A lot of stock market investors are doing pretty well too, but an average person investing as a side business are still probably going to lose money. A lot of MLM/direct sales people make a lot of money but most end up losing money.
This is a guy who accidentally spent 4 figures on a domain he didn't want. And it was no big deal to him because he knew he'd be able to break even on it due to his expertise
He's an expert domain reseller. Novices would get burned.
I've bought 2 at a higher price: someone was squatting on my employer's name and I didn't let them know who I was and I got it for $1500. Another was curecf.com: I have CF (Cystic Fibrosis) and didn't want it to get misused. (I paid $250)
It's just a business expense, right? If you're actually going to be building a business on a domain name, it doesn't necessarily make sense to cheap out, just like any other business expense.
It's not about cheapening out, it's an exorbitant amount without much real customer value. "news.ycombinator.com" apparently works just as well as if this was "techtalk.com" or "bizchat.com" or whatever.
Yahoo isn't about cowboys, Amazon isn't about rainforests, uber isn't a firm from Germany, Google isn't about mathematics... It really doesn't seem to be correlated with business success.
Any made up name will do. Blorpblip, flipturf, dundrill, yepyip, nodnod, whatever. Those only look weird because it's your first time seeing it. Substance comes before brand
The meaning is assigned by the business praxis, not the other way around.
Yeah all this agonizing over domain names makes me think of middle school "bands" I was in where we spent more time riffing on possible names than we did practicing.
Does it though? There's little doubt in my mind that this site would have far greater reach (the actual desirability of that aside) if it were located at hackernews.com. I have no idea what the current owner would want for it but I'm sure it's substantial and rightfully so.
If they really cared they could come up with something. There's countless clones and proxy sites with closer and shorter names but they don't have large audiences because having a 4 (cuil) versus a 10 letter domain (duckdudckgo) doesn't actually matter - only what you put there.
I spent over 100k on a domain. Sometimes there are very few great options that ever come up and if you value the brand name itself and the fact that search traffic on the domain has a financial value (and you're already bidding a lot of $ on those terms for a single click) then it can easily pencil out.
Did you RTFA? He isn't parking the domain, he is picking one and then building something small around that.
To me domain parking is akin to real estate investors just buying up land and hoping some large company suddenly wants it and offers you a ton of money.
And the buyers aren’t scumbags. If someone buys real estate dirt and won’t sell to you for pennies 10 years later, do you suck thumb and whine?
Does this sound kind of scummy to you? Does espousing the virtues of this manifestation of hyper-capitalist profiteering leave you friendless and wondering about your breath? Despite all of that, not a fan of the communist solution? Consider alternatives!
"EVERYBODY WORKS BUT THE VACANT LOT"
I paid $3600 for this lot and will hold 'till I get $6000. The profit is unearned increment made possible by the presence of this community and enterprise of its people. I take the profit without earning it. For the remedy read "HENRY GEORGE"
Some random billboard sign written by some random guy two centuries ago citing some other random economist that you've never heard of really not enough for you?
How about the Pope? An older one, but still the Pope, nonetheless:
Everyone knows that the Fathers of the Church laid down the duty of the rich toward the poor in no uncertain terms. As St. Ambrose put it: "You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich." These words indicate that the right to private property is not absolute and unconditional.
I tried this with a domain. It's related to used beer kegs. The reason is because I was volunteering at a brewery, and one of the hottest commodities for small breweries is used kegs from bigger breweries that are replacing them. Most of the major breweries use keg management services and rent the kegs, which is overkill for smaller breweries, so owning kegs is important starting out.
Kegs are also sought after for the homebrewers market too; you can save a ton of money buying used, and they become available as people fall out of the hobby.
My plan was to either set up a market place or buy and resell kegs for a small profit. Even a bulletin board that just shows announcements for used keg sales would be helpful.
There are a few reasons I haven't pursued this. First, specifically for homebrewers, is gaining momentum from other marketplaces like Facebook, Craigslist, and local homebrew shops. For commercial kegs, these sales are usually announced word of mouth, and I am not well connected enough to be in the loop, and also, there is really no friction selling these kegs that a website could reduce. They "fly off the shelves". There are other issues too with the frequency these sales happen.
My point being, in a long winded way, is that buying a domain name and getting business ideas from it still requires business acumen, networking (which the author does mention), and a innate sense of the problem space and what desire there is for a web based solution. Just like every other way of sourcing business ideas.
> For commercial kegs, these sales are usually announced word of mouth, and I am not well connected enough to be in the loop
I’d have thought if you had to be “in the loop” to know if something’s for sale, it means there’s a possible market for that knowledge, which a website can step in to provide.
I'm not in the business, but occasionally browse to see if any "local" domains pique my interest. You'd be surprised how many people "let" their domains expire - if I was a less than ethical hacker, I'd be able to hold many local organizations and businesses hostage (without infringing on trademarks).
If you want to snag it before it gets returned to the registrars then it's a good option.
Just because someone lets something expire doesn't mean they can't afford the registration during a crisis. They have a redemption period anyway before you can snag it with Pool or SnapNames. An annual domain name registration is not expensive.
I've looked at that pool.com site a few times, out of idle curiosity. Every time I do so, I never fail to be amazed at the absolute mountain of complete junk domains that <someone> <somewhere> has registered.
They seem to fall into two categories; the "my cat walked over the keyboard" + <dot>com ones, like 342yfgtg.com and the "maybe if I add another word, I'll find a combo that's not been already registered" + <crappy new TLD> ones, like "topgoodholidaybargainsales.info"
It's all very well the author of the article coming up with a "buy great domain name > profit" get rich quick scheme. But it's a bit like those "how to make money online" articles which advise you to "start a blog about something lots of people will want to read". If having a good idea was all that was involved in getting rich quick, most of us would be millionaires.
Personally, I think the most of the new TLDs are complete junk. I did snap up a 4-letter<dot>bid one, when they first came out, purely because there was some stupid offer on where you got something like ten years for a few quid. But I only use it for testing random web stuff on. I don't think I'll ever do anything serious with it.
I am lucky enough however to have a 5-letter-real-word<dot>net one that I registered back in the 1990s which I use for my business site and my IRL name is unusual enough that I was also able to snap up myfirstname<dot>net and mysurname<dot>net a few years back as well. I tend to prefer <dot>net for my domains as I think it rolls off the tongue nicer than <dot>com.
Speculation-wise, I've registered a handful of domains over the years, in the vague hope I'd some day be able to sell them on when their 'subject matter' became popular, but nothing ever came of any of them and I ended up just letting them lapse as I'm too poor to keep renewing domains I don't use, on the off-chance.
I can barely remember what any of them were now. Apart from one which sticks in my mind; "genet-X.com" which I registered back when genetic engineering was just starting to get talked about in the news. I had high hopes that some thrusting new biotech company might spring up with that name and offer me untold riches for the domain. But no-one ever came a-knocking, bearing sacks of cash and I let that domain expire with all the rest and my dreams of riches!
Yeah. There are tons of bad domain names on those drop lists. I wonder what the deal is with that too.
The new TLDs aren't that bad IMO, especially if you want something short and memorable for a quick site. Last year I wanted a non-SSL site to help out with captive portal redirection and I was able to register wifi.help rather than some crazy long name on an ogTLD.
Not all the new TLDs are terrible. A few of the short ones like <dot>me [for a personal site], or <dot>info for a reference site are OK. But I think a lot of the other ones do sound really dodgy. If I saw a link to a company website with a domain name like <dot>bargains, <dot>blackfirday, <dot>creditcard, <dot>discount... [to pick just 4 at random near the top of a very long alphabetical list] I'd avoid them like the plague.
They just set off alarm bells in my head that, at best, I'd be venturing on to some godawful spammy site, loaded down with a dozen hacky-tracky javascripts and, at worst, I'd be opening up my computer to god knows what insecure data processing.
Funny how the <dot>xyz domain [which, to be fair, wasn't one of the worst of the new ones] attained a measure of respectability when adopted by Google, in their Alphabet guise.
Don't sweat it. A runaway hit like the onions piece is like catching lightning in a bottle. It's not really something you can plan and, so far, I haven't found a formula where you can reliably recreate it to any degree.
(I've had two posts do about a tenth as well on HN as your onions piece, both on different blogs of mine and that didn't result in follow-up posts on those blogs being similarly successful. So my opinion is somewhat informed by firsthand experience, fwiw.)
Feel free to post some of your stuff to r/GigWorks. I'm the mod there and I also run r/ClothingStartups and I am always actively on the lookout for "tipping point" style ideas where a small thing makes a big difference and can be done as a microbusiness, which is smaller than a small business. Small business is typically defined as like 10 to 100 employees and I am looking at tiny teams of more like 1 to 5 people as my target audience.
I was also born and raised in Georgia, so I just loved your onions piece because I'm from the Deep South. For health reasons, I will never again live in the Deep South, so I like nostalgically visitating via internet from time to time.
I may, at some point, post some of your stuff myself on r/GigWorks, but I'm a one woman show here with too many irons in the fire, so lots of stuff either takes me forever to actually get around to or just never happens even though I would like to get to it. Sometimes, life just keeps getting in my way.
for your nostalgia, here's a video that the GA Dept of Ag just produced on our farm.. Aries (farm owner) is in vid (I'm not in this one).. notice the domain at the end : )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0oNolfKfgc
Thanks. It took me a bit to get to it, but I've watched it.
I am something of a fan of onions. They are good lung support, but can be somewhat hard on the gut. Vidalia's have always been my favorite onion because they are so mild, so they are easier on my touchy gut.
It's one of the reasons your article caught my eye.
Best of luck with your endeavors, both online (finding your writing voice) and off (selling onions, or whatever it is you do out in meat space).
"That’s what I’m trying to introduce – that domains can be viewed as a trustworthy asset."
Totally agree with this, back in print days great typography featuring ample white-space was a signal to the consumer of a high end / luxury brand. Perhaps the unstated logic is we make so much money that we can spend much of it on empty space ina fancy magazine. That is a kind of gravitas in design which implies success which implies authority / social confirmation. A more desirable domain name can be seen in the same light, "ohh they must have spent a lot for that name well can't be some fly-by night operation." Cost limits creating exclusions serve as signals of authority / reliability / success etc. all over the place, think of the country club, it's got a very high membership fee, if you're there you must be wealthy and important, and imagine the networking. That is the logic anyway.
This is awesome advice. Taking incremental steps towards what you want to do makes a big difference. If you already have a domain, hosting, and DNS set up, you’ve got something cool and tangible to work with.
I actually trust less descriptive domain names. When I see biketours.com, I more often expect blog spam and ads. When I see GoSojourn.com, I expect an actual business providing bike tours. It’s also peculiar to me when I see local contractors with domains like MyCityElectrician.com putting “Denver Electrician” in big text and hiding their brand name. I recommend a branded domain name and relying on good page titles and descriptions for ads and SEO.
My mind works exactly the opposite way. If I see a domain like BikeTours.com, I immediately assume that the business is built primarily on the domain name, and the quality of the product or service is inferior. Hence I don’t click it. But I assume the majority of internet users don’t think this way, so it can be a profitable strategy.
Edit: Well, thinking about it, it’s not always true, but at the very least I check out the other options too.
Same, though I think the BikeTours/GoSojourn thing may just be an imperfect example of a point that is correct.
A better example (for me at least) would be backroads.com vs. something like biketourstoday.info. The former is distinct, trustworthy, memorable, greppable, and just good. I thought a lot about these things in starting my business. While capiche.com doesn't say anything about SaaS, I think it resonates with people more than, say, saasreviews.io or whatever would've.
Right, and "GoSojourn" sounds a) like it couldn't have been auto-registered by a bot going off of keywords, and b) like it carries more whimsy than a spammy developer would likely put forth.
Kind of, but then I do want to buy a garden shed from Sheds.co.uk because i think the selection and focus beats big stores. but i could be wrong - at least i will call them tomorrow and see if i pick up any other signals.
I would say a pretty large part of the internet user doesn't look at the domain when looking for something new in Google (they mainly see your headline, text snippets, logo and only then, maybe your domain).
Sure if your domain name looks erratic or otherwise won't they still notice but as long as your domain name is sane I don't think it did matter anymore at least not to a large degree.
Or at least that is what I think.
One exception are people which where "thought" about domains also got stuck in the way they see the internet. So if you target people between 35-50 it might still matter a bit more I guess).
Agreed, especially what I often see from search engines related to health and fitness. Many blogs with short, descriptive domain names, that are completely over-optimizing in SEO, changing publish dates of articles and offering bad UX in general (invasive ads, popups, trackers, ...)
And I would without hesitation open both but that is not where the money is. If the point is to exploit the asset you want those customers who don't bother to compare your minimalist expensive trip with cheap well thought out stuff available elsewhere.
OT: For techies winning depends more on technology. It would be more interesting to appeal to the serious and properly organize the trips by distance, days, incline, temperature, weather and price in a sortable way. The more advanced the cyclist the more there has to be actual cycling (think repairs, renting high end bikes, massages, spa etc), they care about statistics and leaderboards, there is a whole eco system worth of technology to explore and tap into. (Could upload your entire offering to https://www.bkool.com/en/cycling-simulator ) much fun to make. At that point, if you call it cocainepizza44.ninja people will find it.
I agree with you that I'd prefer GoSojourn myself, and that BikeTours sounds spammy. Having now looked at both sites, they both look legit, and at first glance, roughly equivalent in presentation. At this point, I'd base my decision solely on prices, dates available, type of tour, customer service, etc. -- giving no weight to the domain name.
I can accept that buyers would pay more for BikeTours.com than for GoSojourn.com (and that the author would earn more money for brokering such a name), but is there any empirical evidence that customers prefer the simple descriptive name? And by how much? That's a critical question. If the BikeTours name costs $40,000 and GoSojourn costs $200, could the $39,800 difference be put to better use by GoSojourn such that it beats out BikeTours?
His argument is that if you do something decent with biketours and advertise it properly you can easily get your 40 k back or more. GoSojourn wont have ROI.
Do you think having an unusual TLD (travel) is hurting you at all? If someone told an average person to go to "Cycle.travel", I'm not sure that they would understand that to be a web address.
From my experience, such an effect is generally far to small to be a deciding factor (in the beginning).
If you look at the traffic of most websites, very few visitors come directly to your website by entering the domain into the address bar (because visitors are far too lazy to type out an address). The biggest chunk normally comes from other websites directly linking to you (this includes search engines and social media sites), or paid advertising (if you do that).
As a kid I knew every one of my friends phone numbers. I couldn't tell you my nearest and dearest now because typing this kind of info manually is long gone.
I'm 50 and I can still tell you the phone numbers of all of my friends from growing up. The only number other than mine that I know now is my wife's because it's the number for the grocery store discount card. That stuff sticks because we pounded it in there.
I've had to enter in my wife's phone number for various things enough times I know it better than my own phone number now (Meijer mPerks alone I've done it probably 300 times). But outside of that, my own, and my parent's phone number, which has never changed, I don't know any phone numbers.
Only one thing that has room for improvement: if you download the .GPX, it always has the same name. It would be nice if it would indicate the date or destination.
Date is a great idea - thanks! If you've saved the route it'll use that as a name, and I haven't wanted to complicate the UI by adding a separate name field (understanding the various GPX file formats is complication enough). But I hadn't thought of adding the date. Will do that.
Same, more generally, I trust domain name more when they are the name of a company or a product. Not generic words. If biketours.com is not the website of a company called biketours, I will look elsewhere.
Same thing for gosojourn.com
Also the more generic the name, the more I expect to see a large reputable company. For a company named BikeTours, I expect too see many reviews in internet forums, a professional looking, custom built website, maybe even a few financial news articles. For gosojourn, I expect either an official website (ex: tourism office) or a small shop.
I red flag everything that doesn't match my expectations.
This is why I generally avoid getting food at restaurants that have a great view.
Places like that are a great place to get a couple of drinks with friends and soak up the ambience, but 9 times out of 10 the food is overpriced and middle-of-the-road in quality.
There is something about this guy's writing that really irritates me. He writes like he is condescending to millenials by emulating their stereotypical speech patterns. It's hyper-conversational.
So many domain names I bought and never used. Haha the idea seems so great at the time. I suppose you just have to go about trying different things until you start to have some traction. it's just important to recognize that it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking something is going to be super simple, and then starting to execute without any sort of detailed plan. The result ... Wasted time and money
I still enjoy reading HN because every once in a while something good comes up. But you're right, most of the time this site is overrun by a lot of SEO types and folks who want a quick buck.
In my opinion, most people see a posting and go directly to the comments to see _what I should feel about this_
Option 1: I don't really care enough about this to read through the story and develop an opinion. I'm certainly never going to domain squat since I'm quite happy in my career anyway.
Option 2: Alright, well I can at least go get a brief overview of the prevailing sentiment through the comments.
There's nothing wrong with letting experts dictate your opinions on subjects you don't have even a minor interest in. Of course, that comes with the caveat that one must judiciously choose which subjects to do this with (thus our current political climate).
It's a bit of a stupid concept though, isn't it? A man bought a domain name called "shippingsupplies.com" so he decided to get into shipping supplies and now he's a zillionaire?
So, assuming, as the article suggests that people buy a catchy domain name first and then build a business round it, which isn't one they're already involved in or know anything about, how does that conversation go?:
----
MAN: Hi. I've decided to get into the shipping supplies business. I need to borrow £250,000 to buy some trucks, containers, a crane and lease a premises down by the harbour
BANK MANAGER: I see. Hmmm. A quarter of a million is quite a lot of money. Have you any experience in shipping supplies?
MAN: Well.. not exactly..
BANK MANAGER: And have you any of your own money or any startup equipment, that you can bring to the business?
MAN: Well... not exactly...
BANK MANAGER: I'm sorry. But, under the circumstances, I really don't think the bank can take the risk...
MAN: But I've registered the domain name "shippingsupplies.com"!
BANK MANAGER: Why didn't you say so? [rolls wheelbarrow full of cash out from behind his desk] Used notes OK?
MAN: Thanks very much [exits stage left]
[Bank Manager's secretary pops her head round the door]
SECRETARY: Your two-thirty, Mr. Jones is here.
MR JONES: [walking in and shaking hands] I've just snapped up the domain name "executive-airline.travel" and I wanted to ask you about a loan...
Like any other bootstrapped business you’d start off small so that you don’t need to ask anyone for a loan. In this case, that might mean partnering with a distributor of shipping supplies and doing drop shipping direct to the customer or something similar.
In college, I worked for four different restaurants. It always blew my mind how perfectly reasonable people would take their entire life savings and invest it into a restaurant at the age of 60, 65, even 70.
They really and truly thought they'd just show up with a checkbook, and then the restaurant would churn out solid returns, year after year.
On top of that, they often placed their children on the staff. Children who had no interest in working in a restaurant, the children of wealthy parents who knew that their parents couldn't compel them to show up to work.
Why is Bobbleheads a lottery win? Buy a domain for something people like to buy. Find a supplier to manufacture them. Build a reputation with good product and service. Has to be as far from a lottery winner as exists.
I own a bunch of domains but don't really follow the expired market...however the example expired domains in the post seem really expensive for a side project.
If I were looking to invest $5-$15k cash into marketing a random new side business and still needed an idea, it seems like it'd make more sense to follow the post's advice by watching the expired domains come through, then take the inspiration from, say, 'bakedbeans.com', but buy 'stevesbeans.com' for $7.95 and put the remaining cash into performance marketing.
> domains in the post seem really expensive for a side project.
It's probably worth considering that the domain is an asset you can resell. Plus, an auction should, in theory, limit your potential losses to amount you outbid the previous winner by, since they theoretically would buy it. The math is probably a little more complicated but you get the idea.
> It's probably worth considering that the domain is an asset you can resell
Yes this is true. Also, I've met one of the top domainers of all time who got in early and one of the things he told me was that valuations have gone up considerably, in good part, due to the interest by foreign entities who want the .com for its prestige and to be able to tap into the US market, and/or be the sole branded domain for their worldwide presence.
Domain name is one of the "trends" where being early literally pays (the other ones are crypto and making fart apps for iOS).
(Un)fortunately, what's left are ridiculouslylongnames.com that somehow still sells for a few hundred a pop. The long tail.
I'm not a fan of that. Instead, when .id was open for public, I immediately acquired generic names such as every.id, awesome.id, printed.id, even ultimate.id (notice a pattern?).
I own a few hundred in total—managing them is a headache. I've lost a handful of really good names because I forgot to renew (last-minute renewals due to limited budget and procrastination). Also, sometimes I wonder about the performance of my assets, and whether I'm profitable.
I'm building an app, Axtiva, to help manage domain names. It's not a unicorn idea, but I'm scratching my own itch. If you're in a similar situation, take a lot at https://s.id/axtiva-android-test or just put your email in https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/axtiva so I can update you when it's launched in iOS (it's a Flutter app).
On the one hand it is harder and harder to find a decent dot com domain name, on the other hand I see some crazy prices that make absolutely no sense. Even if you choose to buy a name on the second market why pay these ridiculous prices?
It comes with the expectation that the average user is dumb enough to think that by going on a "premium domain name" that it, therefor, makes the product better and marketability even more attractive.
It depends on the marketing budget. If you're spending $100+ million / year on advertising, paying a few million dollars for a domain may make sense if you're plastering it all over other print and digital media.
You have to think of it in the context of how much money some companies spend. DigiCert sells a "Secure Site Wildcard" (non-EV) SSL certificate for $2k / year. If companies are willing to pay $2k / year for something that advertises their stupidity...
Healthinsurance.com sounds super fishy to me and I would be hesitant to do business with a company that hides who they are. My expectation is that a company's domain is the name. So unless it is "Health Inusrance, Inc.", this seems shady.
After seeing the prices that these "premium" domain fetch auctions for a side project it reminds me of a quote: If you want to become rich in the music business, sell instruments.
Domain squatters are making a killing by selling generic "premium" domains to startups that odds are will not get off the ground. And then the process starts all over again with the domains cycling back through the expiration -> squatter -> auction process.
224 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] threadIt’s not an either/or.
He's an expert domain reseller. Novices would get burned.
I thought those prices were just absurd fantasy
Yahoo isn't about cowboys, Amazon isn't about rainforests, uber isn't a firm from Germany, Google isn't about mathematics... It really doesn't seem to be correlated with business success.
Any made up name will do. Blorpblip, flipturf, dundrill, yepyip, nodnod, whatever. Those only look weird because it's your first time seeing it. Substance comes before brand
The meaning is assigned by the business praxis, not the other way around.
If they really cared they could come up with something. There's countless clones and proxy sites with closer and shorter names but they don't have large audiences because having a 4 (cuil) versus a 10 letter domain (duckdudckgo) doesn't actually matter - only what you put there.
To me domain parking is akin to real estate investors just buying up land and hoping some large company suddenly wants it and offers you a ton of money.
Does this sound kind of scummy to you? Does espousing the virtues of this manifestation of hyper-capitalist profiteering leave you friendless and wondering about your breath? Despite all of that, not a fan of the communist solution? Consider alternatives!
"EVERYBODY WORKS BUT THE VACANT LOT"
I paid $3600 for this lot and will hold 'till I get $6000. The profit is unearned increment made possible by the presence of this community and enterprise of its people. I take the profit without earning it. For the remedy read "HENRY GEORGE"
https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47de-036a-a3d9...
Some random billboard sign written by some random guy two centuries ago citing some other random economist that you've never heard of really not enough for you?
How about the Pope? An older one, but still the Pope, nonetheless:
Everyone knows that the Fathers of the Church laid down the duty of the rich toward the poor in no uncertain terms. As St. Ambrose put it: "You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich." These words indicate that the right to private property is not absolute and unconditional.
(1967)
http://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documen...
Read about Georgism today:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
Kegs are also sought after for the homebrewers market too; you can save a ton of money buying used, and they become available as people fall out of the hobby.
My plan was to either set up a market place or buy and resell kegs for a small profit. Even a bulletin board that just shows announcements for used keg sales would be helpful.
There are a few reasons I haven't pursued this. First, specifically for homebrewers, is gaining momentum from other marketplaces like Facebook, Craigslist, and local homebrew shops. For commercial kegs, these sales are usually announced word of mouth, and I am not well connected enough to be in the loop, and also, there is really no friction selling these kegs that a website could reduce. They "fly off the shelves". There are other issues too with the frequency these sales happen.
My point being, in a long winded way, is that buying a domain name and getting business ideas from it still requires business acumen, networking (which the author does mention), and a innate sense of the problem space and what desire there is for a web based solution. Just like every other way of sourcing business ideas.
I’d have thought if you had to be “in the loop” to know if something’s for sale, it means there’s a possible market for that knowledge, which a website can step in to provide.
I'm not in the business, but occasionally browse to see if any "local" domains pique my interest. You'd be surprised how many people "let" their domains expire - if I was a less than ethical hacker, I'd be able to hold many local organizations and businesses hostage (without infringing on trademarks).
Just because someone lets something expire doesn't mean they can't afford the registration during a crisis. They have a redemption period anyway before you can snag it with Pool or SnapNames. An annual domain name registration is not expensive.
They seem to fall into two categories; the "my cat walked over the keyboard" + <dot>com ones, like 342yfgtg.com and the "maybe if I add another word, I'll find a combo that's not been already registered" + <crappy new TLD> ones, like "topgoodholidaybargainsales.info"
It's all very well the author of the article coming up with a "buy great domain name > profit" get rich quick scheme. But it's a bit like those "how to make money online" articles which advise you to "start a blog about something lots of people will want to read". If having a good idea was all that was involved in getting rich quick, most of us would be millionaires.
Personally, I think the most of the new TLDs are complete junk. I did snap up a 4-letter<dot>bid one, when they first came out, purely because there was some stupid offer on where you got something like ten years for a few quid. But I only use it for testing random web stuff on. I don't think I'll ever do anything serious with it.
I am lucky enough however to have a 5-letter-real-word<dot>net one that I registered back in the 1990s which I use for my business site and my IRL name is unusual enough that I was also able to snap up myfirstname<dot>net and mysurname<dot>net a few years back as well. I tend to prefer <dot>net for my domains as I think it rolls off the tongue nicer than <dot>com.
Speculation-wise, I've registered a handful of domains over the years, in the vague hope I'd some day be able to sell them on when their 'subject matter' became popular, but nothing ever came of any of them and I ended up just letting them lapse as I'm too poor to keep renewing domains I don't use, on the off-chance.
I can barely remember what any of them were now. Apart from one which sticks in my mind; "genet-X.com" which I registered back when genetic engineering was just starting to get talked about in the news. I had high hopes that some thrusting new biotech company might spring up with that name and offer me untold riches for the domain. But no-one ever came a-knocking, bearing sacks of cash and I let that domain expire with all the rest and my dreams of riches!
The new TLDs aren't that bad IMO, especially if you want something short and memorable for a quick site. Last year I wanted a non-SSL site to help out with captive portal redirection and I was able to register wifi.help rather than some crazy long name on an ogTLD.
They just set off alarm bells in my head that, at best, I'd be venturing on to some godawful spammy site, loaded down with a dozen hacky-tracky javascripts and, at worst, I'd be opening up my computer to god knows what insecure data processing.
Funny how the <dot>xyz domain [which, to be fair, wasn't one of the worst of the new ones] attained a measure of respectability when adopted by Google, in their Alphabet guise.
(I've had two posts do about a tenth as well on HN as your onions piece, both on different blogs of mine and that didn't result in follow-up posts on those blogs being similarly successful. So my opinion is somewhat informed by firsthand experience, fwiw.)
I was also born and raised in Georgia, so I just loved your onions piece because I'm from the Deep South. For health reasons, I will never again live in the Deep South, so I like nostalgically visitating via internet from time to time.
I may, at some point, post some of your stuff myself on r/GigWorks, but I'm a one woman show here with too many irons in the fire, so lots of stuff either takes me forever to actually get around to or just never happens even though I would like to get to it. Sometimes, life just keeps getting in my way.
I am something of a fan of onions. They are good lung support, but can be somewhat hard on the gut. Vidalia's have always been my favorite onion because they are so mild, so they are easier on my touchy gut.
It's one of the reasons your article caught my eye.
Best of luck with your endeavors, both online (finding your writing voice) and off (selling onions, or whatever it is you do out in meat space).
Totally agree with this, back in print days great typography featuring ample white-space was a signal to the consumer of a high end / luxury brand. Perhaps the unstated logic is we make so much money that we can spend much of it on empty space ina fancy magazine. That is a kind of gravitas in design which implies success which implies authority / social confirmation. A more desirable domain name can be seen in the same light, "ohh they must have spent a lot for that name well can't be some fly-by night operation." Cost limits creating exclusions serve as signals of authority / reliability / success etc. all over the place, think of the country club, it's got a very high membership fee, if you're there you must be wealthy and important, and imagine the networking. That is the logic anyway.
I actually trust less descriptive domain names. When I see biketours.com, I more often expect blog spam and ads. When I see GoSojourn.com, I expect an actual business providing bike tours. It’s also peculiar to me when I see local contractors with domains like MyCityElectrician.com putting “Denver Electrician” in big text and hiding their brand name. I recommend a branded domain name and relying on good page titles and descriptions for ads and SEO.
To this point: My name is Josh and I'm from Minnesota (abbreviated MN in the states), and I have josh.mn. People seem to think I'm a big deal.
I'm not.
Edit: Well, thinking about it, it’s not always true, but at the very least I check out the other options too.
A better example (for me at least) would be backroads.com vs. something like biketourstoday.info. The former is distinct, trustworthy, memorable, greppable, and just good. I thought a lot about these things in starting my business. While capiche.com doesn't say anything about SaaS, I think it resonates with people more than, say, saasreviews.io or whatever would've.
btw, this post is highly relevant and is one I reference often: http://messymatters.com/nominology/
I take issue with greppability. Unnecessary as long as you can use regular expressions to search for whitespace bounded terms.
Sure if your domain name looks erratic or otherwise won't they still notice but as long as your domain name is sane I don't think it did matter anymore at least not to a large degree.
Or at least that is what I think.
One exception are people which where "thought" about domains also got stuck in the way they see the internet. So if you target people between 35-50 it might still matter a bit more I guess).
OT: For techies winning depends more on technology. It would be more interesting to appeal to the serious and properly organize the trips by distance, days, incline, temperature, weather and price in a sortable way. The more advanced the cyclist the more there has to be actual cycling (think repairs, renting high end bikes, massages, spa etc), they care about statistics and leaderboards, there is a whole eco system worth of technology to explore and tap into. (Could upload your entire offering to https://www.bkool.com/en/cycling-simulator ) much fun to make. At that point, if you call it cocainepizza44.ninja people will find it.
I can accept that buyers would pay more for BikeTours.com than for GoSojourn.com (and that the author would earn more money for brokering such a name), but is there any empirical evidence that customers prefer the simple descriptive name? And by how much? That's a critical question. If the BikeTours name costs $40,000 and GoSojourn costs $200, could the $39,800 difference be put to better use by GoSojourn such that it beats out BikeTours?
https://cycle.travel
If you look at the traffic of most websites, very few visitors come directly to your website by entering the domain into the address bar (because visitors are far too lazy to type out an address). The biggest chunk normally comes from other websites directly linking to you (this includes search engines and social media sites), or paid advertising (if you do that).
Only one thing that has room for improvement: if you download the .GPX, it always has the same name. It would be nice if it would indicate the date or destination.
Same thing for gosojourn.com
Also the more generic the name, the more I expect to see a large reputable company. For a company named BikeTours, I expect too see many reviews in internet forums, a professional looking, custom built website, maybe even a few financial news articles. For gosojourn, I expect either an official website (ex: tourism office) or a small shop.
I red flag everything that doesn't match my expectations.
Places like that are a great place to get a couple of drinks with friends and soak up the ambience, but 9 times out of 10 the food is overpriced and middle-of-the-road in quality.
HN trending reality: How I make a zillion dollars a day with a yet another SEO/web scraping/reselling domains business
In my opinion, most people see a posting and go directly to the comments to see _what I should feel about this_
Option 2: Alright, well I can at least go get a brief overview of the prevailing sentiment through the comments.
There's nothing wrong with letting experts dictate your opinions on subjects you don't have even a minor interest in. Of course, that comes with the caveat that one must judiciously choose which subjects to do this with (thus our current political climate).
So, assuming, as the article suggests that people buy a catchy domain name first and then build a business round it, which isn't one they're already involved in or know anything about, how does that conversation go?:
----
MAN: Hi. I've decided to get into the shipping supplies business. I need to borrow £250,000 to buy some trucks, containers, a crane and lease a premises down by the harbour
BANK MANAGER: I see. Hmmm. A quarter of a million is quite a lot of money. Have you any experience in shipping supplies?
MAN: Well.. not exactly..
BANK MANAGER: And have you any of your own money or any startup equipment, that you can bring to the business?
MAN: Well... not exactly...
BANK MANAGER: I'm sorry. But, under the circumstances, I really don't think the bank can take the risk...
MAN: But I've registered the domain name "shippingsupplies.com"!
BANK MANAGER: Why didn't you say so? [rolls wheelbarrow full of cash out from behind his desk] Used notes OK?
MAN: Thanks very much [exits stage left]
[Bank Manager's secretary pops her head round the door]
SECRETARY: Your two-thirty, Mr. Jones is here.
MR JONES: [walking in and shaking hands] I've just snapped up the domain name "executive-airline.travel" and I wanted to ask you about a loan...
They really and truly thought they'd just show up with a checkbook, and then the restaurant would churn out solid returns, year after year.
On top of that, they often placed their children on the staff. Children who had no interest in working in a restaurant, the children of wealthy parents who knew that their parents couldn't compel them to show up to work.
Cool, are there any other stories about lottery winners I should read before I buy my scratch-offs?
If I were looking to invest $5-$15k cash into marketing a random new side business and still needed an idea, it seems like it'd make more sense to follow the post's advice by watching the expired domains come through, then take the inspiration from, say, 'bakedbeans.com', but buy 'stevesbeans.com' for $7.95 and put the remaining cash into performance marketing.
It's probably worth considering that the domain is an asset you can resell. Plus, an auction should, in theory, limit your potential losses to amount you outbid the previous winner by, since they theoretically would buy it. The math is probably a little more complicated but you get the idea.
Yes this is true. Also, I've met one of the top domainers of all time who got in early and one of the things he told me was that valuations have gone up considerably, in good part, due to the interest by foreign entities who want the .com for its prestige and to be able to tap into the US market, and/or be the sole branded domain for their worldwide presence.
(Un)fortunately, what's left are ridiculouslylongnames.com that somehow still sells for a few hundred a pop. The long tail.
I'm not a fan of that. Instead, when .id was open for public, I immediately acquired generic names such as every.id, awesome.id, printed.id, even ultimate.id (notice a pattern?).
I own a few hundred in total—managing them is a headache. I've lost a handful of really good names because I forgot to renew (last-minute renewals due to limited budget and procrastination). Also, sometimes I wonder about the performance of my assets, and whether I'm profitable.
I'm building an app, Axtiva, to help manage domain names. It's not a unicorn idea, but I'm scratching my own itch. If you're in a similar situation, take a lot at https://s.id/axtiva-android-test or just put your email in https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/axtiva so I can update you when it's launched in iOS (it's a Flutter app).
https://www.healthinsurance.com sold for over 8M bucks, is the difference between this name and something like https://insurancemavens.com (for sale @ $395) worth 8 million?
It's stupid.
You have to think of it in the context of how much money some companies spend. DigiCert sells a "Secure Site Wildcard" (non-EV) SSL certificate for $2k / year. If companies are willing to pay $2k / year for something that advertises their stupidity...
Domain squatters are making a killing by selling generic "premium" domains to startups that odds are will not get off the ground. And then the process starts all over again with the domains cycling back through the expiration -> squatter -> auction process.