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Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

A tip I discovered - use hyphens, and suddenly very small nice domains become available. No one types domains anyway.

Also does anyone know how to get a shady domain parking service to give up on a domain they’ve been holding for decades? I’m actually happy to pay 500 but not thousands and it’s not even a domain that a company or commercial interest would want to purchase.

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>No one types domains anyway.

I do, at least the first letters until the browser completes the rest.

And if no one types domains, why do you need a short domain name anyway?

Aesthetics.

> use hyphens, and suddenly very small nice domains become available.

Bad idea. The owner of the corresponding domain without hyphens might steal your visitors.

By accidentally forgetting a "-" is how I once ended up on a porn site in front of the entire company, since that's what the version without a "-" was.

It wasn't a big deal, but I was very young, and I had a very red head.

Oh man, I did something similar in class. In 4th grade (+/- a year). whitehouse.com (I don't know what it is now, but it was a porn site) instead of whitehouse.gov.

Also python dot com back in the day.

> No one types domains anyway.

Only as long as you don't plan to offer e-mail under that domain.

My company's email domain has a hyphen in it (xyz@company-corp.com). Works perfectly fine.

The very fact you want to buy it and are willing to pay $500+ means there is a commercial interest in it. That's like saying no company wants to own a house because they won't live in it. True, but they rent them out.

It’s my first name, and unfortunately there’s an underwear company of the sAme name, but I know for a fact they’re misers (I know, I get their emails sometime).

Any company of sufficient size will get negative emails. The only companies that don't simply aren't big enough

That begs the question do you need a .com anyway?

No, you just need something that has reasonable management and reputation and is familiar-enough for your potential users.

Some country codes are happy to have unrelated users, and some are not. .ninja was polluted by spammers so fast that many email servers just drop the entire TLD on sight. If most of your users speak something other than English, you might find any number of good words going unused.

I’ve done just that.

I own currency-calc.com, which I find even better than the non hypen version of the name name.

I think for generic name domains are fantastic, but maybe not for a brand.

By offering them a low amount. They'll counter with a ridiculously high amount. Make clear that there's no way you'll ever pay anything close to that amount and stop with negotiating if they don't come up with a reasonable price.

They might come back to you in a few months with a better offer. Or they might not, but it has worked for me two times.

You get a good and potentially expensive com domain for easy of use and not landing in spam folders.

I prefer *.io domains for non critical things.

The renewal fees for .io domains are a scamola. Last I checked it was $50+/year.

I was referring to the initial price of a good .com domain.

That will cost you a few thousand dollars if you are not lucky, which you are not if you need to use a hyphen

But a renewal price for 50$/year for a business doesn't matter.

Totally forgot about this but btw. We are on hn. .io is my preferred domain ending due to io ;)

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