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Becoming Remotive.com

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58 pointsrodolphedutel67 comments

I wonder if the author's previous blog post about spending an enormous amount of money for a previous .com domain tipped the domain name squatter off that the author would be willing to pay big bucks.

OP here. I wondered about this too, it's a possibility...

Recently bought a domain for a client. Negotiation started at 50k and ended at 8k. GoDaddy are absolute Messers. Take nothing they say at face value.

I am in the unusual situation that my family name is still available as a 4 letter .com. It's been that way as far as I can tell for many years and I imagine this is a rare situation in 2022.

I always liked the idea of owning it and passing it down for generations (assuming email will last that long)

The domain is parked by some small company / SEO agency but in theory seems to be available for sale. In the past they had a form similar to the one mentioned in this post, which only accepted offers above 10k$. I've been holding out on checking this domain for a while now since I expect every increase in traffic will affect the price but sometime in the last years they reduced it to a simple 'contact us' form without minimum price.

I hope being honest is my best approach here, since I do not expect to build a business with that name (not good for the english speaking world) any time soon.

It is meant purely for family email addresses and possibly one personal/family blog.

I also see this as a one-off chance where I either buy it now for an acceptable amount or I won't come back to the table for pretty much ever since we will have to make a decision soon and settle on some other domain/gmail instead. Noone moves email addresses for fun, for us the value of acquiring the domain decreases over time.

Can anyone here recommend to me how I should proceed with this?

Would a broker be a good fit here or should I open the communications on my own since I am not a business and don't want to appear as such?

At the same time I have no idea how to broker such a sale myself and wouldn't want to risk appearing an easy target for a scam.

Have you thought about *.Family? That's what's we went with.

The problem with gTLDs is that there is no ceiling on the registration/renewal price for those domains. If a given gTLD takes off because, for example, someone writes a blog post about how great it is to just use it for your family's email addresses (great idea, by the way), the owners of the gTLD could quadruple the renewal price next year. Of course, some people spend tens, hundreds, or even thousands a year on domains anyway, so I suppose this only applies if you're particularly price conscious.

Interesting point. Honestly, hadn't thought about that.

Given I'm all in on my .family address, and demand might drive up the price... I would like to revise my comments to say WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT BUY A .family ADDRESS!!!

;-)

Domain names are just bytes. Call me a romantic or a maniac, but DNs must be free. Period. That's why abandoned all of my domains and stopped paying for air. Moved to OpenNIC. But I don't run an enterprise though )

I thought ICANN can forcibly transfer a domain that is not being used to another entity who can prove a legitimate need for it?

That was supposed to end a lot of domain squatting, especially since web addresses are kind of crucial to modern companies and in the wild west of the internet, anyone can setup e.g. cocacola.org or something and start trying to steal your customers.

> that is not being used

How will that be defined? It's not difficult to put up a small website. And just like that, the page is now used.

Or just have a mx record. It's legit usage of a domain. You don't even need a website.

Your example is quite bad since that would be an example of trademark infringement. That isn't what general domain squatting is about

Am I missing something? Someone bought a parked domain for way too much money and they brag about it online?

They did end up on the HN front-page, so maybe it was money well invested as a marketing ploy, at least this once.

I don't think this is a move you can copy though, the next company who pays way too much for their domain are unlikely to end up here.

It seems being the first to do something stupid gets you a lot of attention. Marketing is weird.

lately I've indulged myself into finding a 3/4 letter domain and there is a surprising amount left unregistered even on .org, not to mention all the new domain TLDs.

this guy asked me "why would you want a 3 letter domain" and i could only answer that with "dunno. bragging rights maybe".

Why is it not legal to discuss the sales price of certain sales of expensive assets like domains or companies?

- Usually domain squatters have a whole portfolio and prefer people not knowing the real prices

- It makes for more dramatic blog posts

- They signed an "NDA"

For others reading and thinking of trying something similar:

You could offer to lease the domain instead. Rent-to-buy. And/or a mix of cash and options/rev-share.

Talk to your accountant (get an accountant you doofus) about writing it off, there may be tax benefits. Jerry, all these big companies, they write off everything. They just write it off.

Best to come up with a proper name to begin with and avoid all of this hassle.

The one example I know personally where this actually mattered is a company called face.com (facial recognition) sold to Facebook. To be sold to a big company got to get on their radar first. And all things being equal, out of several face recognition startups, the one with the face.com domain is the more obvious choice :P

Five is still reasonable. I know several that paid seven, after entering into rent-to-buy schemes.

I like this a lot. Spending a lot on a domain seems to say a few things about your business - you're big enough to have money to spend, which reassures people that you're not about to disappear; you value the brand enough to 'invest' which gives people confidence that you're in it for the long haul; and you're being intelligent about SEO and domain trust to know that a .com is preferred by people over a .io (outside of tech).

Spending between $10k and $99k on a domain is just silly, but spending that money on marketing by buying a domain and then telling everyone you bought a domain is quite clever. You could get more value than that the cost of the domain back in PR and press out of a move like this if you were really savvy about it and had connections to the right journalists.

Your first paragraph is vaguely reminiscent of a piece of folklore that I encounter a lot with small town wannabe entrepreneurs. It seems to roughly go like this: "One thing you need to do to make people trust you as a newly started business is to flash money. The more useless the stuff you spend your money on, the richer and therefore more trustworthy it will make you seem."

The reality is that you can expect your business parters, especially the ones that matter the most like equity investors and lenders, to be able to see right through that and expect you to exercise poor stewartship over their money.

The reason it's so widespread is because it's great for cognitive dissonance reduction. Say you leave a well-paid job as a middle manager in a factory to set up as a self-employed management consultant working for other factory managers. Your well-paid management job is a significant element of your identity, and leaving the job will create cognitive dissonance. On one hand you continue to think of yourself as deserving of the same financial status you had yesterday when you were employed and you think of the people who you hope will become your clients as your peers in terms of financial status. This implies you should be driving a brand new BMW. On the other hand you realize that you're taking a huge risk, and are asking the people who you hope will become your clients to take a huge risk on you, and it would be prudent financial risk management to make do with a used Volkswagen.

So there are two voices inside your head, one that says "Get a brand new BMW", another one that says "Get a used Volkswagen". Cognitive dissonance reduction sets in. The latter is the voice you're going to try to silence. You tell yourself: I am not shallow. But those people are shallow, and they will never hire me as a consultant if I drive a used Volkswagen. So, whether I like it or not, it has to be the BMW. Mission accomplished in terms of cognitive dissonance reduction. Whether or not it's the truth is a whole other matter.

Whether or not it's the truth is a whole other matter.

It's not just cognitive bias in play. People do research things. In the specific example here of whether or not non-tech people trust gTLDs other than .com, there are insights available, and most of them point to people being more wary of TLDs they're not used to.

[1] eg https://www.semrush.com/blog/new-research-visitors-don-t-tru...

Yes, it may be genuinely true that a .COM engenders more trust. Just like it may also be genuinely true that a BMW engenders more trust than a VW.

There's a lot of things you can do to try to game your way into trust: Your BMW could be leased. Your .COM might be a totally stupid name that no one wants. You may have a mailing address on Wall Street or in SOMA from a "virtual office" provider. You may have a telephone system that directs callers through 10 levels of operators before putting a call through to you and a hundred role e-mail addresses that all land in your inbox. You can buy an "aged entity" and highlight to people the fact that your company was incorporated 10 years ago, when you really haven't been in business for even just one year. You can put up an "our team" page on your website, and show a dozen faces of people who you're each paying for 5hrs/month on Upwork.

People eventually see through all the crap and will ultimately distrust you for having tried to fool them. The sum total of trust destroyed by trying to game people's perceptions of you will probably outweigh the trust you've successfully managed to game your way into. And in addition to destroying trust, it also destroys money.

Also: It's a zero sum game. If entrepreneurs collectively refused to play it, they would be better off as a group. For example, the trust advantage enjoyed by .COMs would evaporate over time if trustworthy people refuse to pay for that trust-advantage. (They would just use other TLDs that would then become just as trustworthy). The same is true for prestigious locations for business real estate, etc.

Why do you think it’s small town wannabe entrepreneurs? Have you ever seen the cost of the art that hedge funds put in their lobbies, or the skyscrapers built by large companies with their name on the top?

This is kind of a universal element of human nature. Flaunting excess resources is a way to telegraph success and draws people to you.

Actually now that I think of it this isn’t an element of human nature at all it’s common to lots of other life forms too. Ever seen a peacock?

This is a "cool factor" splurge. Spending ~100k cash for a bootstrapped startup on something rather superficial is enough to question their future decision making. To me this shows a bit of immaturity and irresponsibility. What future shinny objects will they splurge on instead of focusing on investments that have more substance?

I wouldn't spend this kind of money on a domain name, but I guess you have to ask what else you'd use the cash for. 6 months of software development? When put like that, it's not clear to me that this is a bad idea. You can write a lot of code without attracting any customers.

> You can write a lot of code without attracting any customers.

Why did you have to bring me into this

Honest question - why do you care? They're bootstrapped. It's their cash, not yours. If you were a shareholder then fine, but by definition you're not.

I would have gone for re-moat.com or remoat.com (reg'd) and put a castle in the logo.

Is there a legitimate reason why a .com TLd would increase the business value over .io?

I don't know if .com specifically matters, but buying a domain under control of a foreign government is definitely a risky choice. I have no direct reason to mistrust the administration of the British Indian Ocean Territory, but if there's ever a problem between whoever controls the military bases in there and your local government, you're in for quite a mess. A lot of vanity TLDs have this problem, some worse than others.

I don't think general consumers care all that much, though the older consumers may have learned that .com means commercial and may distrust foreign/fancy/modern TLDs (or get confused about them, like typing in rootlocus.tech.com instead of rootlocus.tech, for example).

There are known colonialist geopolitical problems with .io domains [1]. The islands are controlled by the British and were depopulated for a US military base. The British control the domain TLD and none of the funds go to the islands (or their former population).

The most recent news is that the country of Mauritius has joined the fight over control of the TLD: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/mauritius-chal...

Staying out of that geopolitical landmine seems a good reason to avoid .io domains.

[1] http://www.thedarksideof.io/

Because outside of the tech industry, not many people know about the .io TLD. If you have a company, I think it's natural that many people's first thought would be to go to <company name>.com (if they don't google it)

If someone saw that <company name>.com doesn't exist, they might think your company doesn't exist or is a scam

You should never buy a domain like that. This just show that it work and make the domain parking business profitable. Stop buying those domain and it will kill that awful business...

Most care more about optimizing their own outcomes than spiting domain squatters.

It’s just not that hard to come up with a unique name that still has an available .com, I do it regularly for clients and have done for 20 odd years. Yes it’s gotten harder, but it’s still absolutely possible. Even short (sub-10 char) pronounceable names are still available if you just spend some time looking.

There’s NO reason to pay 5 figures for a .com unless you can drop that amount of money without even thinking about it, and doing so when you’re a bootstrapped startup is basically irresponsible.

But they already hand a brand, just not the .com. Do you really think if they just changed their name to remotove.com, it would have worked just as well?

Not that hard huh? If you don’t mind me asking what was the last one you came up with?

Zx884hs.com, so hot right now.

ReiTuned.com for an automotive tuner. GildFab.com for a family friends fabrication shop. Many more that I can’t share in public. I do about 1-2 per month for people, always .com’s or .net’s.

Not wanting to point fingers or start conspiracy theories, but what guarantee is there that GoDaddy didn't squat this domain? They had an employee act as "broker", and it seems there was little information about the original owner revealed.

I ask because, years ago, I had a few friends tell me that they searched a domain name on a few registrars, found them available, then upon trying to buy them found that they were already registered. They suspected foul play on the part of the registrar.

I own a few domains, and haven't come across this, but I'd like to know the current state of affairs. Is this a thing? Are there protections in place to prevent this? How do you avoid this? Is domain squatting still the wild-west?

GoDaddy absolutely squats recent searches. So so many other registrars. It’s been like that for many years now and has been proven time and time again.

The only registrar I trust currently is Namecheap. They’re not perfect but they don’t do any major dark patterns.

I'm assuming Google doesn't squat.

a bit more color: it's not that Google "wouldn't" necessarily squat (I don't know), it's just that they reserve "aggressive monetization practices" like this for 100x larger businesses, like search and commerce ads, maps, gsuite, GCP, etc.

This used to be widespread. The registrar can reserve the name for up to 48 hours IIRC without itself having to pay.

Godaddy in particular would justify the behaviour by "ensuring that nobody would snatch the names that it already said you could register". Of course, it was always obvious that this was to prevent you from registering them with someone else.

Ah,this explains a recent email I got where the company claimed a third party was trying to register mycompany.net (different tld) and gave me a short time window to register it myself for an additional fee.

It's called domain name front running. GoDaddy in particular has been accused of this in the past here on HN and have responded to it[0].

Use a trustworthy registrar when you can, avoid GoDaddy or Namecheap.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24506303

What is wrong with Namecheap?

It's a criminal outfit masquerading as a domain registrar. They go out of their way to protect blackhats using their services, refusing to adhere to their ICANN requirements of blocking users or domains registered through Namecheap that carry out major scale phishing and fraud. So much so that, with blackhats, it's the domain registrar of choice. Stolen credit card? No problem. SMS scams? Sounds good!

Do a WHOIS the next time you come across a phishing website or receive an SMS with an odd link. And then disappoint yourself with the complete lack of care when trying to report it to Namecheap's support.

Their CTO or whoever considers this form of enabling crime to be 'free speech' or suggesting registrars shouldn't 'police' or something equally as stupid when it was raised on HN a few times.

As a non criminal, this is a major selling point for me. I for one do not want to lose my entire business because I offended someone or failed to moderate a comment or whatever. And it’s smart business for them too - stay out of the censorship game as long as you can, because you can never win.

Yes of course until the CEO popped up and unilaterally banned all of Russia[0]. Or when they banned a crypto related domain on a single tweet[1] then unbanned it when people said WTF [2].

Blocking actual exploitative malware is a legal obligation, not "censorship." If they had a TOS that says "do whatever you want" then sure, but in this case they're just violating their TOS too.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30504812

[1] https://twitter.com/Namecheap/status/1489485337885921284

[2] https://twitter.com/Namecheap/status/1489504958596714499

You realize a lot of their staff is pretty much next door to that conflict geographically right?

> ... It's a criminal outfit ...

Refusing to police does not mean "they go out of their way to protect blackhats", it means they sell domains and know their place.

Refusing to adhere to your TOS, ICANN guidelines and legal obligations by turning a blind eye to international crime rings isn't knowing your place, it's exploitation and has horrible ethics regardless of how it can be perceived.

Knowingly taking money from criminals, likely stolen, is almost certainly a criminal offence.

Just because they don't immediately cancel people you have issue with doesn't make them a criminal org. You should check out about libel because this is getting close.

I'd like the opportunity to actually have this heard in a courtroom. Although the FBI would probably do most of the talking.

I'm sure if you were to provide them with evidence of your allegations they would take actions appropriate to their obligations. What you want them to do is that work _for_ you, which they are not obliged to do, as far as I know.

I (and many others) have provided full evidence and it's not actioned. Or I would give 20 domains with 20 subdomains -- all from the same circle, same time of registry, same phishing concept -- and they would only action one and stop responding to emails after.

Don't assume what I want them to do. They have been spoonfed the information and their Eastern European support staff/legal department doesn't care. Then their C-levels come on here and claim nonsense about free speech when quizzed about it.

Sounds like added value to me

Is there any anecdotal evidence that Namecheap does this?

I'd add my anecdotal evidence that namecheap doesn't do this. I've searched quite a few domains on namecheap and then bought them months later without issue. I have had this issue (although of course it's impossible to know for sure who's registered the domain) with GoDaddy and Gandi.

Second this: recently, a startup of mine let summer domains lapse and bought them back for the same price, when NC could've easily squatted them.

Hopefully some additional links too, to show how it evolved from Domain Name Front Running[0]. Moved into Domain tasting (which things like Domain Kitting is related to) [1].

There are posts all the way back to 2011[2] and probably further showing GoDaddy doing this for some time, and even I spotted it when using Network Solutions back in the day [3].

ICANN introduced charges (from the Wiki article) to try and reduce the Domain Tasting element, so I a guessing it is better now), but I (my personal opinion) think that it is still out there, just not as obvious as it once was!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326790

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22005265

This absolutely happens.

If I can find the time I plan to write some code to gather enough evidence to make a substantial case to prove registrars doing it.

It's happened multiple times to me with one particular registrar.

Happened to me when I checked availability of a domain via Uniregistry (now part of GoDaddy). Domain was available, a few days later when I decided to buy it it was suddenly a registered premium name costing over $2000.

If I’m checking if a domain is free, I usually use ”nslookup example.com” or ”dig example.com” — if they return NXDOMAIN, it is not reserved yet. I haven’t had an issue at least with namecheap when registering them, granted the domains I have booked have not been anything super special, so YMMV.

Pretty sad story about human nature: shows how much some people are selfish enough to sell with a 10000%+ markup something they never needed and that anyway would have stayed in the dust, rather than give it to someone who needs it.

Same with shoes, salt, sugar, PS5, etc.

+1 My thoughts exactly.

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