain that's "close enough." If you think about it, that makes a
lot of sense, because most people find sites on the web either by following
links or by searching Google/Bing/etc., neither of which rely on knowing what
the destination URL is.

His advice of buying the actual product name (e.g. foursquare.com instead of
playfoursquare.com) post-launch is good advice though, because it can help
push your product beyond the early adopter stage.

~~~
portman
By way of example...

A couple of years ago, my buddy and I made a parody site "Woofer" -- like
Twitter, but with a 1400 character _minimum_ per 'woof'.

We tried to buy the domain name woofer.com. We tried rent to own. The owner
wouldn't budge.

We ended up purchasing "Woofertime.com". Within 1 month we were the top
organic search result for "woofer", even above Woofer.com and Wikipedia.

(It's since fallen to #4, and in truth I'm not even sure if the site works
anymore. It was just a joke. But, the fact remains that during its peak, we
didn't need the .com)

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laujen
I think this was written up here on Hacker News a few weeks ago but it is
relevant for this discussion and thought I'd link to it if anyone is
interested. It is 24,000 five-letter domain names that are available:
[http://www.kevinohashi.com/17/04/2011/other-24000-available-...](http://www.kevinohashi.com/17/04/2011/other-24000-available-
brandables-com-domains-full-list)

(I'm not the author but I bookmarked the site for some new projects. I didn't
find anything that jumped out at me on a first pass but maybe something will
for you!)

~~~
rawsyntax
I'd just like to add I made a similar blogpost, 20337 available alliterative
.com domain names [http://rawsyntax.com/post/4839370351/20337-available-
alliter...](http://rawsyntax.com/post/4839370351/20337-available-alliterative-
com-domain-names)

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FreeTV
Domains do NOT have to cost you ANY $$$ I have started OpenDomain - an Open
source project that lets open source groups use for FREE: Please contact me
@JSON if you would like to use NoSql.Com 4NY.Com 4DC.Com wUSB.Com JSON.Com
LocalFeed.Com Free.TV

Some references: Dries Buytaert Founder of Drupal CMS
<http://buytaert.net/drupal-com>

Brendan Eich Creator of JavaScript, CEO of Mozilla OpenDomain:
<http://www.ecmascript.org/>

Jon Ferraiolo, IBM W3C - the leader of the OpenAjax Alliance
<http://www.openajax.org/OpenDomain.php>

Peter S. Andre Jabber protocol <http://xmpp.org/xsf/press/2005-12-30.shtml>

Tim O'Reilly
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_inner_circles_of_10...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_inner_circles_of_10_geek_heroes_on_twitter.php)
OpenDomain: <http://Oscon.com>

Others <http://nunit.com/blogs/?p=36> <http://www.greylisting.org/about.shtml>
<http://archive.fosdem.org/2008/sponsors>

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ab9
It's interesting that Wilson says "Etsy" doesn't mean anything. I assumed it
was a phoneticization of "etc.".

~~~
fredwilson
hmm. i never thought of that. i'll have to ask rob kalin if that was the
inspiration. i don't think so.

~~~
kanamekun
According to this CNN article: "in a January 2010 interview for Reader's
Digest, founder Rob Kalin finally revealed the secret: "I wanted a nonsense
word because I wanted to build the brand from scratch. I was watching
Fellini's 8 ½ and writing down what I was hearing. In Italian, you say 'etsi'
a lot. It means 'oh, yes.' And in Latin, it means 'and if.'"

[http://articles.cnn.com/2011-04-22/living/website.name.origi...](http://articles.cnn.com/2011-04-22/living/website.name.origins.mf_1_skype-
service-etsy-laser-pointer?_s=PM:LIVING)

~~~
kgtm
It's also a Greek word, meaning (roughly) "like this".

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derrida
Would anybody be interested in this?

I have relaun.ch. It's free for a month. If you get over 100,000 uniques it's
yours forever. Otherwise I give it to the next company with a good idea, with
similar conditions.

I don't care about the money, just if you have a good idea.

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vaksel
personally I find that domains are severely undervalued for what they are.

I mean think about it...once you own a domain, you have a monopoly on it. You
can charge whatever you want...and if someone wants it, they have no choice
but to go through you.

~~~
hessenwolf
If somebody wants it... There are ~91 million registered .com domain names,
and >220 million domain names of length 6 or less. The mode, the most frequent
domain name length, is 12.

There are quite a lot of free domain names.

(source: the zone file we got from verisign that we use for nametoolkit.com)

