
Ask HN: how to buy a domain name from a squatter? - old-gregg
I've grown frustrated with the process: I've been sending emails to whois contact info but haven't managed to get a single response.<p>The squatter's main intent is to squat on domains to sell them for profit, right? Why, then, is it so hard to reach them?
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dpifke
Last year I was in a similar boat; after getting no response from the domain
owner via email and postal mail (the phone number was either out-of-date or
bogus), I enlisted the help of a domain brokerage service (Sedo).

The way it works is you pay for an "appraisal" of the domain, then they work
on commission (a percentage of the eventual selling price of the domain).

The broker I worked with was able to get ahold of the domain owner, but the
price they wanted was way out of line with reality. The broker claimed to have
aggressively negotiated, and went back to the domain owner several times over
the following months, but no sale was ever made. The commission-based
compensation model seems to me to be an inherent conflict of interest, but my
impression was that the broker was negotiating on my behalf in good faith.

Would be curious if anyone has a success story here. I know someone who used a
different brokerage service (BuyDomains) to attempt to purchase a different
domain, and were also unsuccessful - in that case the broker was also unable
to reach the owner listed on WHOIS.

~~~
Caligula
I considered using a domain broker but thought that they would take it for
themselves if it was cheap.

I was not able to locate the owner because he did not answer emails to the
whois address but he had the same whois info for other sites that were active.
I went to one of those sites and was able to go get in contact with him. Price
was ten times what I was willing to pay so I passed.

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edw519
_I've grown frustrated with the process..._

Then stop wasting time on it. You must have way more important things to do.

Here's a thought: Get a virgin domain name for $6 and market the shit out of
it. You really didn't expect to skip the marketing step with a domain name
that someone else thought was important, did you?

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bhousel
If you want the name that badly, trademark it and have a lawyer start the
ICANN dispute process to take the name from the squatter. This will cost you
some $$$ in legal fees, but probably less than the squatter is willing to
spend in defending the name.

see:

How To Trademark a Domain Name:
[http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/internet-domain-
names/...](http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/internet-domain-
names/683-1.html)

ICANN Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy:
<http://www.icann.org/en/udrp/udrp.htm>

~~~
boredguy8
Have you actually done this, or is it a theory? ICANN is clear about what
constitutes bad faith: "circumstances indicating that you have registered or
you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling,
renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the
complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a
competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your
documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name."

If you aren't registering for the purpose of selling to the complainant, it's
not bad faith. And it's hard to have bough it to sell to a TM that didn't
exist when you registered. You really don't have to tell that much of a story
in order to justify your squatting.

See, for instance, (.doc, blame WIPO)
[http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/word/2009/d2009...](http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/word/2009/d2009-0025.doc)

~~~
micks56
Important to know: negotiating the sale of a domain to a purchaser is evidence
of bad faith on the part of the seller because the seller. If a person wants
to keep the domain name, not answering the emails is a better option than
asking for any amount of money.

To win via UDRP, the complainant has to prove: 1) the domain name is
confusing, 2) there is no legitimate use of the domain name, and 3) bad faith
in use.

UDRP is nice because it is administrative and lawyers typically aren't used.
You just file paperwork.

However, with the Anti Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), bad
faith is met by proving bad faith in registration, not in use. That is a much
easier standard to prevail on.

ACPA is civil litigation. It has more teeth to it when you win and lose, so
lawyers are recommended because you may lose your right to appeal if you don't
do things correctly during trial.

Also, remember that trademarks only exist when used to identify goods in the
stream of commerce. A person does not acquire a trademark simply by
registering a domain name. Therefore, old-gregg may own the trademark if he
was the first to use it to identify goods in the stream of commerce.

Side note: if your "squatter" is outside the US, you have to use UDRP because
you can't get jurisdiction in VA for ACPA when the person isn't in the US.

------
patio11
I realize most people here are in the Internet generation, but nothing says
Serious Business Proposal like having FedEx put a letter in his hand that says
"I paid $15 so that you could read this TODAY" on the outside of it.

------
redorb
I've tried for PDR tools . com (hopefully the spaces will save from this in
the search results) ...

\- the squatter was

NOKTA INTERNET TECHNOLOGIES 2887 College Ave. 3 Berkeley CA

I have contacted them - but they want $30k , I think they are counting on PDR
standing for physicians desk reference not - Paintless dent repair .... (our
industry isn't as wealthy as the doctors) .. the squatter couldn't even reason
out their value - although I reasoned them our offer (10k).

\- but yeah its frustrating ...

\- I did have some success recently buying Hail.org from a individual... but
hail.com (currently a not updated in 10 years) website about hail
technology... he seemed intent on teaching me a lesson about something, (just
a pissed off out dated old computer nerd..the kind that hate the 'new blood')

------
dpcan
From a "squatter-like" perspective:

I have domains that I don't use. People have contacted me, made a decent
offer, and I've sold the domain to them. So, if it looks like the domain is
held by someone who just isn't using it (like me), then you may be able to
make a reasonable offer.

~~~
Caligula
I experienced this once. Someone contacted me about a domain I had no use for
with a pretty good story about why they needed it. He even showed me his work
as a small timer in the entertainment industry with an interesting sounding
project he had in mind for it. He offered a small sum and I decided to just
avoid the hassle and give it for free as I probably would of let it expire in
a year. I even paid the small fee yahoo wanted to transfer it.

I was curious and went to the site a few months later. The fucker is a domain
shark on the side and the sites a parked page with a forsale contact on it.

Moral of the story is to google their name and spend a few minutes before
giving/selling domains.

~~~
hallmark
Very similar experience.

I had registered getwellconnected.com, which I had vague plans to use for a
nonprofit idea to let sick kids in hospitals connect together.

I got an email from someone claiming to be a consultant working for a small
hospital. They were building a site and wanted to use that domain name. They
offered a fair but relatively small price, and since I didn't have immediate
plans to work on my idea, I agreed to sell at the offered price - no higher.

A year later today, I see that the domain is parked. It's quite a good and
general domain name. I registered it with plans to use it. What a ploy.

------
kynikos
You may want to explore filing a UDRP complaint with ICANN. You don't need a
lawyer necessarily. However, it does cost ~$1300 to file a complaint for 1
domain for a 1 person dispute panel (you can get up to 5 people on a panel.)
End-to-end timeline from when you submit the complaint to when you get a
judgment is about 30 days (can be up to 60, though.)

As already pointed out here, you do need a strong case and a existing
trademark. In our case, we were looking to obtain rights to top-level .COM
domain that was an acronym of our current site's fullname URL--the acronym was
favorable for obvious reasons and we/our users had used the acronym
extensively to reference our site.

You basically have to prove all three of these things:

(i) The domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or
service mark in which the complainant has rights; and

(ii) The owner(s) have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the
domain name; and

(iii) The domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.
(source: ICANN)

If you haven't gotten a response from the owner based on the WHOIS info, you
can file a different type of ICANN complaint (free to file this one) that
should force the registrar to contact the owner, who will update the WHOIS
information. We had gone through this while trying to buy the domain from the
squatter and not getting a response. We think he just updated WHOIS info with
fictitious contact information again.

------
JoachimSchipper
I'm somewhat surprised that no one has pointed out this angle yet:

Domain squatting is an abuse of a public resource for personal gain. There are
more evil things to do, but it's hardly moral.

Do _not_ give them money. (micks56 e.a. suggest other ways of getting your
hands on the domain you want.)

------
salvadors
> _The squatter's main intent is to squat on domains to sell them for profit,
> right?_

Not necessarily. Much domaining is about monetising traffic with minimal
effort. A .com costs around $6 a year. Two cents a day in ad revenue makes you
a profit.

Serious domainers do this on names that cost them much more than $6 to buy,
but the renewal rates will still only be $6 a year, and the traffic revenue
will be a lot more than two cents a day.

To them each domain is a small money-making business. They'll sell if the
price is right, on discounted cashflow and all that, but that's not the
primary intent. The main goal is to increase the number of domains making
money and increase the amount of money each domain is making.

~~~
hristov
How anyone makes money on parked websites is way boyond me. Does anyone ever
spend anything based on parked websites? I am sure google won't put ads on
those sites. And really any ad service worth its salt should not pay anything
for displaying ads on parked websites. (As those sites merely serve to annoy
ppl). Yet somehow they make money.

~~~
salvadors
> _I am sure google won't put ads on those sites_

Not only do they, but they have an entire scheme just for it:

<http://www.google.com/domainpark/>

> _those sites merely serve to annoy ppl_

Actually, parked domains convert really well.

Typosquatters and the like, yes, they're annoying, but that's not what we're
talking about here. Most of these are vaguely generic domains or things that
people are typing in because they assume there will be something useful on
them. A well parked domain then directs them off to where they actually want
to be (and makes some money in the process).

Don't forget, you only need to earn two cents per day to make a profit.

------
ivyirwin
I really don't get where squatter prices come from. It's one thing if a domain
is in use, has a history of high traffic, and has high potential through name
length and/or brand potential. But a regular old squatting site that barely
gets hit except by crawlers and link farms?

I think the problem stems from an unregulated marketplace. Don't get me wrong,
I'm not asking for domain reselling to be regulated, I'm just saying the
consequences of the reality of the situation is that somewhere along the way
it became okay to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a $10/year commodity.
Because of that, everyone thinks they can strike it rich by being greedy.

Personally I think a new model is needed for a majority of domain reselling.
I've been working on a model that prices regular domains at cost to the owner
times a premium factor. For instance, if you had a domain for ten years at
$10/year, and multiplied it by a premium factor of not less than 1.5 and not
greater than 3, the domain would sell for between $150 and $300. Not bad for a
$100 investment. The premium factor would be calculated based on traditional
characteristics (length, traffic, etc).

Don't get me wrong, I've been asked by buyers for domains I own and I'm not
doing anything with and I see the dollar signs. But at the end of the day, I'd
actually sell a domain using the above formula. And when I'm buying domains,
it doesn't take that much effort to find an alternative to a taken domain...
just use some imagination.

~~~
yuvouv
I don't get where the price of land comes from? It's just a unique patch of
dirt that they own, that I want and I can't get anywhere else - why do they
want to so much money for it? It's not like they have built an office block on
it like I want to do!

~~~
ivyirwin
Fair enough. Decent analogy, but not quite to the point. Land prices are
adjusted over time due to quality of land, location, and surrounding. Domain
prices are all relatively the same price new, but theoretically the next day
someone can turn around and sell a new domain for tens of thousands of
dollars.

If you're doing to make the real estate argument, then new domain purchases
should also have variables pricing from the same domain provider such that
somekeywords.com is more than gobblygook.com, don't you think?

~~~
yuvouv
To push the analogy further - no.

Unclaimed domain names are like parts of the wild west handed out to early
claiments, they all had the same value/acre (=almost nothing). Then when a
city had been built on them (=you have a brand) then the price goes up. Even
if the owner didn't do any work to build the city, having an empty lot in the
middle of it is still valuable.

------
mildweed
It all depends if its a professional squatter or not.

A domain I wanted was once held by an amateur squatter. I made a decent offer,
she counter-offered way too high, I declined. Thinking nobody would buy it if
I wouldn't, she let it expire. I snatched it up for $10.

~~~
shiranaihito
I hope you sent her a message along the lines of " _Ha-Ha!_ ".

------
zandorg
A few weeks ago, I took about 4 hours to think up a domain not taken, and
bought it for 5 years. Much cheaper (on an hourly rate) than paying a
squatter, for example, $2000!

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I've had a squatter insist that a domain was worth $10,500 just because it's
"search terms" yielded a paltry 65,000 results....

~~~
camwest
It could be argued that the lower the amount of search terms yielded, the
better.

------
zck
Domain squatters are quite frustrating. I wanted to buy the .com version of my
hn handle, but (after contacting them several times), they responded, saying
they don't even consider anything less than $50,000. Yeesh. The .net version
is owned by Future Media Architects, who are famous for never selling domain
names. I haven't bothered to contact the people who own the .org.

Squatters, while I acknowledge their right to do what they do, are quite
frustrating.

------
mrkurt
I've had success buying domains from individuals, but rarely from squatters
(or domain holding companies, or whatever they call themselves). I think
you'll find that unless you're able to get ahold of someone and offer them
what seems like an exorbitant amount of money, you'll never get anywhere.

The cost of keeping a domain is so low that people generally aren't losing
much by hanging onto it, particularly if they have a pretty decent parking
page setup.

------
eli
Check what other domains that person has registered. Or possibly even what
other domains point to the same IP (unless it's a generic GoDaddy page or
something)

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petesalty
Just because you can't get a domain name you want doesn't make the owner a
squatter. I bet everyone who's commented here, probably everyone who's read
this, has more than one domain they own that they aren't using at the moment.
Are they squatters?

Maybe the reason you didn't get an answer is that they weren't interested in
selling - you don't respond to every random email you get do you?

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mpk
Don't even try.

Find a name that isn't taken and then register all the variations.

That's a fraction of the price and none of the hassle.

------
mightybyte
Buying a domain from a squatter is morally equivalent to settling out of court
with the plaintiff on a frivolous lawsuit to avoid legal expenses. The
difference is that in this case doing the right thing costs less money.

