by mtmail on 5/10/23, 4:16 PM
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.
by pimlottc on 5/10/23, 6:23 PM
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.
by canadiantim on 5/10/23, 5:06 PM
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.
by rolenthedeep on 5/11/23, 12:00 AM
I am the proud owner of my own firstnamelastname.com
When I first ventured into web hosting, the domain was dead, but still registered. I did a whois and got Firstname Lastname. Not sure what I expected, really.
After some years I randomly checked with my favorite registrar, and it was suddenly available for $15/yr. Immediately grabbed that, no regrets.
A couple of years ago, I got a series of emails from some broker offering me an increasing amount of money for the domain. I think they gave up at $5k, and I never responded. $5k would have been incredible at the time, but by then I was fully committed to my FirstName@firstnamelastname.com email address.
I guess I never really put a website at that domain, it's just an email address. I keep telling myself I'll do it eventually, but it's been almost 10 years at this point...
by klinquist on 5/10/23, 5:52 PM
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 :).
by evanmoran on 5/10/23, 6:29 PM
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.
by 6gvONxR4sf7o on 5/11/23, 1:00 AM
I'm so surprised that squatting on tens of thousands of domains is still allowed, after decades of squatters being a problem. Have any proposals for dealing with this gotten any traction?
by sirstan on 5/10/23, 5:00 PM
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?
by dhosek on 5/10/23, 11:42 PM
When I came up with the idea for finl, I was not entirely surprised that finl.com was squatted, and given that finl is unlikely to ever make money (since my business plan is to not be a business), the asking price of $53,000 is entirely out of line. I maybe will switch to a different tld than .xyz at some point in the future, but for now, barring a lottery win (which would require buying a lottery ticket, I suppose), I’ll never have the .com and that’s fine.
by asimpletune on 5/10/23, 5:33 PM
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.
by russellbeattie on 5/10/23, 6:24 PM
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.
by kwanbix on 5/11/23, 7:56 AM
"100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have the .com of their name. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of the rest, one way or another"
Isn't it expected that when you make it to the top (being for example a top 20 YC company by valuation) you go out and buy the .com? What would be interesting to know is, how many of the top 20 or top 50 started with .com.
by ByAnyOtherName on 5/10/23, 5:47 PM
lol I saw the domain of the article and was definitely curious why OP wanted advaitruia.com so bad
by CharlesW on 5/10/23, 5:56 PM
>
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."
by querez on 5/10/23, 6:14 PM
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?
by ReDeiPirati on 5/11/23, 10:00 AM
> There is no definite way of isolating the importance of the .com but it is likely to have played a part. Our domain authority also increased meaningfully.
How is it possible to conclude that "it is likely" given there aren't any evidence to support that?
After reading the article my takeaways are that a) the agency you hired might have helped you with SEO much more than changing the domain and b) the success you had after the migration don't correlate with the domain change, but more with your distribution.
To be honest, I'm not really convinced that purchasing the .com has played a role in your success after reading this.
by kruuuder on 5/10/23, 7:22 PM
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?
by elantis on 5/11/23, 8:48 PM
I think you did well and received a good price!
For the last several years, bitcoin and crypto related domain names have been really hot and selling at high prices. supertokens.com would make a great crypto business name, this would have been in the seller's mind when he set the price. I'm surprised that your domain broker didn't mention it.
by AtNightWeCode on 5/11/23, 6:15 AM
Email addresses, that is the only reason why we got the .com domain. I think the other arguments in the article are pale.
by bombcar on 5/10/23, 4:31 PM
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.
by yde23 on 5/10/23, 7:44 PM
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?
by jonathantf2 on 5/10/23, 7:29 PM
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?
by diegogm934 on 5/10/23, 6:24 PM
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.
by aiisahik on 5/10/23, 6:03 PM
who was your domain broker? My company really needs to find one.
by joshmanders on 5/10/23, 5:14 PM
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.
by anteloper on 5/10/23, 4:12 PM
graphs were especially informative, thanks for sharing!
by nikolay on 5/11/23, 3:49 PM
They should learn what "domain squatter" really means. Owning domains is not squatting. It's like owning land you don't use - it's your right if you pay property taxes, in this case, renewal fees.
by arxpoetica on 5/10/23, 5:26 PM