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Honest question, are people outside the domain squatter economy (squatters and their customers) actually paying for .com domains? I’ve never been able to secur
by r3trohack3r 5y ago
Honest question, are people outside the domain squatter economy (squatters and their customers) actually paying for .com domains?
I’ve never been able to secure a .com for a project, they are all squatted and being sold at a massive (like 1000x+) markup.
- mottosso 5y agoSure am, never had a problem with it. E.g. https://ragdolldynamics.com https://ragdolldynamics.com The problem is finding a suitable name for a project that also has an available domain. The easy ones are all picked.
- mulmen 5y agoWell the fact that the practice continues suggests to me that someone is spending the money. But I don't know of any examples.
- ryantgtg 5y agoIt could also indicate that it’s relatively cheap to sit on domains for 20 years, patiently waiting for someone to pony up. It’s not like valuable domains are more expensive to renew.
- mulmen 5y agoRight but at some point there must be some return. Sitting on domains is cheap, not free.
- NathanielWest 5y agothen maybe it should be forbidden to renew domain if you haven't use it for a year instead of increasing prices for everyone, how convenient for domain registrars
- ryantgtg 5y agoHow would they define “using it”? I’m guessing there would be easy ways to skirt around any automated system that checks for whether a domain has been used. Update the text on the “for sale” landing page? Look, I used it!
- NathanielWest 5y agowe have AI algorithms that can parse millions of youtube comments daily for "hate speech" but can't figure out if someone is using their domain for a year?
- crazygringo 5y agoIt's usually pretty easy to get a .com if you're willing to put a prefix like "get" or a suffix like "app" on it or something -- or both ("getbluebirdapp.com" isn't taken). Or combine the brand name with the product class ("bluebirdhumidifiers.com"). Or any non-obvious two-word combo, really. But yeah, if you want a .com that's a single-word brand name without any prefixes/suffixes, basically everything's been taken for a long time.
- cortesoft 5y agoThere are literally an infinite number of un-squatted .com domains available.
- jefftk 5y agoDefinitely! You need to be a bit creative / flexible, but it's quite practical. I probably have about ten, all in active use and most of them registered within the last five years.
- CarVac 5y agoI have both the .com and .org domains for my project Filmulator, though I have .com redirect to .org. They were not expensive at all.
- qecez 5y agoI have been in your shoes and I honesty feel your pain. I'm trying [0] to fix that and hopefully be a part of the solution. Renewal price increases won't magically prevent people from squatting, so that's pure milking by the VeriSign monopoly. [0] https://zlipa.com https://zlipa.com
- Strom 5y agoI've registered multiple 5 letter brand name .com domains in the last five years. They are out there, it just takes time and creativity to find them. 6 letters and more are even more abundant.