6 ms·

Finding And Buying A Domain Name

55 points by vdondeti 15y ago

dclaysmith 15y ago
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 15y ago
  >> 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 15y ago
    If the demand was high enough, someone could make a company that held domains in escrow during these sorts of arrangements.
    - ojilles 15y ago
      Is already there, see: https://www.escrow.com/solutions/domain_name/domain_name_holding_services.asp https://www.escrow.com/solutions/domain_name/domain_name_hol...
      - mthoms 15y ago
        Unless I missed something, it doesn't appear that the buyer can "use" the domain while in Escrow.
        ojilles 15y ago
        My apologies -- you seem to be correct.
vaksel 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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)
ilamont 15y ago
On the subject of using words with no meaning, Aaron Patzer had a different philosophy: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1219141 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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    Then Zynga(18) is worth less than Geezeo(16), which ain't the case!
ab9 15y ago
It's interesting that Wilson says "Etsy" doesn't mean anything. I assumed it was a phoneticization of "etc.".
- fredwilson 15y ago
  hmm. i never thought of that. i'll have to ask rob kalin if that was the inspiration. i don't think so.
  - sradnidge 15y ago
    I always assumed it was 'etc' as well. Maybe only *nix people assume that because thinking about it, the only time I've ever heard 'etc' pronounced 'etsy' is with reference to the /etc directory.
  - kanamekun 15y ago
    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.origins.mf_1_skype-service-etsy-laser-pointer?_s=PM:LIVING http://articles.cnn.com/2011-04-22/living/website.name.origi...
    - kgtm 15y ago
      It's also a Greek word, meaning (roughly) "like this".
    - fredwilson 15y ago
      yes. that's what rob told me too.
- qq66 15y ago
  I thought it was a derivative of "Betsy," connoting a friendly 60something lady knitting scarves.
atacrawl 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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)
laujen 15y ago
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-brandables-com-domains-full-list http://www.kevinohashi.com/17/04/2011/other-24000-available-... (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 15y ago
  I'd just like to add I made a similar blogpost, 20337 available alliterative .com domain names http://rawsyntax.com/post/4839370351/20337-available-alliterative-com-domain-names http://rawsyntax.com/post/4839370351/20337-available-alliter...
- ohashi 15y ago
  I am the author and thanks :) A lot jumped out at me but less than 10 that I pulled the trigger on. I really couldn't find a way to organize/sort them in a meaningful ranking. You're motivating me to release bigger lists with 6-7 letters though.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- aeden 15y ago
  That's a very interesting idea. If you could get a reasonable number of domain holders who have somewhat valuable names that aren't being used to buy in then I think you have a good chance of some success. Naturally the biggest concern would be that one of the parties will break the terms of the agreement at the most inopportune moment, and protecting from this is going to be the biggest concern IMO. I'm sure there are other issues as well, and I look forward to hearing what others say. I hope that you'll give it a go though, it really does sound like an interesting idea.
  - Mc_Big_G 15y ago
    I am working to get some owners of great domains to buy into the idea, but I've just started the process. I definitely plan to focus on just a few in the beginning and hopefully have some success with them before trying to scale.
- ohashi 15y ago
  Domain leasing has been tried, it's never succeeded with scale. Most domainers are amenable from what I've seen. If you can make it work, it would be great. The one big hole in your logic is you seem to think that they aren't making any money off those parked domain names. I can tell you from experience, some of them make tons of money. I had one domain that covered more than my rent. So the trade-off often isn't zero dollars for a domain holder, it's what am I earning now? How long will this revenue stream last? Do I expect the value to go up in the future?
  - Mc_Big_G 15y ago
    You are totally right that some of the parked domains make a lot of money. For example, Anything.com Ltd. owns a slew of domains (look at marketing.com) which are nearly all parked. They make money from users clicking through and I'm sure they earn a lot of money, but imagine how much more they could make if, at minimum, they created a better affiliate site that didn't look like a crappy parked domain. Even if they just changed the design and kept basically the same strategy, they could probably double their money. Frankly I'm amazed they don't try harder. How many people actually click through the links on a parked page? Personally I hate these pages and immediately close them. If they just put in the effort to create a "real" site, they would draw in a much higher percentage of users. It may not be the case with Anything.com Ltd., but I'm sure that there are many domain owners who don't have the knowledge or resources to make a decent site. So, if they paired with a competent developer, they greatly increase their chances for success.
derrida 15y ago
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.
FreeTV 15y ago
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 http://buytaert.net/drupal-com Brendan Eich Creator of JavaScript, CEO of Mozilla OpenDomain: http://www.ecmascript.org/ http://www.ecmascript.org/ Jon Ferraiolo, IBM W3C - the leader of the OpenAjax Alliance http://www.openajax.org/OpenDomain.php http://www.openajax.org/OpenDomain.php Peter S. Andre Jabber protocol http://xmpp.org/xsf/press/2005-12-30.shtml http://xmpp.org/xsf/press/2005-12-30.shtml Tim O'Reilly http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_inner_circles_of_10_geek_heroes_on_twitter.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_inner_circles_of_10... OpenDomain: http://Oscon.com http://Oscon.com Others http://nunit.com/blogs/?p=36 http://nunit.com/blogs/?p=36 http://www.greylisting.org/about.shtml http://www.greylisting.org/about.shtml http://archive.fosdem.org/2008/sponsors http://archive.fosdem.org/2008/sponsors

55 points by vdondeti 15y ago

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 15y ago
>> 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 15y ago
  If the demand was high enough, someone could make a company that held domains in escrow during these sorts of arrangements.
  - ojilles 15y ago
    Is already there, see: https://www.escrow.com/solutions/domain_name/domain_name_holding_services.asp https://www.escrow.com/solutions/domain_name/domain_name_hol...
    - mthoms 15y ago
      Unless I missed something, it doesn't appear that the buyer can "use" the domain while in Escrow.
      - ojilles 15y ago
        My apologies -- you seem to be correct.

vaksel 15y ago

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 15y ago
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)

ilamont 15y ago

On the subject of using words with no meaning, Aaron Patzer had a different philosophy: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1219141 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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  Then Zynga(18) is worth less than Geezeo(16), which ain't the case!

ab9 15y ago

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

fredwilson 15y ago
hmm. i never thought of that. i'll have to ask rob kalin if that was the inspiration. i don't think so.
- sradnidge 15y ago
  I always assumed it was 'etc' as well. Maybe only *nix people assume that because thinking about it, the only time I've ever heard 'etc' pronounced 'etsy' is with reference to the /etc directory.
- kanamekun 15y ago
  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.origins.mf_1_skype-service-etsy-laser-pointer?_s=PM:LIVING http://articles.cnn.com/2011-04-22/living/website.name.origi...
  - kgtm 15y ago
    It's also a Greek word, meaning (roughly) "like this".
  - fredwilson 15y ago
    yes. that's what rob told me too.
qq66 15y ago
I thought it was a derivative of "Betsy," connoting a friendly 60something lady knitting scarves.

atacrawl 15y ago

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 15y ago
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)

laujen 15y ago

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-brandables-com-domains-full-list http://www.kevinohashi.com/17/04/2011/other-24000-available-... (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 15y ago
I'd just like to add I made a similar blogpost, 20337 available alliterative .com domain names http://rawsyntax.com/post/4839370351/20337-available-alliterative-com-domain-names http://rawsyntax.com/post/4839370351/20337-available-alliter...
ohashi 15y ago
I am the author and thanks :) A lot jumped out at me but less than 10 that I pulled the trigger on. I really couldn't find a way to organize/sort them in a meaningful ranking. You're motivating me to release bigger lists with 6-7 letters though.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

aeden 15y ago
That's a very interesting idea. If you could get a reasonable number of domain holders who have somewhat valuable names that aren't being used to buy in then I think you have a good chance of some success. Naturally the biggest concern would be that one of the parties will break the terms of the agreement at the most inopportune moment, and protecting from this is going to be the biggest concern IMO. I'm sure there are other issues as well, and I look forward to hearing what others say. I hope that you'll give it a go though, it really does sound like an interesting idea.
- Mc_Big_G 15y ago
  I am working to get some owners of great domains to buy into the idea, but I've just started the process. I definitely plan to focus on just a few in the beginning and hopefully have some success with them before trying to scale.
ohashi 15y ago
Domain leasing has been tried, it's never succeeded with scale. Most domainers are amenable from what I've seen. If you can make it work, it would be great. The one big hole in your logic is you seem to think that they aren't making any money off those parked domain names. I can tell you from experience, some of them make tons of money. I had one domain that covered more than my rent. So the trade-off often isn't zero dollars for a domain holder, it's what am I earning now? How long will this revenue stream last? Do I expect the value to go up in the future?
- Mc_Big_G 15y ago
  You are totally right that some of the parked domains make a lot of money. For example, Anything.com Ltd. owns a slew of domains (look at marketing.com) which are nearly all parked. They make money from users clicking through and I'm sure they earn a lot of money, but imagine how much more they could make if, at minimum, they created a better affiliate site that didn't look like a crappy parked domain. Even if they just changed the design and kept basically the same strategy, they could probably double their money. Frankly I'm amazed they don't try harder. How many people actually click through the links on a parked page? Personally I hate these pages and immediately close them. If they just put in the effort to create a "real" site, they would draw in a much higher percentage of users. It may not be the case with Anything.com Ltd., but I'm sure that there are many domain owners who don't have the knowledge or resources to make a decent site. So, if they paired with a competent developer, they greatly increase their chances for success.

derrida 15y ago

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.

FreeTV 15y ago

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 http://buytaert.net/drupal-com Brendan Eich Creator of JavaScript, CEO of Mozilla OpenDomain: http://www.ecmascript.org/ http://www.ecmascript.org/ Jon Ferraiolo, IBM W3C - the leader of the OpenAjax Alliance http://www.openajax.org/OpenDomain.php http://www.openajax.org/OpenDomain.php Peter S. Andre Jabber protocol http://xmpp.org/xsf/press/2005-12-30.shtml http://xmpp.org/xsf/press/2005-12-30.shtml Tim O'Reilly http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_inner_circles_of_10_geek_heroes_on_twitter.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_inner_circles_of_10... OpenDomain: http://Oscon.com http://Oscon.com Others http://nunit.com/blogs/?p=36 http://nunit.com/blogs/?p=36 http://www.greylisting.org/about.shtml http://www.greylisting.org/about.shtml http://archive.fosdem.org/2008/sponsors http://archive.fosdem.org/2008/sponsors