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How and why we acquired our .com domain
- anteloper 3y agographs were especially informative, thanks for sharing!
- advaitruia 3y agoThank you!
- mtmail 3y agoThat is a great and very transparent write-up, I'd say the best I've read in years. Usually companies don't disclose the final price. My dream .com domain name is squatted by somebody in Korea owning 10.000s of domains. One year they forgot to pay their registration, 'whois' printed 'overdue' (can't remember the exact words). I tried to register, backorder, everything. Nothing worked sadly.
- advaitruia 3y agoThank you! Took me a long time to actually get myself to publish it
- advaitruia 3y agoWhy not reach out to a domain broker to acquire it? Or even reach out yourself?
- pronoiac 3y agoI think you hit reply to the wrong comment.
- pronoiac 3y agoI've been looking at the domain lifecycle lately, and it can take a couple of months after the expiration date for it to actually become available for registration. I'd check with whois on the command line.
- JohnFen 3y agoI've had my domains for decades now, and once or twice I've accidentally failed to renew in time. My registrar has a grace period during which they won't release the domain for others to register it, just to let people who accidentally let it lapse have a chance to renew it first. In my case, I failed to notice the renewal notice and only realized that I missed it once the domains stopped resolving. The grace period let me avoid losing them.
- pronoiac 3y agoI was trying to keep it short! I like grace periods and redemption periods, but they vary so widely by TLD and registrar, that I wanted to avoid that rabbit hole of conversation. I've been working on going from calendar reminders to, at least, semi-automating checking a list of expiration dates, and then checking regularly. I'm still making mistakes, I'm just trying to avoid repeating them and instead make exciting new mistakes.
- antifa 3y agoI acquired a desired domain this way. I kept silent about it on any service that might detect my interest in it and hold it hostage. For about 3 months, I checked the whois weekly. Some company was holding it. I never visited the domain in any way, to help the domain feel dead to their analytics. Then one day, the whois result matched what you get from whois-ing a bunch of random letters with .com. It was finally released. I registered it from a company like namesilo or porkbun for the standard .com price.
- folli 3y agoI was in a similar boat a couple of years ago with sunlocator.com I created an app with that name, unfortunately the domain was already in possession of a turkish PV company that went out of business. I noticed that the domain will lapse in a couple of months, so I used Snapnames (if I remember correctly) to set up a domain drop catching service. Meanwhile, I got an email from someone representing the Turkish company who independently asked me if I wanted to buy the domain for a couple of thousand USD. I was getting nervous, but decided to go radiosilent on that matter. Well it worked, they must have thought I'm out of business as well, or whatever. A couple weeks later the domain dropped and got picked up by Snapnames in my name.
- hackernewds 3y agoSnapnames seems like everything that is wrong with the industry of domain squatting
- bombcar 3y agoMore people and companies (especially) should be willing to at least try to get the domain they want; I was surprised when I was able to get a work-related TLA on an original TLD for not much money at all, especially considering how much you spend to send even a single press release.
- sirstan 3y agoIs there a bit of story missing between: > After a few hours, the broker sent me this from the seller.. > "Our price is final on this one" and > ... we got a great deal on his broker fees and paid $4,000 all said and done It read as though the seller was firm on $8k, but then sold for $4k?
- mhink 3y agoThey paid $8k for the domain and $4k to the broker. (At least, that's how I'm reading it- I agree it could be worded more clearly.)
- lostlogin 3y agoDid the broken do more than offer a couple of opinions? That $4k seems steep.
- thrtythreeforty 3y agoSounds like the broker got paid for his advice on not poking the bear. That could easily have saved $4k.
- lostlogin 3y agoBut the asking price was $8k - you’d have to go in very hot to get yourself a 50% price rise (which would justify the broker’s fee in this instance). However I am aware of how squatters behave, so this could actually happen.
- iudqnolq 3y agoThe risk was that the seller would realize the buyer was a company with VC money and an investment in the name. The broker thought that the seller might ask for an order of magnitude more if they knew that.
- advaitruia 3y ago
- canadiantim 3y agoHonestly the key is to be patient. Put it a low-ball offer on a .com you want then wait. They'll reject initially, then they'll contact you again every couple months to see if you're still interested. Keep the low-ball offers going, maybe increasing by very small increments. Eventually you will catch them in a moment where the seller is desperate and then you strike a deal. I got a 6 letters .com domain for $3k down from $40k this way.
- ceejayoz 3y agoI got one of my personal domains back for $100 after years of various different squatters asking between $2k and $10k for it. "Literally no one else will ever buy this particular domain from you, take the win" finally worked.
- sedatk 3y agoThe price was $100 + “years”, not $100.
- faeyanpiraat 3y agoYou must mean that it got even cheaper, as today's $100 is worth a lot less than a couple of years ago.
- sedatk 3y agoDepends on how much those years without that domain cost you.
- ceejayoz 3y agoYou say "years", I say "a minute or two annually". If I'd urgently needed it back, I'd have had to spend more, yes.
- vxNsr 3y agoCurious, how’d you lose it? Expired cc?
- joshmanders 3y agoIMHO getting the domain you want is key, don't get a domain that will suffice with the idea you'll get the domain you want later. Because it's always hard to do things later. I've got many domains I paid $5k+ for sitting in my portfolio unused because I wasn't going to settle on mediocre domain to save a few bucks for a business I expect to make that amount in MRR within a year.
- arxpoetica 3y agoLucked out and got the domain I want: https://www.cinemodal.com/ https://www.cinemodal.com/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- asimpletune 3y agoI feel like the take away from this is 1.) start with a .com domain and 2.) choose a company name that is cheap to buy for a domain.
- bruce511 3y agoYeah, this. Some years ago we started a new product. We just kept plugging names into a name registrar until one we liked was com-available. We paid the princely sum of $15 or something. So i guess if nothing else we saved a few bucks there :) Names are like ideas, there are plenty of them and you can basically just keep discarding the bad ones until a hood one comes along.
- ByAnyOtherName 3y agolol I saw the domain of the article and was definitely curious why OP wanted advaitruia.com so bad
- advaitruia 3y agoHaha, that was a straightforward purchase. I dont think i've ever been able to find another advaitruia (advait on its own is an uncommon name)
- garganzol 3y agoActually that's not a bad website name because it's unique. A bit strange for sure, but this is how it rolls.
- klinquist 3y agoGreat write up. I paid $3500 w/ broker fees (sedo.com) for my (lastname.com) about 11 years ago. Seemed super expensive at the time, but more and more "professional individuals" (lawyers, doctors, etc) that share my last name were appearing on the internet despite the rarity of it, so I knew I had to act fast. No regrets! ...and the rest of my family loves having first@last email addresses :).
- CharlesW 3y ago> There was no doubt that .com has a better brand than .io. Ten years ago, there was still some merit to this. Given changes to browsers and search engines, I believe this has a "vanity license plate" level of importance today. > There is no definite way of isolating the importance of the .com but it is likely to have played a part. "We have no way of knowing if traffic would be as high or higher if we stuck with .io, but it definitely would not have been."
- horsawlarway 3y agoI think this section is fairly compelling: "One of the first things we noticed was that the traffic patterns between supertokens.io (our actual domain) and supertokens.com were nearly identical. Whenever our .io traffic had a big spike, so did the .com, even though there was nothing on it yet. More importantly, these spikes meant that a significant portion of potential users went to supertokens.com directly." If they're driving traffic spikes to a domain squatter - probably reasonable to assume owning both those domains is helping. Plus - 8k is a pittance, all things considered.
- CharlesW 3y agoThat's interesting, and I wish the author would've dug into that more. The claim is that people were typing .com when searching for them, but a search would've resulted in a search page, not direct traffic. As far as direct traffic, they migrated to .com on 1/15/23, at which point supertokens.com already had 1,473 referring domains and 16.6K backlinks. I think it's more likely that the traffic they saw was the result of that instead of people typing the exact domain name (which is relatively rare). I'd also submit that this is the story as told by their agency, who probably also told them to write this content marketing piece based on that explanation.
- advaitruia 3y agoThe claim is that we saw traffic patterns on the .com mirror that of the .io even though nothing was on it yet and we had not migrated. Our inference or best guess based on the above is that people were typing supertokens.com directly in the URL bar on the browser. Like you said - I would not have expected that (and still doubt it) but dont have any alternative explanations for why that would be the case. Our agency doesnt know we've even written this. I still need to share it with them.
- aiisahik 3y agowho was your domain broker? My company really needs to find one.
- advaitruia 3y agoWe used Ritch at acquirable
- querez 3y agoSlightly off-topic, but: Gandi was my registrar of choice, but I read some months ago that they've sold out. Who do people go to these days for registering domain names?
- aeoliun 3y agoGoogle Domains: https://domains.google/ https://domains.google/ The last time I used it, it was around 12$/year at the minimum.
- Toutouxc 3y agoI went with Porkbun a few years ago, they seemed to be popular and recommended at that time. Zero issues, simple dashboard, low prices.
- gondaloof 3y agoCloudFlare and Internet.bs are no-nonsense registrars I like at the lowest prices on the web.
- mminer237 3y agoI like Porkbun. They have competitive pricing, a very easy-to-use website, and no dark patterns that I've found.
- pimlottc 3y agoBased on the URL, and being completely unfamiliar with the author, I assumed this was about advaitruia.com, so I was surprised that anyone would be squatting on such an unusual name in the first place. You might want to put the actual supertokens.com domain name in the title to avoid this confusion. HN is certainly not the only site that highlights the domain name of submitted URLs.
- advaitruia 3y agoRight - that makes sense. Unfortunately cant edit the title now
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- diegogm934 3y agoThanks for the detailed process and the cool project. Do you have any plans to support Ping Federate? Since they took over Auth0 from Okta, they have raised prices like hell and a project like this really makes sense.
- advaitruia 3y agoYes we are a OAuth 2.0 client (and have SAML integrations too). So if PingFederate is the provider, you can add "sign in with Ping" on an app that uses SuperTokens
- russellbeattie 3y agoThe resale value of domains has fallen through the floor, especially .io. I assume because of the huge number of TLDs now available and the familiarity of them by the general populace. I tried selling, then auctioning my domain rb.io for months and finally accepted an offer of $2k. A few years ago a two letter domain like that would have gotten 5 to 10 times as much. I know because I was an early adopter of .io domains and sold karma, clever, flip, xs and maven for $8k to $10k over the years. I was shocked at the disinterest I got in my last one.
- advaitruia 3y agoThats a really interesting anecdote.. Most squatters sit on domains for 10+ years though. Both the 'good' .com domains I've bought were held unused by squatters for almost 20 years. Maybe thats what you need to do when you have a domain like that?
- evanmoran 3y agoCurious for fellow founders with the .com, how many of you defensively buy the .net, .org names as well? I find it hard to resist getting at least those three if I'm settled on a name/brand.
- sokoloff 3y agoIf I'm even thinking about an idea, I'll register all three. The cost is indistinguishable from zero. I wouldn't defensively buy from a broker or squatter, but for unregistered domains, I think it's a no-brainer to do it.
- garganzol 3y agoThose specific additional domains are useful in their own ways. .net is good for network infrastructure, .org is good for organizational purposes like mapping your office/LAN endpoints into it, so that employees could connect to VPNs and internal services like SCM and build servers. Other than that, additional domains also give leverage for diversification if you decide to make them publicly visitable one day.
- jcparkyn 3y ago> .net is good for network infrastructure, .org is good for organizational purposes Genuine question: Is there any tangible/technical benefit to this, or is it just for the sake of keeping them organised?
- brirec 3y agoIf you deploy a Windows Server AD domain (do people still deploy new AD domains?) it makes things a lot easier and simpler to be able to make it the authoritative DNS servers for a real domain name, and by default it will stomp all over the A/AAAA records for the top of that DNS zone. I can’t really think of anything else that would really benefit from having its own domain though, especially if your DNS infrastructure supports nested zones.
- garganzol 3y ago
- kruuuder 3y agoI have recently purchased the .com domain for my product. For the past 10 years I have only owned used the .net domain (although for not much more than a landing page as it's an App Store app). Is there a best practice what to do in this situation today? I'm currently forwarding from .com to the .net domain. Should I forward from .net to the new .com domain instead? Or keep it as it is?
- advaitruia 3y agoHow much does SEO play a role in your customer acquisition? Do you have a lot of existing backlinks to the .net domain? Do you plan to continue building this product for a long time? Depending on the answers to these questions, I would evaluate the tradeoffs of migrating. If SEO is not critical or if you already have a certain domain authority / backlinks or dont plan to continue for a long period of time - then it may not make sense to migrate.
- jonathantf2 3y agoDomain for a project I used to run was snapped up by a domain squatter, I've contacted a few times but they want 4 figures and I'm not prepared to pay that. Guess I'll just keep watching every few months to see if it's expired?
- rationalist 3y agoCheck the ICANN WHOIS, find the expiration date, set a calendar event for it. If they renew it, change the calendar event for the following year, rinse and repeat.
- yde23 3y agoWouldn't it have been easier if you had the trademark rights to get the domain name without forking over the $8k through legal means. I guess you'd still be looking at around $4k for the legal fees but wouldn't that be a better option?
- ryan29 3y agoThere's a good chance it would be considered a "bad faith" complaint. It's called reverse domain name hijacking [1] and is specifically addressed in the UDRP. If you lose the dispute, you'll never buy the domain for a reasonable price after that, so it's a really risky move. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_hijacking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_hijacking
- dhosek 3y agoWhen I came up with the idea for finl, I was not entirely surprised that finl.com was squatted, and given that finl is unlikely to ever make money (since my business plan is to not be a business), the asking price of $53,000 is entirely out of line. I maybe will switch to a different tld than .xyz at some point in the future, but for now, barring a lottery win (which would require buying a lottery ticket, I suppose), I’ll never have the .com and that’s fine.
- MrVandemar 3y ago> barring a lottery win (which would require buying a lottery ticket, I suppose) It's not impossible to win the lottery without buying ticket. Someone can give you one. You could find one on the street. etc. There's also saying "buying a lottery ticket only very slightly increases your odds of winning it".
- jasomill 3y agoWorse: buying a ticket generally decreases your expected net lottery winnings, as the expected value of a lottery ticket is almost always lower than its purchase price. The only likely exceptions I'm aware of that don't require either cheating or inside information are atypically large progressive jackpots without commensurate increases in ticket sales (unlikely exceptions include finding exploitable patterns in inadequately randomized draws before they're otherwise brought to the attention of lottery operators). For the record, my own personal net lottery winnings total nearly $400, consisting almost entirely of gifts and winning scratch-offs I've picked up off the ground (slightly more than $400 in winnings less $5–10 I've spent buying three or four tickets in my life).
- dhosek 3y agoI buy one lottery ticket a year, on my birthday. A lotto quick-pick. Fantasizing about what I’d do with the jackpot for a couple days is worth the buck a year. My total winnings in a lifetime is $2. There was some group that determined that it was possible to get a return of slightly over 1.0 on lottery tickets (I forget all the parameters, although the one I remember was playing numbers only greater than 31 to reduce the odds of sharing the jackpot with people who play birthdays/anniversaries/etc) and the return time to get slightly over 1.0 was several thousand years (this is all based on memories that are 30ish years old, so I may have some details wrong).
- rolenthedeep 3y agoI am the proud owner of my own firstnamelastname.com When I first ventured into web hosting, the domain was dead, but still registered. I did a whois and got Firstname Lastname. Not sure what I expected, really. After some years I randomly checked with my favorite registrar, and it was suddenly available for $15/yr. Immediately grabbed that, no regrets. A couple of years ago, I got a series of emails from some broker offering me an increasing amount of money for the domain. I think they gave up at $5k, and I never responded. $5k would have been incredible at the time, but by then I was fully committed to my FirstName@firstnamelastname.com email address. I guess I never really put a website at that domain, it's just an email address. I keep telling myself I'll do it eventually, but it's been almost 10 years at this point...
- Waterluvian 3y ago$5000 can do a lot of good in the world. But it’s your property to do what you will with, for sure.
- rolenthedeep 3y agoIf someone offered you $5000 to change the email address you've used on every website for a decade, would you? All of your banking and financial accounts, your phone and utility bills, your doctor. Could you even identify every place you've ever used it? That sounds like an awful lot more than $5k worth of work to me
- nerdbert 3y agoThink of how many people still use their ISP's domain for their email address...
- soderfoo 3y agoThere's no time like the present. Finally got around to putting together my personal site this past weekend. Just a simple blog and centralized place to post updates and photos for family. I was dragging my feet for a while but finally made a big push. Nostalgia for the simplicity of the GeoCity days made me apprehensive over the years.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 3y agoI'm so surprised that squatting on tens of thousands of domains is still allowed, after decades of squatters being a problem. Have any proposals for dealing with this gotten any traction?
- apple4ever 3y agoI'd love a solution to this. If you aren't doing anything with it and someone wants to buy it, they should be forced to sell. I've been trying to buy a domain for 15 years. I'm the only one interested in it. But still haven't been able to close the deal as it's too expensive.
- phendrenad2 3y agoIf you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
- tomas789 3y agoIn our country we have a problem with exchanges giving horrendous rates to tourists (like 16 for 1 EUR instead of fair 24). Governor of central bank was asked why they don't stop it. He replied that they in theory could but seems like people are using such services and if they intervene then they are disrupting a free market. They are offering a service and they have customers. Should they stop them just because they have high margins? What I want to say is that I don't like this practice either but should we cancel businesses just because we don't like them? They are not stealing or anything. I'd say they are in a light grey business but for sure not black. And I guess there is a bright side to this all too. At least for large-ish businesses. If nissan.com was owned by domain squatter then they would sell it to Nisan for 1M or something and both sides would be happy.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- AtNightWeCode 3y agoEmail addresses, that is the only reason why we got the .com domain. I think the other arguments in the article are pale.
- kwanbix 3y ago"100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have the .com of their name. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of the rest, one way or another" Isn't it expected that when you make it to the top (being for example a top 20 YC company by valuation) you go out and buy the .com? What would be interesting to know is, how many of the top 20 or top 50 started with .com.
- ReDeiPirati 3y ago> There is no definite way of isolating the importance of the .com but it is likely to have played a part. Our domain authority also increased meaningfully. How is it possible to conclude that "it is likely" given there aren't any evidence to support that? After reading the article my takeaways are that a) the agency you hired might have helped you with SEO much more than changing the domain and b) the success you had after the migration don't correlate with the domain change, but more with your distribution. To be honest, I'm not really convinced that purchasing the .com has played a role in your success after reading this.
- nikolay 3y agoThey should learn what "domain squatter" really means. Owning domains is not squatting. It's like owning land you don't use - it's your right if you pay property taxes, in this case, renewal fees.
- elantis 3y agoI think you did well and received a good price! For the last several years, bitcoin and crypto related domain names have been really hot and selling at high prices. supertokens.com would make a great crypto business name, this would have been in the seller's mind when he set the price. I'm surprised that your domain broker didn't mention it.