[HN Gopher] How and why we acquired our .com domain
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How and why we acquired our .com domain
Author : advaitruia
Score : 85 points
Date : 2023-05-10 16:03 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.advaitruia.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.advaitruia.com)
| yde23 wrote:
| Wouldn't it have been easier if you had the trademark rights to
| get the domain name without forking over the $8k through legal
| means. I guess you'd still be looking at around $4k for the legal
| fees but wouldn't that be a better option?
| ryan29 wrote:
| There's a good chance it would be considered a "bad faith"
| complaint. It's called reverse domain name hijacking [1] and is
| specifically addressed in the UDRP.
|
| If you lose the dispute, you'll never buy the domain for a
| reasonable price after that, so it's a really risky move.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_hijacking
| canadiantim wrote:
| Honestly the key is to be patient. Put it a low-ball offer on a
| .com you want then wait. They'll reject initially, then they'll
| contact you again every couple months to see if you're still
| interested. Keep the low-ball offers going, maybe increasing by
| very small increments. Eventually you will catch them in a moment
| where the seller is desperate and then you strike a deal. I got a
| 6 letters .com domain for $3k down from $40k this way.
| sireat wrote:
| I tried looking for myfirstname.com and it is completely
| inactive and private registration for the last 20 years.
|
| I am not even sure how would I go about placing a bid.
|
| It is an uncommon name not in English dictionary. Possibly my
| namesake bought it 20 years ago and has done absolutely nothing
| (not even placed parking on it).
|
| How could I even contact them?
| garganzol wrote:
| Use a broker for $100.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I got one of my personal domains back for $100 after years of
| various different squatters asking between $2k and $10k for it.
| "Literally no one else will ever buy this particular domain
| from you, take the win" finally worked.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Curious, how'd you lose it? Expired cc?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| IIRC (it was long ago): Expired card, broke college
| student, procrastination, and at a time where domain
| squatting was somewhat new.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Yea expired card is what scares me the most, I think
| these days theoretically that shouldn't be a problem
| because cc companies will proactively send out the new
| info to companies charging recurring payments (which can
| be good and bad).
| ceejayoz wrote:
| All my current registrars support backup cards, and
| they've gotten a lot better about warning in advance.
|
| If they really matter, extend registration for 10 years
| and keep adding one annually.
| sedatk wrote:
| The price was $100 + "years", not $100.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| You must mean that it got even cheaper, as today's $100 is
| worth a lot less than a couple of years ago.
| sedatk wrote:
| Depends on how much those years without that domain cost
| you.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You say "years", I say "a minute or two annually".
|
| If I'd urgently needed it back, I'd have had to spend more,
| yes.
| obloid wrote:
| I'd like [my last name].com but a domain squatter has it and
| wanted over $10,000. I put in a low ball offer and they
| wouldn't budge. I told them they were crazy. I have an
| uncommon name that very few people would want so I may try
| your tactic.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| You could try having a relative offer $40 and steadfastly
| refuse to negotiate any higher than $50. Might make your
| offer sound a lot better. Or it might backfire because now
| they think two people want it.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > Keep the low-ball offers going, maybe increasing by very
| small increments.
|
| Or maybe _decreasing_ by very small amounts to show them the
| direction the negotiations are going to go if they keep it up.
| anteloper wrote:
| graphs were especially informative, thanks for sharing!
| advaitruia wrote:
| Thank you!
| bombcar wrote:
| More people and companies (especially) should be willing to at
| least try to get the domain they want; I was surprised when I was
| able to get a work-related TLA on an original TLD for not much
| money at all, especially considering how much you spend to send
| even a single press release.
| aiisahik wrote:
| who was your domain broker? My company really needs to find one.
| advaitruia wrote:
| We used Ritch at acquirable
| arxpoetica wrote:
| Lucked out and got the domain I want: https://www.cinemodal.com/
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| Domain for a project I used to run was snapped up by a domain
| squatter, I've contacted a few times but they want 4 figures and
| I'm not prepared to pay that. Guess I'll just keep watching every
| few months to see if it's expired?
| rationalist wrote:
| Check the ICANN WHOIS, find the expiration date, set a calendar
| event for it. If they renew it, change the calendar event for
| the following year, rinse and repeat.
| [deleted]
| ByAnyOtherName wrote:
| lol I saw the domain of the article and was definitely curious
| why OP wanted advaitruia.com so bad
| advaitruia wrote:
| Haha, that was a straightforward purchase. I dont think i've
| ever been able to find another advaitruia (advait on its own is
| an uncommon name)
| garganzol wrote:
| Actually that's not a bad website name because it's unique. A
| bit strange for sure, but this is how it rolls.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Based on the URL, and being completely unfamiliar with the
| author, I assumed this was about advaitruia.com, so I was
| surprised that anyone would be squatting on such an unusual name
| in the first place.
|
| You might want to put the actual supertokens.com domain name in
| the title to avoid this confusion. HN is certainly not the only
| site that highlights the domain name of submitted URLs.
| [deleted]
| advaitruia wrote:
| Right - that makes sense. Unfortunately cant edit the title now
| mtmail wrote:
| That is a great and very transparent write-up, I'd say the best
| I've read in years. Usually companies don't disclose the final
| price.
|
| My dream .com domain name is squatted by somebody in Korea owning
| 10.000s of domains. One year they forgot to pay their
| registration, 'whois' printed 'overdue' (can't remember the exact
| words). I tried to register, backorder, everything. Nothing
| worked sadly.
| folli wrote:
| I was in a similar boat a couple of years ago with
| sunlocator.com
|
| I created an app with that name, unfortunately the domain was
| already in possession of a turkish PV company that went out of
| business. I noticed that the domain will lapse in a couple of
| months, so I used Snapnames (if I remember correctly) to set up
| a domain drop catching service.
|
| Meanwhile, I got an email from someone representing the Turkish
| company who independently asked me if I wanted to buy the
| domain for a couple of thousand USD. I was getting nervous, but
| decided to go radiosilent on that matter.
|
| Well it worked, they must have thought I'm out of business as
| well, or whatever. A couple weeks later the domain dropped and
| got picked up by Snapnames in my name.
| pronoiac wrote:
| I've been looking at the domain lifecycle lately, and it can
| take a couple of months after the expiration date for it to
| actually become available for registration. I'd check with
| whois on the command line.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I've had my domains for decades now, and once or twice I've
| accidentally failed to renew in time. My registrar has a
| grace period during which they won't release the domain for
| others to register it, just to let people who accidentally
| let it lapse have a chance to renew it first.
|
| In my case, I failed to notice the renewal notice and only
| realized that I missed it once the domains stopped resolving.
| The grace period let me avoid losing them.
| pronoiac wrote:
| I was trying to keep it short! I like grace periods and
| redemption periods, but they vary _so widely_ by TLD and
| registrar, that I wanted to avoid that rabbit hole of
| conversation.
|
| I've been working on going from calendar reminders to, at
| least, semi-automating checking a list of expiration dates,
| and then checking regularly. I'm still making mistakes, I'm
| just trying to avoid repeating them and instead make
| _exciting new mistakes._
| advaitruia wrote:
| Thank you! Took me a long time to actually get myself to
| publish it
| advaitruia wrote:
| Why not reach out to a domain broker to acquire it? Or even
| reach out yourself?
| pronoiac wrote:
| I think you hit reply to the wrong comment.
| diegogm934 wrote:
| Thanks for the detailed process and the cool project.
|
| Do you have any plans to support Ping Federate? Since they took
| over Auth0 from Okta, they have raised prices like hell and a
| project like this really makes sense.
| advaitruia wrote:
| Yes we are a OAuth 2.0 client (and have SAML integrations too).
|
| So if PingFederate is the provider, you can add "sign in with
| Ping" on an app that uses SuperTokens
| russellbeattie wrote:
| The resale value of domains has fallen through the floor,
| especially .io. I assume because of the huge number of TLDs now
| available and the familiarity of them by the general populace. I
| tried selling, then auctioning my domain rb.io for months and
| finally accepted an offer of $2k. A few years ago a two letter
| domain like that would have gotten 5 to 10 times as much. I know
| because I was an early adopter of .io domains and sold karma,
| clever, flip, xs and maven for $8k to $10k over the years. I was
| shocked at the disinterest I got in my last one.
| advaitruia wrote:
| Thats a really interesting anecdote.. Most squatters sit on
| domains for 10+ years though. Both the 'good' .com domains I've
| bought were held unused by squatters for almost 20 years. Maybe
| thats what you need to do when you have a domain like that?
| joshmanders wrote:
| IMHO getting the domain you want is key, don't get a domain that
| will suffice with the idea you'll get the domain you want later.
| Because it's always hard to do things later.
|
| I've got many domains I paid $5k+ for sitting in my portfolio
| unused because I wasn't going to settle on mediocre domain to
| save a few bucks for a business I expect to make that amount in
| MRR within a year.
| klinquist wrote:
| Great write up. I paid $3500 w/ broker fees (sedo.com) for my
| (lastname.com) about 11 years ago. Seemed super expensive at the
| time, but more and more "professional individuals" (lawyers,
| doctors, etc) that share my last name were appearing on the
| internet despite the rarity of it, so I knew I had to act fast.
|
| No regrets! ...and the rest of my family loves having first@last
| email addresses :).
| asimpletune wrote:
| I feel like the take away from this is 1.) start with a .com
| domain and 2.) choose a company name that is cheap to buy for a
| domain.
| evanmoran wrote:
| Curious for fellow founders with the .com, how many of you
| defensively buy the .net, .org names as well? I find it hard to
| resist getting at least those three if I'm settled on a
| name/brand.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I always do that. I also proactively register possible domains
| before the product/company name is even firmly decided on. If
| I'm certain of the name, I'll also register the common
| misspellings and typos.
| garganzol wrote:
| Those specific additional domains are useful in their own ways.
| .net is good for network infrastructure, .org is good for
| organizational purposes like mapping your office/LAN endpoints
| into it, so that employees could connect to VPNs and internal
| services like SCM and build servers.
|
| Other than that, additional domains also give leverage for
| diversification if you decide to make them publicly visitable
| one day.
| ryan29 wrote:
| I was trying to decide this a few years ago when I found the
| best .com I'll ever own. It's only 8 characters and I was able
| to get matching social media handles everywhere but Twitter.
|
| My main concern was that someone with more money than me could
| come along, start using it, trademark it, and make it unusable
| for me. I've been thinking about trying to trademark it, but
| it's expensive and complicated, especially if I can't get a
| trademark personally and transfer it to a business in the
| future
|
| In the meantime I decided it was worth the money to buy every
| decent TLD as a way of discouraging someone else from trying to
| use the same name. It's not cheap, but it's cheap in the
| context of what people like the OP pay for a decent .com.
|
| I pay about $200 / year in total to renew about a dozen
| matching domains. I can hold onto those for 20 years and it'll
| still cost less than the asking price of a half decent .com.
|
| Think of the .net and .org as a $3 month expense for brand
| protection. I'm from Canada where .com and .ca are used pretty
| equally. I remember about 10 years ago when a local computer
| store only registered one of them and ended up with an unhappy
| customer redirecting the other to a porn site. Would you pay $3
| / month to avoid dealing with that?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I've been thinking about trying to trademark it, but it's
| expensive and complicated, especially if I can't get a
| trademark personally and transfer it to a business in the
| future
|
| Trademarks are a bit of a pain, but you totally can get the
| trademark registered to you personally and transfer it to a
| different entity later.
|
| The main things people miss about trademarks is that they're
| category-specific (If I have trademark "Foo" for a food
| product, that doesn't prevent someone else from getting
| trademark "Foo" for sporting goods), and that you have to
| actively be doing business (in that category) using the
| trademark first. You can't register the trademark until after
| you've been engaging in commerce with it.
| ryan29 wrote:
| > You can't register the trademark until after you've been
| engaging in commerce with it.
|
| Is that US? I'm in Canada. I think we can register before
| commercial use [1]:
|
| > Another of your responsibilities as the owner of a
| trademark is to use the trademark in Canada. If you do not
| use it, the registration could be expunged from the
| Register of Trademarks by the Registrar. The Registrar
| could start summary expungement proceedings, after three
| years beginning on the day on which a trademark is
| registered
|
| To me, that sounds like you have to use it within 3 years
| of registering and I didn't see anything requiring
| commercial use prior to registration in the linked info.
|
| We also have a ~3 year backlog for applications and I don't
| know if the trademark ends up registered with the filing
| date or the issuance date. It's the kind of thing that's
| complicated enough that I wouldn't want to risk screwing it
| up, so I'm waiting until I can pay someone that knows what
| they're doing.
|
| TLDR; It's complicated and expensive, especially compared
| to the simplicity of pulling out a credit card and
| registering a dozen TLDs. Lol.
|
| 1. https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canadian-intellectual-
| prope...
| JohnFen wrote:
| Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I was talking about the US.
| slig wrote:
| >My main concern was that someone with more money than me
| could come along, start using it, trademark it, and make it
| unusable for me.
|
| This happened recently with substack.net.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If I'm even _thinking about an idea_ , I'll register all three.
| The cost is indistinguishable from zero.
|
| I wouldn't defensively buy from a broker or squatter, but for
| unregistered domains, I think it's a no-brainer to do it.
| sirstan wrote:
| Is there a bit of story missing between:
|
| > After a few hours, the broker sent me this from the seller.. >
| "Our price is final on this one"
|
| and
|
| > ... we got a great deal on his broker fees and paid $4,000 all
| said and done
|
| It read as though the seller was firm on $8k, but then sold for
| $4k?
| advaitruia wrote:
| Yup, that was not clear. It was a typo and I've corrected it to
| $8K (this was for the domain). Thank you for pointing this out
|
| The broker was $1-1.5K
| jaclaz wrote:
| I still do not get it.
|
| >That's exactly what we did. We had a brief discussion on
| broker fees, our domain broker had already proved himself and
| we liked him. The feeling was mutual, we got a great deal on
| his broker fees and paid $8,000 all said and done.
|
| If you paid 8,000 for the domain and 1,000 or 1,500 for the
| broker, you paid 9,000 or 9,500, all said and done.
| advaitruia wrote:
| Correct. I've edited it to say that clearly (finally).
| Sorry about all the confusion here
| pimlottc wrote:
| Ah, I have to say, I still didn't quite understand the
| price from how the article is written, particularly since
| I wasn't sure if the squatter sold for their listed price
| of $8,000 or if they had accepted the $3,500 and _that_
| was their "final" price.
|
| I only now understand that it was $8000 + $1000 broker
| fee based on your replies here.
| mhink wrote:
| They paid $8k for the domain and $4k to the broker. (At least,
| that's how I'm reading it- I agree it could be worded more
| clearly.)
| lostlogin wrote:
| Did the broken do more than offer a couple of opinions? That
| $4k seems steep.
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| Sounds like the broker got paid for his advice on not
| poking the bear. That could easily have saved $4k.
| lostlogin wrote:
| But the asking price was $8k - you'd have to go in very
| hot to get yourself a 50% price rise (which would justify
| the broker's fee in this instance).
|
| However I am aware of how squatters behave, so this could
| actually happen.
| querez wrote:
| Slightly off-topic, but: Gandi was my registrar of choice, but I
| read some months ago that they've sold out. Who do people go to
| these days for registering domain names?
| aeoliun wrote:
| Google Domains: https://domains.google/ The last time I used
| it, it was around 12$/year at the minimum.
| gondaloof wrote:
| Trusting Google with your domains is honestly _nuts._
| mminer237 wrote:
| I like Porkbun. They have competitive pricing, a very easy-to-
| use website, and no dark patterns that I've found.
| garganzol wrote:
| What's the problem of being sold out for Gandi? Does it really
| change anything?
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I went with Porkbun a few years ago, they seemed to be popular
| and recommended at that time. Zero issues, simple dashboard,
| low prices.
| gondaloof wrote:
| CloudFlare and Internet.bs are no-nonsense registrars I like at
| the lowest prices on the web.
| jbc1 wrote:
| Even more off topic: A lot of very large companies (eg. Google,
| Reddit, Microsoft) use Mark Monitor as their registrar rather
| than either being their own registrar or using one of the
| providers everyone else does. Anyone know what they're getting
| that makes that particular company so appealing?
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _There was no doubt that .com has a better brand than .io._
|
| Ten years ago, there was still some merit to this. Given changes
| to browsers and search engines, I believe this has a "vanity
| license plate" level of importance today.
|
| > _There is no definite way of isolating the importance of the
| .com but it is likely to have played a part._
|
| "We have no way of knowing if traffic would be as high or higher
| if we stuck with .io, but it definitely would not have been."
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I think this section is fairly compelling:
|
| "One of the first things we noticed was that the traffic
| patterns between supertokens.io (our actual domain) and
| supertokens.com were nearly identical. Whenever our .io traffic
| had a big spike, so did the .com, even though there was nothing
| on it yet. More importantly, these spikes meant that a
| significant portion of potential users went to supertokens.com
| directly."
|
| If they're driving traffic spikes to a domain squatter -
| probably reasonable to assume owning both those domains is
| helping.
|
| Plus - 8k is a pittance, all things considered.
| CharlesW wrote:
| That's interesting, and I wish the author would've dug into
| that more. The claim is that people were typing .com when
| searching for them, but a search would've resulted in a
| search page, not direct traffic.
|
| As far as direct traffic, they migrated to .com on 1/15/23,
| at which point supertokens.com already had 1,473 referring
| domains and 16.6K backlinks. I think it's more likely that
| the traffic they saw was the result of that instead of people
| typing the exact domain name (which is relatively rare).
|
| I'd also submit that this is the story as told by their
| agency, who probably also told them to write this content
| marketing piece based on that explanation.
| kruuuder wrote:
| I have recently purchased the .com domain for my product. For the
| past 10 years I have only owned used the .net domain (although
| for not much more than a landing page as it's an App Store app).
|
| Is there a best practice what to do in this situation today? I'm
| currently forwarding from .com to the .net domain. Should I
| forward from .net to the new .com domain instead? Or keep it as
| it is?
| advaitruia wrote:
| How much does SEO play a role in your customer acquisition? Do
| you have a lot of existing backlinks to the .net domain? Do you
| plan to continue building this product for a long time?
|
| Depending on the answers to these questions, I would evaluate
| the tradeoffs of migrating. If SEO is not critical or if you
| already have a certain domain authority / backlinks or dont
| plan to continue for a long period of time - then it may not
| make sense to migrate.
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(page generated 2023-05-10 23:00 UTC)