I guess I fit into the "squatter" category here so I can possibly offer some advice from that side. I receive about an email a week asking if I want to sell xyz

I guess I fit into the "squatter" category here so I can possibly offer some advice from that side. I receive about an email a week asking if I want to sell xyz domain. They nearly never offer a price and I end up going back to them and saying that it is for sale, I haven't really thought about the price blah blah blah, but I paid a bit for the domain - make me an offer. And they tend not to come back. My advice would firstly be to not use a hacked name for a business orientated product. Some comments here imply that your clients will be tech savvy - well in my experience the guy that is going to sign off the bill probably is not, and being too clever with a name wont help you there - stick to a simple .com name. Secondly use a thesaurus and try and find different words for "project" and "name" that you might be able to string together and pay $9 for rather than buying off someone else. Whilst lots of domains are taken there are still billions of combinations available. Thirdly, without going too obscure, see if you can find a 5-7 letter pronounceable generic domain. Know any kids, ask them to spell the word you come up with, that is always a good test. http://domaintyper.com/ http://domaintyper.com/ has a list of "web 2.0" names it generates, sometimes some good ones (generally not, but worth a click). Last time I did this exercise for my business I came up with about 30 usable names. If you do want the squatted name, try sending an email directly to the person along the lines of "Hi, I have an idea for a small business and the domain name registered to you xyz.com would be quite a nice match. It is only in the early stages, I'm a student blah blah so have little budget and was wondering if you'd be interested in selling the domain for $200". If it was me I might come back to you wanting $400, but unlikely I'd ask for $1,000 or 10K unless it was really valuable, and if it is 11 characters it probably isn't. You've set the expectations of what you can afford and that is a good place to start. Bare in mind you can get a readable 4 letter domain for under $1,000 so don't go too high.