15 ms·

How to Acquire a Domain Name (That Someone Already Owns)

203 points by ebcase 15y ago

rickdale 15y ago
In my opinion this is a huge problem on the internet. I am all for freedom to own domains, but it's coming to the point where more often or not the domain name I search for has no content up and is just conveniently being parked. For me, I guess the fact that the domain is parked tells me the owner is looking for a pay day from it, rather than to create their own content rich site. Big companies can force the little guy to submit to them and give them a domain, but little guys can't do anything to little or big guys to get a domain. It's a pretty messed up system. I sold a domain once for $5,000(us) to the biggest equipment manufacturer in the world. I wanted more, their proposal was to buy it for $3,000(us). I was happy enough with the $5,000 after they told me they were going to sue and take it from me...
- jsomethings 15y ago
  I completely agree. Something to keep in mind is that the domain name system is almost unlike any other commodity -- in that only one of each exists, and it can never be replicated. For example, no matter how rare a baseball card is, there is almost always a few others of its kind. Same with comic books, and so on. Now, no matter how rare an antique piece of furniture is (let's say it's a one-off, hand-made piece), you can still replicate it with enough attention to detail to nearly fully mimic the original. But, with a domain name, there's only one. And, you can't mimic it. (You can get the .co, but that's a whole other story.) Consequently, domain owners have a lopsided amount of haggling power.
  - larrys 15y ago
    "But, with a domain name, there's only one." How do you figure that? You can get a name in a different gtld tld cctld etc. It may not be as desirable as .com (because of course I'm assuming that is what you mean). And why is there only "one". There is not only "one" name you can use for your business. Especially if you are starting one. You are free to call yourself whatever you want.
    - jsomethings 15y ago
      As both you and I already hinted at, you can get a name in a different TLD (or even prepend "get", e.g. "getAPP.com"), but you're taking a hit for a variety of reasons (perception, confusion). My point was only that you won't ever replicate it, and for that reason domains are unique. My personal favorite "fallback" is to use .io or prepend "get."
      - larrys 15y ago
        "get" is fine or "my" etc. But I would absolutely stay away from any cctld's like .io. If your site becomes popular you will end up having to purchase the .com assuming you even can do that. (Once publicity of your .io site gets out the price of the .com will go up if it's even possible to buy).
  - gala8y 15y ago
    Feel I know exactly what you mean. One side of the problem is that "only one of each exists", the other is that many entities might 'need' (more or less) this very name, regardless whether we talk about local (eg. 3 bookstores in one small town) or worldwide. I imagine with system (resources on the internet) getting bigger and bigger single, nice, short and memorable domains will gradually become less important. I imagine factors like location aware, user aware, use of bookmarks, search, links attached to social profiles, NFC, qr, AI algorithms, you name it, will each play a role here. There could be moment in time when everybody will accept change of 'paradigm' and accept that addressing resources is not the way it used to be, or that it is 'many ways lead to the content' . We could even use bare numbers for lots of stuff. Also, this reminds me that people used to share domains back in 90's with a nice intro and screen split to two parts - you would choose which company/site you wanted to go. Sure its not the solution by any means, but I liked those sites, always getting some positive feeling that this was possible (people agreeing on sth). I have not seen such a site for a long time, though.
  - njharman 15y ago
    > almost unlike any other commodity Art and people (sports, movie starts) are two I thought of instantly. And the insane, somewhat arbitrary (although it's always whatever someone is willing to pay) pricing of those makes domain market look clean and efficient.
    - jsomethings 15y ago
      The comparison of domains to sports and movie stars (when it comes to being un-replicable and heavily influenced by taste) is very interesting. Maybe I'll start telling people that domains are like movie stars :) An interesting question that then arises is what would be the equivalent of "character actor" in the domain world?
      - jacques_chester 15y ago
        * .blogspot.com, * .wordpress.com, * .tumbler.com etc.
- sjtgraham 15y ago
  The domain system desperately needs reform. It's unconscionable that one can simply park domains wholesale and wait for the bids to roll in. It's a huge problem that people wanting to create value are held to ransom by parasites, and there is little chance other than to pay through the nose.
  - larrys 15y ago
    "It's unconscionable that one can simply park domains wholesale" "unconscionable"? It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one. "people wanting to create value are held to ransom by parasites" And what if the someone "wanting to create value" got to the name first and has their idea of a site is not as good as your idea of a site. The name would also not be available for you to use. This idea that if people weren't parking names they would be available when you wanted the name is simply not true. Someone else could have registered the name and used it to put up 3 picture of their cat. Then you'd have to approach and buy it from them. That said I can certainly understand the frustration that people feel in trying to obtain names for their startups (as I consult with these people).
    - jasonkester 15y ago
      "unconscionable"? It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one. Notice that your response in no way addresses the grandparent's complaint. Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person. There are lots of things in this world that are technically legal to do, but make the world a worse place (domain squatting being a perfect example). There's also a type of individual that doesn't look beyond legality when determining right behavior. This is a good type of individual to be able to recognize, as it's a very good indicator of somebody with whom you never want to do business.
      - andyakb 15y ago
        Parking a domain makes somebody a bad person? How is this any different than a speculator buying undeveloped parcels of land and waiting for a developer to come along and buy them for more money? Are they bad people, too? It is annoying when you need to buy the domain you want from a reseller and have to pay more than if it wasnt registered, but saying it makes the reseller a bad person is going way, way too far.
- orky56 15y ago
  In the area of trademarks I believe, you need to demonstrate that you are not just "parking" the name but also actually taking actions to sell and market the product/service. A similar regulation should be applied for websites to ensure they are using it for the proposed purpose.
  - newhouseb 15y ago
    There is precedent for this in WIPO court (around abusing domain parking), but unfortunately the shady businesses that profit off of parking domains are getting smarter by auto-generating "specialty based news services" based on the keywords in the URL instead of throwing up exclusively ads. Take for example, the World News Network which squats domains with pages like "http://policearrest.com/ http://policearrest.com/. (See an example WIPO proceeding here http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2005/d2005-0587.html http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2005/d2005...) World New Network had squatted a domain that we were interested in (a gobbledegook web 2.0 name, mind you), and they wanted 80k under the idea that this website was an important part of their news operation. If this was an English word it might make sense, but it was far from it so the whole game reeked of extortion (in the casual, not legal, sense).
- nmridul 15y ago
  There are lots of tlds available now. If one cannot find hisname.com, he should go for .biz, .info, .net, .org, .in, .name, .me or any of the extensions that are available for anyone to register. I'm sure hisname will be available in one of these extensions. Problem is, people feel entitled to own the .com name just because they have an idea that they think can change the world. If the idea can change the world, then the tld should not matter (or even the domain name should not matter).
Timothee 15y ago
One option that was left out is to wait for it to drop and buy it then. You can use a service to try to catch it when it drops but you then enter into a bidding match, or you can just wait for it to be completely released. Obviously more risky and maybe not worth the risk but I've done it recently. The domain I wanted was 4-5 weeks away from expiring, so I read a bit on the services to catch it when it drops and some sounded a bit fishy (some claim they put fake bids to pump the price up…). So I took a chance and waited the whole expiration process and was lucky enough to get it for just the price of a domain. Granted, it wasn't one of these unique four-letter domains so there was a decent chance there'd be little interest, and I would have survived without it (I had bought a good back-up name), but it's still an option for the cheap and patient…
- phillmv 15y ago
  The issue comes down to economics. Parked domains are an investment, and I suspect this is the kind of business that is only profitable on the long tail - you only flip some exceedingly small percentage of your total inventory on a given year, but you can't tell ahead of time which ones are going to be the winners. So… unless these are all manually managed (which I find unlikely, doesn't GoDaddy have a whole panel dedicated to parking?) I find this scenario to be extremely unlikely. Someone who has actually parked domains can probably shed some more light on the business model involved.
  - larrys 15y ago
    "Someone who has actually parked domains can probably shed some more light on the business model involved." ...you answered your question perfectly: "I suspect this is the kind of business that is only profitable on the long tail - you only flip some exceedingly small percentage of your total inventory on a given year, but you can't tell ahead of time which ones are going to be the winners." Exactly. That said much of this also has to do with who owns the name, whether they need the money (what you are offering) and a host of other factors to numerous to mention. As a general rule though I would rather be making an offer to buy a name off someone who owns a vast inventory of names than someone who owns only a few. Why? Because they know that if they pass up your offer they might wait another 7 years to sell that name. So essentially you just have to clear a certain point based on their experience and the names is yours. Unless of course that person who owns only a few names needs money in which case (well you get my point) I'd rather have that person be the seller. From my experience I've seen all sorts of things happen. I just helped a startup get a great name for a few hundred dollars that was worth much more simply because the owner didn't even google to see that they obviously would need the name.
tnorthcutt 15y ago
Direct link to the comment on the avc.com post mentioned in this post: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/finding-and-buying-a-domain-name.html#dsq-comment-body-193649096 http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/finding-and-buying-a-domain-...
- silentific 15y ago
  That comment is perfect. I'm a developer that loves buying domain names that strike a chord. I'll get to that idea one day! I get approached a few times a year and the author touched on a lot of feeling a seller goes through when being approached via email. I've ignored a few requests because I can tell the prospective buyer is not serious. I'd be much more likely to "think" about a serious offer in an initial email.
- silentific 15y ago
  "Many Domain Owners Think They're Sitting On A Lottery Ticket"
wilfra 15y ago
If you want to buy a domain somebody owns, just get the email address from the WHOIS and send them a quick note, 'are you interested in selling this domain?'. Response rate from this is > 80%. Payment always via Escrow.com (PayPal does not provide protection for domains) and you're set. As to the discussion of whether domain parking should be allowed, think of it like real estate. Those who own vast tracts of land may develop it, they may sell it or they may just sit on it for the rest of their life and pass it to their heirs. Premium domains are exactly the same.
larrys 15y ago
The title is "How to Acquire a Domain Name (That Someone Already Owns)" But the article essentially deals only with how to contact the owner. It doesn't deal at all with strategy or research required to acquire a domain name at a fair price. Acquiring a domain name is much more than contacting the owner. It's how you contact the owner and what you say and even how you say it. And who you appear to be and a host of other factors. It's what your initial offer is (and while some will say don't make the first offer that is not always correct) and even how long it takes you to reply to a counter or how that is handled. There is much to the strategy (on both buy and sell side). And even if you are using an intermediary to make offers on your behalf you will have to use a strategy with them as well.
- jsomethings 15y ago
  That was the purpose of linking to the Fred Wilson blog post comment. It covers almost everything you just mentioned. This post is an outline for others to handily reference.
dutchbrit 15y ago
I've acquired 2 or 3 registered domains in my life, so not that much experience. However, I get the feeling that people dare to ask more money when they have time to think about it, ie. acquiring via email. When I acquired my first domain, I didn't email, but simply called the person up. Worked like a charm!
pitdesi 15y ago
Related: Great comment in an avc post- http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/finding-and-buying-a-domain-name.html#comment-193649096 http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/finding-and-buying-a-domain-... I'll repost the good part here, since it isn't attributed anyway: The Art Of Negotiating A Domain Name Purchase I see so much bad advice about how to approach someone to buy their domain... "contact them and say I see you're not using xxxxx.com, I have a little project I'd like to use it for... would you be willing to let it go?" etc. etc. etc. HORRIBLE ADVICE. People that are sitting on domain names don't keep paying the registration fees every year for fun, even if they aren't using the name. They know it has value. So don't insult their intelligence making them think they should do you a favor by letting you have their unused domain. Many Domain Owners Think They're Sitting On A Lottery Ticket Many domain owners think that one day someone is going to come along and give them millions for their .Com no matter what it is. The fact is, domains are only worth what someone is ready to hand you a check for. (A tip to all you wannabe speculators.) I've seen many GREAT domains never get sold, so always keep that in mind. Anyway, because domain owners have this thinking, they are very reluctant to NAME A PRICE. So forcing them to start by naming a price isn't something they want to do, because they're hoping YOU offer some ridiculously high price that they will then counter to go much higher. Because of this, you MUST start out on first contact with an offer (more on this in a second). The approach of "would you be willing to sell xxxxx.com? If so, how much?" isn't going to cut it; one of the main reasons is that domain owners of decent domains get TONS of emails all the time asking them that, and when they've replied in the past with a price or try to start negotiations so many people are only willing to pay $100 or some insulting price. So what do most domain owners do? IGNORE YOU. That's right. So if you've ever contacted a domain owner after looking them up with a Whois search and they didn't reply, it's not because they didn't your email (which makes you think that follow-up fax or phone call will do the trick; HINT: it won't.) It's because they think you're like everyone else that thinks they can buy the domain for $100 or so. Here's how you get their attention and get the ball rolling... Rule #1: You must start out by making an offer in your initial email. Rule #2: This offer must be high enough to get their attention and make them at least THINK. NOTE: Rule #2's amount will depend on how great the domain is. The two magic price points I have found that work the best (they depend on how valuable the domain is) is either $1,000 or $2,500. If it's a great domain then $5K-$10K is usually the starting point. These amounts are enough to get anyone's attention. I've bought many $100K+ value domains for $15K-$20K by starting with a $5K or $7K offer. By starting with at least something that gets their attention they will take you seriously. This is the first step or you have no chance to make a deal. In most cases for decent 2 words domains, the $1K to $2.5K opener works best. * TIP: Always know your seller if possible. Do a Whois on who owns the domain, visit the domain in their email address or do some Google searches, etc. You'll often find a struggling Web designer is sitting on a great domain. $1,000 cash to that person is a lot of money. So this also goes into the process of deciding what to open the offer with. The key here is not to insult someone with a lowball offer, but offer enough to make them know you're a serious buyer. So here's a sample initial contact email to send... (and I'll explain the rest of the language I use)... Subject Line: Whatever.com ($2,500?) Hi, I see you are the owner of Whatever.com. I'm in the process of trying to find a domain name for a client I am building a web site for and think your name could be a good fit. I am contacting different domain owners as we have it in the budget to buy a cool name and Whatever.com is on the list we came up with. Would you be interested in selling it for $2,500? Let me know and I can have the funds wired to you next day or PayPal'd to you. Just let me know your PayPal address. Thanks for your time. -YOUR NAME ------------------------- Let's breakdown why I used that language... 1. You've positioned yourself as not the future 'owner' of the domain. You're just managing a budget for a project. This helps because as they will usually counter with a higher amount, you'll play the "sorry, I just don't have it in the budget to go that high" to work towards a price you want. You'll also be able to play the "let me see if the client can approve a budget increase to accommodate that price" etc. etc. This also allows you to play Good Cop, Bad Cop in a way. You're just someone trying to get the deal done to do your job (build the site). You're also presenting yourself as someone LESS EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN THE NAME -- which will potentially keep the price down. (Trust me, it works very well.) 2. You mention that you're contacting several domain owners (i.e. making multiple offers). You're playing up SCARCITY, one of the most powerful emotions when it comes to sales. For all this person knows they could reply and say "okay, I'll sell it" but you may come back and say, "sorry someone replied to our email first and now we have a domain." 3. By closing with the "we'll pay you right away" it makes the offer more REAL. Many of these domain owners get offers that people back out of and have no intention to actually pay. And you're also ASSUMING THE SALE by saying, "what's your PayPal address?" :-) Again, all of these things are very, very powerful and I have tweaked this initial contact email over the years. ADDITIONAL TIPS Let's say you initially offer $2,500 on a great name and the owner counters with, "I couldn't sell it for that, I've had higher offers. I would never sell it for anything less than $10K." FIrst, you must IGNORE anything they say. You'll get the "I've turned down higher offers" response a lot. In the example response about $10K above, unless you would love to have it for $10K, just reply with something like this... "While I do think your name is possibly worth $10K to someone, we just don't have the budget for that much, sorry. I could probably get something more like $5K-$7K approved, but even that's pushing it. Anyway, thanks for your time." That's it. Cut them off. Trust me, they'll come back to you 90% of the time. Sometimes you just have to be a little PATIENT and you'll save a fortune. Remember to always play up the SCARCITY. "That's just too much for our budget... looks like we'll just go with an alternative name that we've been negotiating for a lot less, even though we preferred your name. Thanks for your time and at least trying to work something out." That's NOT what they want to read from you. ;-) There are THOUSANDS of amazing domain deals out there waiting to happen. I, personally, buy domains all the time this way. In fact, this is probably a good time to negotiate some deals as many people need the cash more than in recent years. FINAL TIP: It's not uncommon to settle on a final price that is 30% of what their original asking price was. Keep that in mind as a general rule of thumb. I've had many deals for great names where someone "really wanted $60,000" and we closed the sale around $20K.
matt1 15y ago
Quick pitch: I've been building a new domain search tool called Lean Domain Search [1] that makes it really, really easy to find great available .com domain names. You type in a word and it pairs it with 1,400 other words and instantly shows you which are available (and I'm adding 100 results per week). The number of available search results is now almost at 700. Unless you are dead-set on having a specific name, there's no reason you should have to pay more than the $12 registration fee to pick up a decent domain name for your next site. I'd even go so far as to say that as word of Lean Domain Search spreads (it's less than 5 weeks old), it will have a major impact on the premium domain name market for this very reason. There's this perceived scarcity of good domain names that simply doesn't exist. You just need a tool like LDS to show you. [1] http://www.leandomainsearch.com http://www.leandomainsearch.com
- underwater 15y ago
  I used LDS recently when picking out a domain. It was good, but the results often felt a SEO-like (e.g. "bestof<x>"). I found I was doing a lot of manual work separating the wheat from the chaff. I ended up creating a text file of base words, prefixes and suffixes (built partially from LDS suggestions) which I fed through another site that combined them into domains I could query in batches of 225. I felt this was something your site could have easily automated by letting me flag prefixes/suffixes I liked and allowing me to suggest multiple base words.
- larrys 15y ago
  lds is a good tool and I've just used it to recommend names to people last week. That said selling names to startups is only one channel for domain names. So I wouldn't say the impact is going to "major". Also mainstream name buyers tend to search through premium domains at godaddy or type in a name and may see a for sale page that leads to buydomains etc.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
opendomain 15y ago
When I want to buy a domain, I use Who.Is to find the owner and send a certified FAIR value through Escrow.Com Unfortunately, when people contact me to obtain a domain I have, I get very lowball offers - to which I do not respond. I also offer people to use my domains for Free as part of my project OpenDomain, but most people insist that they must own the domain. I guess they do not get that we are "Open Source for domains".
- ohgodthecat 15y ago
  Open source for domains means nothing to me, what are you to domains? I have no way of linking open source in my mind to the concept of domains. I tried to look what OpenDomain was so I search and I find some business solutions .com which I assume isn't your project so I look and I find your twitter[1] (I'm assuming) which has the same slogan you used, so I go to the website and what do I find? Just some default filler content for whatever template your purchased. Owning the domain for a project or a company is key as that is a great part of their identity that they have to build up (especially for online applications). Maybe if your project "OpenDomain" gets some backing and is alive for many years and actually says what it does then maybe people won't have to own their domains but as of now your complaint of people not getting it is moot. [1]: http://twitter.com/#!/opendomain http://twitter.com/#!/opendomain
bdr 15y ago
I got a voicemail last week from an LA area number. It was a cute-sounding girl saying, "Hi, my name is Kayla, I'm taking a marketing class, and for one of my projects I wanted to use your domain xxx dot yyy, so I was wondering if you would sell it to me. Ok, please call me back!" Not suspicious at all!
- there 15y ago
  That instantly reminded me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW8j3x3GzxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW8j3x3GzxY
- mansolo 15y ago
  I would've fallen for that. Thanks for the heads up.
there 15y ago
Domain owners behind WHOIS privacy are not necessarily unreachable. The privacy service has to offer some way of contacting those domain owners by proxy, so you may just have to fill out a web form behind a CAPTCHA to get your message across. I did this for a domain a few weeks ago that was using OpenSRS' WHOIS privacy (via http://contactprivacy.com http://contactprivacy.com) and while it took 2 weeks for the owner to get back to me, he responded by putting the domain up on Sedo so I could make an offer on it.
apenwarr 15y ago
A simple solution for the vast majority of domain squatting: just charge a "property tax" of $100/year per domain. That's not an outrageous amount for a real user, but it makes the "buy a zillion domains and park them until the Big One comes along" business model no longer mathematically sound.
- EdiX 15y ago
  Who gets to collect the tax?
  - apenwarr 15y ago
    Any organization that's sufficiently large they don't care about the small incremental income. That is, anybody who's not a domain registrar. I'm not a U.S. citizen, but the U.S. federal government would fit the bill just fine, and would be the obvious (though inevitably controversial) group to do it for .com, .net, and .org, ie. the problematic ones.
hessenwolf 15y ago
This is comment can sit at the bottom of the page or wherever. This page is full of misinformation and spam. Ignore all of it.
iends 15y ago
What about domains that are not business specific, but personal? For example, there is a squatter who registered a huge number of firstnamelastname.com -- one of which is my real name. He's been reregistering it for the past 8 years. I created a fake email several years ago and made up some cover story about how I was looking to create an online persona to blog with and listed 5-6 domains of these domains. The squatter wanted 10k for my firstnamelastname.com when I offered less than he wanted (like 1k) for one of the domains I really didn't want, he just said no and stopped responding. I even cited a post where he paid $80 for the domain... I've been afraid to interact with the guy using my real name and the domain I actually want because I don't want to show any interest in the domain in hopes he just lets it expire. ((The guy has also had several domains seized by ICANN))
paulschreiber 15y ago
Has anyone had any experience acquiring a name that's being squatted on? Our nonprofit has the .org for a domain; a squatter has the .com. We'd like to get it from them so we don't have confused users. Should we write them first? Have our lawyer write nicely? Sternly? Or just skip this and go straight to UDRP?
tucson 15y ago
To "get a feel for the domain name aftermarket’s trends" -> check out http://www.dnsaleprice.com/SalePrice.aspx http://www.dnsaleprice.com/SalePrice.aspx

203 points by ebcase 15y ago

In my opinion this is a huge problem on the internet. I am all for freedom to own domains, but it's coming to the point where more often or not the domain name I search for has no content up and is just conveniently being parked. For me, I guess the fact that the domain is parked tells me the owner is looking for a pay day from it, rather than to create their own content rich site. Big companies can force the little guy to submit to them and give them a domain, but little guys can't do anything to little or big guys to get a domain. It's a pretty messed up system. I sold a domain once for $5,000(us) to the biggest equipment manufacturer in the world. I wanted more, their proposal was to buy it for $3,000(us). I was happy enough with the $5,000 after they told me they were going to sue and take it from me...

jsomethings 15y ago
I completely agree. Something to keep in mind is that the domain name system is almost unlike any other commodity -- in that only one of each exists, and it can never be replicated. For example, no matter how rare a baseball card is, there is almost always a few others of its kind. Same with comic books, and so on. Now, no matter how rare an antique piece of furniture is (let's say it's a one-off, hand-made piece), you can still replicate it with enough attention to detail to nearly fully mimic the original. But, with a domain name, there's only one. And, you can't mimic it. (You can get the .co, but that's a whole other story.) Consequently, domain owners have a lopsided amount of haggling power.
- larrys 15y ago
  "But, with a domain name, there's only one." How do you figure that? You can get a name in a different gtld tld cctld etc. It may not be as desirable as .com (because of course I'm assuming that is what you mean). And why is there only "one". There is not only "one" name you can use for your business. Especially if you are starting one. You are free to call yourself whatever you want.
  - jsomethings 15y ago
    As both you and I already hinted at, you can get a name in a different TLD (or even prepend "get", e.g. "getAPP.com"), but you're taking a hit for a variety of reasons (perception, confusion). My point was only that you won't ever replicate it, and for that reason domains are unique. My personal favorite "fallback" is to use .io or prepend "get."
    - larrys 15y ago
      "get" is fine or "my" etc. But I would absolutely stay away from any cctld's like .io. If your site becomes popular you will end up having to purchase the .com assuming you even can do that. (Once publicity of your .io site gets out the price of the .com will go up if it's even possible to buy).
- gala8y 15y ago
  Feel I know exactly what you mean. One side of the problem is that "only one of each exists", the other is that many entities might 'need' (more or less) this very name, regardless whether we talk about local (eg. 3 bookstores in one small town) or worldwide. I imagine with system (resources on the internet) getting bigger and bigger single, nice, short and memorable domains will gradually become less important. I imagine factors like location aware, user aware, use of bookmarks, search, links attached to social profiles, NFC, qr, AI algorithms, you name it, will each play a role here. There could be moment in time when everybody will accept change of 'paradigm' and accept that addressing resources is not the way it used to be, or that it is 'many ways lead to the content' . We could even use bare numbers for lots of stuff. Also, this reminds me that people used to share domains back in 90's with a nice intro and screen split to two parts - you would choose which company/site you wanted to go. Sure its not the solution by any means, but I liked those sites, always getting some positive feeling that this was possible (people agreeing on sth). I have not seen such a site for a long time, though.
- njharman 15y ago
  > almost unlike any other commodity Art and people (sports, movie starts) are two I thought of instantly. And the insane, somewhat arbitrary (although it's always whatever someone is willing to pay) pricing of those makes domain market look clean and efficient.
  - jsomethings 15y ago
    The comparison of domains to sports and movie stars (when it comes to being un-replicable and heavily influenced by taste) is very interesting. Maybe I'll start telling people that domains are like movie stars :) An interesting question that then arises is what would be the equivalent of "character actor" in the domain world?
    - jacques_chester 15y ago
      * .blogspot.com, * .wordpress.com, * .tumbler.com etc.
sjtgraham 15y ago
The domain system desperately needs reform. It's unconscionable that one can simply park domains wholesale and wait for the bids to roll in. It's a huge problem that people wanting to create value are held to ransom by parasites, and there is little chance other than to pay through the nose.
- larrys 15y ago
  "It's unconscionable that one can simply park domains wholesale" "unconscionable"? It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one. "people wanting to create value are held to ransom by parasites" And what if the someone "wanting to create value" got to the name first and has their idea of a site is not as good as your idea of a site. The name would also not be available for you to use. This idea that if people weren't parking names they would be available when you wanted the name is simply not true. Someone else could have registered the name and used it to put up 3 picture of their cat. Then you'd have to approach and buy it from them. That said I can certainly understand the frustration that people feel in trying to obtain names for their startups (as I consult with these people).
  - jasonkester 15y ago
    "unconscionable"? It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one. Notice that your response in no way addresses the grandparent's complaint. Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person. There are lots of things in this world that are technically legal to do, but make the world a worse place (domain squatting being a perfect example). There's also a type of individual that doesn't look beyond legality when determining right behavior. This is a good type of individual to be able to recognize, as it's a very good indicator of somebody with whom you never want to do business.
    - andyakb 15y ago
      Parking a domain makes somebody a bad person? How is this any different than a speculator buying undeveloped parcels of land and waiting for a developer to come along and buy them for more money? Are they bad people, too? It is annoying when you need to buy the domain you want from a reseller and have to pay more than if it wasnt registered, but saying it makes the reseller a bad person is going way, way too far.
orky56 15y ago
In the area of trademarks I believe, you need to demonstrate that you are not just "parking" the name but also actually taking actions to sell and market the product/service. A similar regulation should be applied for websites to ensure they are using it for the proposed purpose.
- newhouseb 15y ago
  There is precedent for this in WIPO court (around abusing domain parking), but unfortunately the shady businesses that profit off of parking domains are getting smarter by auto-generating "specialty based news services" based on the keywords in the URL instead of throwing up exclusively ads. Take for example, the World News Network which squats domains with pages like "http://policearrest.com/ http://policearrest.com/. (See an example WIPO proceeding here http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2005/d2005-0587.html http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2005/d2005...) World New Network had squatted a domain that we were interested in (a gobbledegook web 2.0 name, mind you), and they wanted 80k under the idea that this website was an important part of their news operation. If this was an English word it might make sense, but it was far from it so the whole game reeked of extortion (in the casual, not legal, sense).
nmridul 15y ago
There are lots of tlds available now. If one cannot find hisname.com, he should go for .biz, .info, .net, .org, .in, .name, .me or any of the extensions that are available for anyone to register. I'm sure hisname will be available in one of these extensions. Problem is, people feel entitled to own the .com name just because they have an idea that they think can change the world. If the idea can change the world, then the tld should not matter (or even the domain name should not matter).

Timothee 15y ago

One option that was left out is to wait for it to drop and buy it then. You can use a service to try to catch it when it drops but you then enter into a bidding match, or you can just wait for it to be completely released. Obviously more risky and maybe not worth the risk but I've done it recently. The domain I wanted was 4-5 weeks away from expiring, so I read a bit on the services to catch it when it drops and some sounded a bit fishy (some claim they put fake bids to pump the price up…). So I took a chance and waited the whole expiration process and was lucky enough to get it for just the price of a domain. Granted, it wasn't one of these unique four-letter domains so there was a decent chance there'd be little interest, and I would have survived without it (I had bought a good back-up name), but it's still an option for the cheap and patient…

phillmv 15y ago
The issue comes down to economics. Parked domains are an investment, and I suspect this is the kind of business that is only profitable on the long tail - you only flip some exceedingly small percentage of your total inventory on a given year, but you can't tell ahead of time which ones are going to be the winners. So… unless these are all manually managed (which I find unlikely, doesn't GoDaddy have a whole panel dedicated to parking?) I find this scenario to be extremely unlikely. Someone who has actually parked domains can probably shed some more light on the business model involved.
- larrys 15y ago
  "Someone who has actually parked domains can probably shed some more light on the business model involved." ...you answered your question perfectly: "I suspect this is the kind of business that is only profitable on the long tail - you only flip some exceedingly small percentage of your total inventory on a given year, but you can't tell ahead of time which ones are going to be the winners." Exactly. That said much of this also has to do with who owns the name, whether they need the money (what you are offering) and a host of other factors to numerous to mention. As a general rule though I would rather be making an offer to buy a name off someone who owns a vast inventory of names than someone who owns only a few. Why? Because they know that if they pass up your offer they might wait another 7 years to sell that name. So essentially you just have to clear a certain point based on their experience and the names is yours. Unless of course that person who owns only a few names needs money in which case (well you get my point) I'd rather have that person be the seller. From my experience I've seen all sorts of things happen. I just helped a startup get a great name for a few hundred dollars that was worth much more simply because the owner didn't even google to see that they obviously would need the name.

tnorthcutt 15y ago

Direct link to the comment on the avc.com post mentioned in this post: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/finding-and-buying-a-domain-name.html#dsq-comment-body-193649096 http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/finding-and-buying-a-domain-...

silentific 15y ago
That comment is perfect. I'm a developer that loves buying domain names that strike a chord. I'll get to that idea one day! I get approached a few times a year and the author touched on a lot of feeling a seller goes through when being approached via email. I've ignored a few requests because I can tell the prospective buyer is not serious. I'd be much more likely to "think" about a serious offer in an initial email.
silentific 15y ago
"Many Domain Owners Think They're Sitting On A Lottery Ticket"

wilfra 15y ago

If you want to buy a domain somebody owns, just get the email address from the WHOIS and send them a quick note, 'are you interested in selling this domain?'. Response rate from this is > 80%. Payment always via Escrow.com (PayPal does not provide protection for domains) and you're set. As to the discussion of whether domain parking should be allowed, think of it like real estate. Those who own vast tracts of land may develop it, they may sell it or they may just sit on it for the rest of their life and pass it to their heirs. Premium domains are exactly the same.

larrys 15y ago

The title is "How to Acquire a Domain Name (That Someone Already Owns)" But the article essentially deals only with how to contact the owner. It doesn't deal at all with strategy or research required to acquire a domain name at a fair price. Acquiring a domain name is much more than contacting the owner. It's how you contact the owner and what you say and even how you say it. And who you appear to be and a host of other factors. It's what your initial offer is (and while some will say don't make the first offer that is not always correct) and even how long it takes you to reply to a counter or how that is handled. There is much to the strategy (on both buy and sell side). And even if you are using an intermediary to make offers on your behalf you will have to use a strategy with them as well.

jsomethings 15y ago
That was the purpose of linking to the Fred Wilson blog post comment. It covers almost everything you just mentioned. This post is an outline for others to handily reference.

dutchbrit 15y ago

I've acquired 2 or 3 registered domains in my life, so not that much experience. However, I get the feeling that people dare to ask more money when they have time to think about it, ie. acquiring via email. When I acquired my first domain, I didn't email, but simply called the person up. Worked like a charm!

pitdesi 15y ago

Related: Great comment in an avc post- http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/finding-and-buying-a-domain-name.html#comment-193649096 http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/finding-and-buying-a-domain-... I'll repost the good part here, since it isn't attributed anyway: The Art Of Negotiating A Domain Name Purchase I see so much bad advice about how to approach someone to buy their domain... "contact them and say I see you're not using xxxxx.com, I have a little project I'd like to use it for... would you be willing to let it go?" etc. etc. etc. HORRIBLE ADVICE. People that are sitting on domain names don't keep paying the registration fees every year for fun, even if they aren't using the name. They know it has value. So don't insult their intelligence making them think they should do you a favor by letting you have their unused domain. Many Domain Owners Think They're Sitting On A Lottery Ticket Many domain owners think that one day someone is going to come along and give them millions for their .Com no matter what it is. The fact is, domains are only worth what someone is ready to hand you a check for. (A tip to all you wannabe speculators.) I've seen many GREAT domains never get sold, so always keep that in mind. Anyway, because domain owners have this thinking, they are very reluctant to NAME A PRICE. So forcing them to start by naming a price isn't something they want to do, because they're hoping YOU offer some ridiculously high price that they will then counter to go much higher. Because of this, you MUST start out on first contact with an offer (more on this in a second). The approach of "would you be willing to sell xxxxx.com? If so, how much?" isn't going to cut it; one of the main reasons is that domain owners of decent domains get TONS of emails all the time asking them that, and when they've replied in the past with a price or try to start negotiations so many people are only willing to pay $100 or some insulting price. So what do most domain owners do? IGNORE YOU. That's right. So if you've ever contacted a domain owner after looking them up with a Whois search and they didn't reply, it's not because they didn't your email (which makes you think that follow-up fax or phone call will do the trick; HINT: it won't.) It's because they think you're like everyone else that thinks they can buy the domain for $100 or so. Here's how you get their attention and get the ball rolling... Rule #1: You must start out by making an offer in your initial email. Rule #2: This offer must be high enough to get their attention and make them at least THINK. NOTE: Rule #2's amount will depend on how great the domain is. The two magic price points I have found that work the best (they depend on how valuable the domain is) is either $1,000 or $2,500. If it's a great domain then $5K-$10K is usually the starting point. These amounts are enough to get anyone's attention. I've bought many $100K+ value domains for $15K-$20K by starting with a $5K or $7K offer. By starting with at least something that gets their attention they will take you seriously. This is the first step or you have no chance to make a deal. In most cases for decent 2 words domains, the $1K to $2.5K opener works best. * TIP: Always know your seller if possible. Do a Whois on who owns the domain, visit the domain in their email address or do some Google searches, etc. You'll often find a struggling Web designer is sitting on a great domain. $1,000 cash to that person is a lot of money. So this also goes into the process of deciding what to open the offer with. The key here is not to insult someone with a lowball offer, but offer enough to make them know you're a serious buyer. So here's a sample initial contact email to send... (and I'll explain the rest of the language I use)... Subject Line: Whatever.com ($2,500?) Hi, I see you are the owner of Whatever.com. I'm in the process of trying to find a domain name for a client I am building a web site for and think your name could be a good fit. I am contacting different domain owners as we have it in the budget to buy a cool name and Whatever.com is on the list we came up with. Would you be interested in selling it for $2,500? Let me know and I can have the funds wired to you next day or PayPal'd to you. Just let me know your PayPal address. Thanks for your time. -YOUR NAME ------------------------- Let's breakdown why I used that language... 1. You've positioned yourself as not the future 'owner' of the domain. You're just managing a budget for a project. This helps because as they will usually counter with a higher amount, you'll play the "sorry, I just don't have it in the budget to go that high" to work towards a price you want. You'll also be able to play the "let me see if the client can approve a budget increase to accommodate that price" etc. etc. This also allows you to play Good Cop, Bad Cop in a way. You're just someone trying to get the deal done to do your job (build the site). You're also presenting yourself as someone LESS EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN THE NAME -- which will potentially keep the price down. (Trust me, it works very well.) 2. You mention that you're contacting several domain owners (i.e. making multiple offers). You're playing up SCARCITY, one of the most powerful emotions when it comes to sales. For all this person knows they could reply and say "okay, I'll sell it" but you may come back and say, "sorry someone replied to our email first and now we have a domain." 3. By closing with the "we'll pay you right away" it makes the offer more REAL. Many of these domain owners get offers that people back out of and have no intention to actually pay. And you're also ASSUMING THE SALE by saying, "what's your PayPal address?" :-) Again, all of these things are very, very powerful and I have tweaked this initial contact email over the years. ADDITIONAL TIPS Let's say you initially offer $2,500 on a great name and the owner counters with, "I couldn't sell it for that, I've had higher offers. I would never sell it for anything less than $10K." FIrst, you must IGNORE anything they say. You'll get the "I've turned down higher offers" response a lot. In the example response about $10K above, unless you would love to have it for $10K, just reply with something like this... "While I do think your name is possibly worth $10K to someone, we just don't have the budget for that much, sorry. I could probably get something more like $5K-$7K approved, but even that's pushing it. Anyway, thanks for your time." That's it. Cut them off. Trust me, they'll come back to you 90% of the time. Sometimes you just have to be a little PATIENT and you'll save a fortune. Remember to always play up the SCARCITY. "That's just too much for our budget... looks like we'll just go with an alternative name that we've been negotiating for a lot less, even though we preferred your name. Thanks for your time and at least trying to work something out." That's NOT what they want to read from you. ;-) There are THOUSANDS of amazing domain deals out there waiting to happen. I, personally, buy domains all the time this way. In fact, this is probably a good time to negotiate some deals as many people need the cash more than in recent years. FINAL TIP: It's not uncommon to settle on a final price that is 30% of what their original asking price was. Keep that in mind as a general rule of thumb. I've had many deals for great names where someone "really wanted $60,000" and we closed the sale around $20K.

matt1 15y ago

Quick pitch: I've been building a new domain search tool called Lean Domain Search [1] that makes it really, really easy to find great available .com domain names. You type in a word and it pairs it with 1,400 other words and instantly shows you which are available (and I'm adding 100 results per week). The number of available search results is now almost at 700. Unless you are dead-set on having a specific name, there's no reason you should have to pay more than the $12 registration fee to pick up a decent domain name for your next site. I'd even go so far as to say that as word of Lean Domain Search spreads (it's less than 5 weeks old), it will have a major impact on the premium domain name market for this very reason. There's this perceived scarcity of good domain names that simply doesn't exist. You just need a tool like LDS to show you. [1] http://www.leandomainsearch.com http://www.leandomainsearch.com

underwater 15y ago
I used LDS recently when picking out a domain. It was good, but the results often felt a SEO-like (e.g. "bestof<x>"). I found I was doing a lot of manual work separating the wheat from the chaff. I ended up creating a text file of base words, prefixes and suffixes (built partially from LDS suggestions) which I fed through another site that combined them into domains I could query in batches of 225. I felt this was something your site could have easily automated by letting me flag prefixes/suffixes I liked and allowing me to suggest multiple base words.
larrys 15y ago
lds is a good tool and I've just used it to recommend names to people last week. That said selling names to startups is only one channel for domain names. So I wouldn't say the impact is going to "major". Also mainstream name buyers tend to search through premium domains at godaddy or type in a name and may see a for sale page that leads to buydomains etc.

deleted 15y ago

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opendomain 15y ago

When I want to buy a domain, I use Who.Is to find the owner and send a certified FAIR value through Escrow.Com Unfortunately, when people contact me to obtain a domain I have, I get very lowball offers - to which I do not respond. I also offer people to use my domains for Free as part of my project OpenDomain, but most people insist that they must own the domain. I guess they do not get that we are "Open Source for domains".

ohgodthecat 15y ago
Open source for domains means nothing to me, what are you to domains? I have no way of linking open source in my mind to the concept of domains. I tried to look what OpenDomain was so I search and I find some business solutions .com which I assume isn't your project so I look and I find your twitter[1] (I'm assuming) which has the same slogan you used, so I go to the website and what do I find? Just some default filler content for whatever template your purchased. Owning the domain for a project or a company is key as that is a great part of their identity that they have to build up (especially for online applications). Maybe if your project "OpenDomain" gets some backing and is alive for many years and actually says what it does then maybe people won't have to own their domains but as of now your complaint of people not getting it is moot. [1]: http://twitter.com/#!/opendomain http://twitter.com/#!/opendomain

bdr 15y ago

I got a voicemail last week from an LA area number. It was a cute-sounding girl saying, "Hi, my name is Kayla, I'm taking a marketing class, and for one of my projects I wanted to use your domain xxx dot yyy, so I was wondering if you would sell it to me. Ok, please call me back!" Not suspicious at all!

there 15y ago
That instantly reminded me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW8j3x3GzxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW8j3x3GzxY
mansolo 15y ago
I would've fallen for that. Thanks for the heads up.

there 15y ago

Domain owners behind WHOIS privacy are not necessarily unreachable. The privacy service has to offer some way of contacting those domain owners by proxy, so you may just have to fill out a web form behind a CAPTCHA to get your message across. I did this for a domain a few weeks ago that was using OpenSRS' WHOIS privacy (via http://contactprivacy.com http://contactprivacy.com) and while it took 2 weeks for the owner to get back to me, he responded by putting the domain up on Sedo so I could make an offer on it.

apenwarr 15y ago

A simple solution for the vast majority of domain squatting: just charge a "property tax" of $100/year per domain. That's not an outrageous amount for a real user, but it makes the "buy a zillion domains and park them until the Big One comes along" business model no longer mathematically sound.

EdiX 15y ago
Who gets to collect the tax?
- apenwarr 15y ago
  Any organization that's sufficiently large they don't care about the small incremental income. That is, anybody who's not a domain registrar. I'm not a U.S. citizen, but the U.S. federal government would fit the bill just fine, and would be the obvious (though inevitably controversial) group to do it for .com, .net, and .org, ie. the problematic ones.

hessenwolf 15y ago

This is comment can sit at the bottom of the page or wherever. This page is full of misinformation and spam. Ignore all of it.

iends 15y ago

What about domains that are not business specific, but personal? For example, there is a squatter who registered a huge number of firstnamelastname.com -- one of which is my real name. He's been reregistering it for the past 8 years. I created a fake email several years ago and made up some cover story about how I was looking to create an online persona to blog with and listed 5-6 domains of these domains. The squatter wanted 10k for my firstnamelastname.com when I offered less than he wanted (like 1k) for one of the domains I really didn't want, he just said no and stopped responding. I even cited a post where he paid $80 for the domain... I've been afraid to interact with the guy using my real name and the domain I actually want because I don't want to show any interest in the domain in hopes he just lets it expire. ((The guy has also had several domains seized by ICANN))

paulschreiber 15y ago

Has anyone had any experience acquiring a name that's being squatted on? Our nonprofit has the .org for a domain; a squatter has the .com. We'd like to get it from them so we don't have confused users. Should we write them first? Have our lawyer write nicely? Sternly? Or just skip this and go straight to UDRP?

tucson 15y ago

To "get a feel for the domain name aftermarket’s trends" -> check out http://www.dnsaleprice.com/SalePrice.aspx http://www.dnsaleprice.com/SalePrice.aspx