Ask HN: How much should a startup pay for a .com?
How much should a startup be willing to pay for a .com address? I'm currently bootstrapping a project that's entering private beta. The domain I'd like to get is currently owned by a "domainer" who is asking for way more than I'd like to pay.
I'm thinking <$1000 is reasonable for a pretty good domain that has no natural traffic flow. (think snapchat.com in 2010.) Am I way out of line? Should I be willing to pay more? If it matters, the domain I'm seeking has no existing trademarks.
50 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadNon-technical startup in this case, consumer facing.
If they want $5000, you can say, "I'll give you $100 in year 1, $1000 in year 2, and purchase it for $10,000 in year 3"
If the business is successful, $10,000 hopefully will not matter. If it isn't, you don't have to pay and the owner keeps the domain.
Once you're up and running and generating revenue, then you can worry about paying for the .com.
(The price that the "domainer" is asking isn't going to come down. It comes him practically nothing (<$10/year) to hold onto the domain name -- which he'll definitely do now that he knows someone is interested -- since he is your only option if you really want it.)
That's not really true - they don't ever make money unless someone buys it - so it's not like they're sitting on all their domains waiting for million dollars offers for them.
If you're going for something a bit more brandable, there are plenty of domains in the sub-$2k range which are at least as good as, say, Dropbox, Kabbage, Snapchat, etc etc, and probably many more which are not obviously attractive names but won't hurt your company at all (Twilio, Airbnb, etc).
There's also a virtually infinite number of NAMEapp, getNAME, NAMEnow, etc etc available on any TLD you care to name available for the registration fee. Many startups start that way.
If you've already generated 2k+ in revenue - it's probably a more definitive "yes."
Really depends on the property. If it's a single word - you're looking at multiples of that. If you're looking for a made-up word version, you might be able to get it for closer to 1-5k.
I bring this up because indeed .org tld is used generally for non-profits, or the non-profit/philanthropic arms of for-profit companies (google.org, etc.), so branding .org tld for your little startup would seem like a misguided decision, and may possibly impair the professional look one is going for. I know you've just said that this is an attractive option where brandability isn't important, but I'm hoping you can discuss this just a little bit more. Is using .org for one's startup a total no-no or is there some conceivable scenario in which it would actually work out?
So if you are not buying the .com, you are choosing not to build the AppointmentReminder brand. Why? Surely, more markets exist for you to sell to. The recognizability of a brand bridges market segments. Since every market segment communicates in its own language (because of varying contexts), they need standard identifiers of solutions to problems, which a brand provides. With a solid brand, you control a channel of communication between markets. Thus, you naturally expose the company to new markets.
There is nothing stopping you from growing AppointmentReminder 10x, at least. The markets exist for you to capture. So why don't you try to do capture them? The first step is paying $30k for the .com (maybe make the marketing materials first).
My guess is that patio went for SEO boost over brandability when picking the name.
Your "common fact" is "common" on message boards. You have message board blindness, and it's begging you in this instance to spend $30,000 on something that would potentially not improve sales at all. That's a disastrous decision for an early stage startup.
Isn't paying 30k for a "brand" piece the last step? You know, after making 30k with the business (or multiples of that?)
It seems really bad business strategy to vomit 30k on a domain name before you even get started in a business (and I love branding).
Is this just the fine print? Or does it just not matter anymore.
Anyone can register an org second-level domain. Although org was recommended for non-commercial entities, there are no restrictions to registration. There are some instances of org being used by commercial sites such as craigslist.org.
Refer all complaints to Craig Newmark.
It's been decades since anyone cared what those suffixes used to mean. Just look at all the .co domains. And how many of those .cc domains are really in the Cocos Islands?
Put differently, if you're losing people who click shady text ads on a shady website, they probably weren't potential customers to begin with.
Yes, the parked pages are nothing but ads, but users who land there are looking for an escape and a surprisingly high number click on the ads.
You can find out more from Marchex which is a public company (ticker: MCHX) that runs a large domain portfolio (since it is public, they disclose lots of info).
If you absolutely must get your desired .com domain, I would recommend finding a new name for the company that has an available .com. You might even find that you like the new name better.
There is no way to prove whether or not we would have been as successful with a random domain, but I think in the early days it helped make us seem more established to the non-tech savvy user (which was and still is the majority of the users) than we were at the time. I think if your users are more tech savvy it doesn't matter as much, but for "consumer brand" types of things, I think if your name is good, and your name and domain name match, that will be noticed and will make you appear more reputable.