
Would you buy an expensive domain name? - Tichy

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gibsonf1
No - buying an expensive domain name is not increasing customer value when so
many names are still available - use your money to make your application
better. My cofounder demanded a .com name, and I agreed - .com is the way to
go as long as you can still find a suitable name. For example, our company
makes a project management application with the essential feature that it
focuses on customer valuestreams. After brainstorming for hours and bouncing
around about 30+ different dot.com permutations (and using a thesaurus
extensively as well as the greek-english dictionary) we ended up with the
simple name: StreamFocus.com essentializing what our app does. (We just
finalized the name last weekend)

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pg
Depends what you call expensive.

Our default advice is that buying domains doesn't work. The owner either wants
a ridiculous price, or doesn't want to sell, or doesn't answer your emails.
There are also plenty of good names still untaken. We can often find one in a
few minutes using instantdomainsearch.

~~~
sbraford
Picking a brand new domain does usually seem to be the best bet.

Net marketing guru John Reese has a tale of how he sold his first domain for
$1,000. After the paperwork was signed, the domain broker let him in on a
secret. He was actually buying the domain on behalf of a VC firm for $1
million. =)

The trick would be (if it still works) to always use a no-name broker or
middleman to get the lowest price... but I'm no expert either.

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dawie
I used this service when I could not dream up a cool domain name.
<http://www.pickydomains.com/> It works wonderfully and real people think up
your domain name. Its well worth the $50 and also one of the coolest simplest
startup ideas I have seen in a while.

~~~
Tichy
That's really cool - especially as it seems kind of fun to participate in
creating names.

A problem is of course giving away the idea, but often one can probably
formulate it general enough to not do much harm.

~~~
dawie
you just give them your idea in a sentence or two and they fly with it. Also I
had my new name in 24 hours, which is pretty cool and fast, especially when
you where supposed to choose a domain yesterday...

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msallin
I had the perfect domain name - but it was a .net. We even had the perfect
logo for it. But everyone in the biz told me I needed a .com, even my mom. So
I spent a few hours with a thesaurus and came up with a shortlist, and of the
ones available, the best was offered by BuyDomains.com for $2,500. I mentioned
it to my investors and my parents and they said BUY IT NOW. My team was less
enthusiastic about the name, but they understood why it was good: \- .com \- 5
letters, 2 syllables \- easy to pronounce and spell \- the name made sense for
our business, it wasn't nonsense

I went for it and I'm really glad I did. Would I do it for $3K? Not sure. $4K?
I don't want to think about it.

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Tichy
Another question: is it mandatory to have a .com domain name? I kind of feel
it is, because otherwise your customers will just go to the .com domain even
though they might have been looking for you. Perhaps one exception would be if
the TLD somehow is part of the name? But even then, I wouldn't be sure.

On the other hand it seems inevitable that in the long run people will get
used to other TLDs, because not every valid business will be able to aquire a
good .com-name.

~~~
sethjohn
I would steer clear of .org, .net, or many others...but I think that .tv
domains can be a great choice if you're doing something video-related.

.tv is different enough from .org/.com to be memorable, and can be quite
descriptive about what you are offering.

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danw
Is .mobi accepted yet or should mobile startups use a .com?

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Xichekolas
No... crazy names are Web 2.0ish anyway... so just think of a weird way to
spell it, or make up a word. Both those strategies worked out fine for Yahoo
and Google.

Closer to home, I imagine this was the strategy employed by Loopt and scribd
too.

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Tichy
What do you think of them, though? I don't really like them, but perhaps it
just takes some getting used to. Google and Yahoo are different, because I
don't even now the words they are derived from. But the others - it's weird
that those misspellings will probably become normal words if the startup is
really successful. Perhaps they'll even replace the correctly spelled words.

Then again, if the exist strategy is getting bought by Google or Yahoo,
perhaps the name doesn't matter much - it can be changed after the acquisition
anyway (ie scripts.google.com).

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mdakin
No, but the answer is relative. If you have a million dollars then $5,000
isn't "expensive" for the perfect name. But if you have $20,000 spending
$5,000 on the domain name would be insane.

I just went through this myself. I started negotiating with the squatter and I
came to find out that we went to the same school and we travel in the same
circles. Even still we were not able to agree on the price so I walked away.

Last week I finally had a new inspiration for the name. It's just one
character longer than the perfect name. I was able to buy .com .org and .net
with this minor variation from a registrar (not a squatter)!

Keep thinking!

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Tichy
A domain name that would be perfect for my next project is already taken, but
for sale for 4500$ (9 characters). Another one is available for 1500$ (15
characters :-( ).

Which raises the question, would you ever buy a domain name (for that kind of
price)? Something in me doesn't want to do it, but then again it is hard to
find good names that aren't taken. 4500$ is too much for me at this stage of
the project, but in principle?

~~~
bls
What makes you think that the price is $4,500? In almost all cases, these
prices are very negotiable. Keep in mind that the owner probably paid less
than $10 for it. Even considering overhead, $200 is a very good return on the
sellers investment.

Here's how I would go about negotiating the price:

    
    
     Subject: Interested in buying a domain name
     Date:    2007-04-28
     To:      squatter1; squatter2; squatter3; ... ; squatter50
    
     I am thinking about purchasing one of the following 
     domains. According to the WHOIS information, you are the
     owner of one or more of them. If you are interested in 
     selling, please reply back with domain name and the price 
     you want for it. In order to give everybody enough time to 
     respond, I will wait a few days collect the responses I get
     before I make a decision. I promise I will not disclose 
     your offer to anybody.
    
     Thank you!
    
     domain1.com - squatter1
     domain2.com - squatter2
     ...
     domain50.com - squatter50
    
    
     Subject: RE: Interested in buying a domain name
     Date:    2007-05-10
     To:      squatter
    
     Thanks for your reply. I cannot afford the price you gave
     me. If you still are interested in selling, please reply  
     back with a smaller price. Thanks again!
    
     Subject: RE: Interested in buying a domain name
     Date:    2007-05-25
     From:    me
     To:      squatter
    
     Thanks for your numerous replies. I guess my expectations
     are unrealistic because I didn't want to pay more than $100
     for this project. I am not interested in the other 
     variations (.net, .org, etc.) you offered me. Please let me
     know if you will accept $100 for just .com.
    
    
     Subject: RE: Interested in buying a domain name
     Date:    2007-05-30
     From:    me
     To:      squatter
    
     Sorry, $ is too much for me. I will pay $200 if you throw
     in the other variations too. I want to finish this up soon
     so please reply back with the payment/escrow information.
    

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GranadaBlue
Yes. I spent tens of thousands of dollars to purchase FreeDrive.com. It was a
web 1.0 company back in 1997 that raised $20 million dollars and went bust.

I'm building the web 2.0 version of this company now and I am starting with a
memorable domain that has over 200,000 backlinks already built-in.

If you are a web business, your domain name is your most important asset.

~~~
danielha
Wholeheartedly disagree. You can turn a worthless domain into a valuable one.

Can you really count on people manually typing in familiar urls today? Even
organic search results are not as crucial as they once were.

~~~
sethjohn
Somewhere down the line you're going to sink many $K into marketing, I don't
see why paying for a domain name that already has some traffic and name
recognition is a categorically bad idea.

Was it a bad deal for 'freedrive.com'? Depends on the specifics of the
situation and how the company leverages their name recognition.

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vlad
I paid about $100 for mine. I went to either sedo.com or afternic.com and
looked for domain names that were selling for a single price. I may have typed
it in and saw that it was for sale--I don't remember the details now.

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bkmrkr
too many good domain names still available

I would never get a domain 15 characters long

I actually got a great one today :)

