I sell onions on the Internet (2019) | Hacker News Reader

I sell onions on the Internet (2019)

deepsouthventures.com

496 pointssogen174 comments

> The way Faulkner treats his characters, I treat domain name projects. I buy them with an intention to develop. And I let them take the lead. They’re the inspiration for the business itself. They guide me towards what they need to become. I’m just the dude behind the keyboard (sorta).

I feel the same way about personal projects and blogs. A good idea tends to be self-reinforcing. It just needs someone to uncover it. Selling onions on the internet seems unusual but to the right person that idea is gold.

I buy domains and then forget about them only to renew them once a year for aspirational reasons.

Its kinda like seeing my family at Christmas once a year.

It beats the FOMO of thinking about a good quirky name, and then seeing someone take a (close) variant of it years later. I think it feels like a word game - but with a reward you can keep.

I still have no fucking idea what to do with saving.cash and it's costing me $500/year which is financially ruining me lol but I'd rather starve and keep the domain name. I'd never forgive myself for selling it. It's literally saving cash. It can't be anything other than what it is.

How about a site which parses your credit card / bank statement to find out where you're spending money and provides tips to save cash based on that spending (which could be sourced from community submissions + voting)

E.g. I buy supermarket gift cards from a slightly obscure site which sells them at a 5% discount. Super easy way to save a few hundred dollars a year. The hardest thing was discovering that this was an option.

Hey this is a great idea. If you want to talk more about it my contacts in my profile. Would love to hear more.

If nothing else, you can put up a static page on the basics of Boglehead-ish finances; a copy of The Flowchart from /r/personalfinance would be a great low-effort stop-gap.

Good idea, thank you.

While you wait for an idea, how about a global savings account comparison directory?

This is good. I was thinking of this but with things like comparing savings accounts, mortgages, and adding different financial products over time.

It should be an adventure game where a character named Cash is missing and probably in trouble.

Maybe it can be like that vim tutor game where you save him by encountering different financial scenarios that you have to solve and overcome.

+1 to that idea! Something like: “you earn this much every month, and these are your recurring expenses, long term debts and goals, and oh yeah an immediate financial challenge. In what accounts would you put hard earned dollars?”

Yes I love this. I've been messing with building a 3d renderer in c++ compiled to wasm rendered to a canvas with webgpu, and then playing with the [0] Bobba source code, combined with something like SpacetimeDB would be sweet. Would be really valuable to collect common financial issues and situations from people and work with someone who knows finance deeply to figure out how to express these challenges in a way that don't seem too open-ended.

[0] https://bobba.io/

That doesn’t sound very fun.

I say forget the finance angle. Go for a straight up adventure game where you have to save the hero, Cash, from tragedy.

The irony! May as well turn the page into a piece of abstract art saying "the domain 'saving.cash' has cost me hundreds of dollars every year". A meditation on having to spend money to earn money, if you will.

Hahahaha I didn't even see the irony until I read this, that's hilarious. That's a great idea, I'll do that this weekend.

Maybe a running total that updates daily?

Like domain cost per year / day, and accumulating it daily?

Exactly!

Promotions/deals?

I like how you put it: uncovering rather than creating

The internet was originally promised as a way to disintermediate these kinds of supply chains, yet we often ignore these "boring" businesses for hype trains. The fact that he added a phone number and it sometimes out-sells the website is the cherry on top.

I've found more and more often the last few years that a lot of the long time businesses I use still do most of their ordering by phone. Or some version that involves talking to actual person.

The restaurants I go to still generally do phone ordering because they care about the quality of their ingredients. They want to discuss and talk about it with someone before placing an order.

The engineering and consulting firms I work with are the same. The engineers I enjoy working with are all phone based, not a lot of emails unless there are details involved.

I'm a bit of the same way. There is a lot of peripheral information that we miss out on when everything is done via automation/email. Those dead moments when our brains wander, then we ask a silly question, tend to bear fruit.

It's gotten to the point where I generally don't order anything online anymore because I can't trust I'll get what I ordered. When I have to deal with support it's an automated system that only gives me 1 or 2 options, neither of which satisfy my needs so I have to make a compromise. I'm not interested.

can you elaborate on the phone basis with engineers? I can’t really imagine how that wouldn’t be much more hassle discussing details without written documents, so I’m intrigued

A picture paints a thousand words

A picture is worth a thousand words -- but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of a thousand words can be adequately described with pictures.

A word is worth a thousand pictures.

— Jobs ?

The way NASA did it for decades was conference calls. Nowadays it's Teams meetings.

The outputs of the meetings are decisions that are later encoded in very many very long documents. It's just faster to hash out engineering details when the relevant engineers are able to talk to each other in real time and relevant decision makers are present to be able to unofficially bless or reject what the engineers come up with (formal acceptance of these decisions is of course a paperwork thing).

So, in this domain anyway, it's not a literal phone call. But it's what we see as the modern equivalent.

You do both, but I know at work for me the problem with written communication is we just talk past each other. Writing is, still, a very distilled and compressed medium. Meaning, a lot of the information is lost when translated to writing. I've spent weeks talking over email and on ticket just to solve it within 5 minutes on a zoom call.

re: the phone number

Businesses really underestimate how much having a human representative helps customers feel connected to a business. I see it in corporate sales (B2B) where accounts are pretty much tied to the account manager. When the manager leaves, the companies refuse to renew because the account was only good because of the manager.

I think of my favorite businesses I regularly visit and they all have a memorable face to them. I feel more than a consumer. They help me understand the product and guide my decision making. They tell me when my order doesn’t make sense. And they refer me to other places they recommend. Or they tell me my problem is real and a mess, but assure me they’ll fix it.

You don’t get that with AI chat bots.

This feels like the internet doing the thing it was supposed to do, not the thing it currently gets most of the attention for

author here : ) happy to answer questions if you have any. We also have a twitter account here if you want to follow along: https://x.com/vidaliaonions

we also film a lot of the growing process here: https://www.youtube.com/@vidaliaonion

Is your website accessible over the onion network by Tor?

the only tor joke I have: https://x.com/searchbound/status/1263578735724433408?s=20

Perfect opportunity for you to get your site on Tor then!

How would you market such a business in 2026? I am from an Italian region where farmer grow many special coltures, and I was always a bit surprised why they don’t try selling on the internet. I ended up convincing myself it is not a viable business model.

I'd still lean into a great .com domain, as it still gives you instant credibility. Also leverage Facebook, as my typical buyer hangs out there a good bit. YouTube has been helpful as well, as we try to share "behind the curtain" what life is like as a Vidalia farmer.

I live in Sweden, and almost every year I discover someone I work with or have friends in common with, who has a friend or relative in Italy, or Greece who farms oranges/olives/cheese or what have you. And this friend in Sweden is selling their produce by word of mouth.

So once a year at harvest, the relative has someone drives a truck full of olive oil 2000 kilometers north, and dozens of Swedes turn up at an appointed time on a Tuesday afternoon in a parking lot to pick up their order of six bottles of oil. The prices are no better than in the supermarket, but ostensibly you’d get a high quality product.

It’s a funny way to do business in 2025, completely without Internet infrastructure. Somehow, I don’t think it would work as a web shop.

There is a lot of “paperwork” to do it as a web shop, if you know what I mean.

I’m sure taxes are part of it, but keep in mind it’s a toll free union after all. They could easily do this above board and just declare the Italian VAT as they do selling to locals.

I think for food products there are more considerations, like labeling and traceability.

If the Greek farmer is selling in Greece then all that is already done.

Exactly, you'll have to declare VAT

I know it does for a small Dutch setup :) https://www.kalamatakarma.com/ Marketing is still completely word of mouth afaik, but the webshop makes it easier for total strangers to tag along.

Is anyone really getting into trouble growing Vidalia onions not in Georgia?

Like if I plant some in my yard and start selling them online or at the local farmers market, what is anyone really going to do?

Seems kinda weird they have a government granted monopoly on them.

It's a brand name, like any other. Usage of it requires fulfilling the brand requirements. It's like how you can't say a burger from Burger King if it's actually from McDonalds, even if it's a very similar hamburger.

But even then, this isn't uncommon for food and beverages. You can't call it "whisky" unless you follow certain requirements about the mash bill, barrel, etc.

(My dad, before his death, had started growing "Pennsylvania Simply Sweet" onions. Because you can't call them Vidalia.)

It’s more than a brand name (civil matter), it’s a federally protected designation (criminal matter):

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-IX/p...

I didn’t know this until this thread! Thanks for the citation.

There are a lot of food and drink items with official legal definitions that include the region of origin. The most famous one is champagne, which can only be called champagne if it comes from a specific region.

You can think of the name as being inclusive of the region, not simply descriptive of the variety. So if someone made a sparkling wine in a different region and sold it as champagne then they would be committing fraud.

> Like if I plant some in my yard and start selling them online or at the local farmers market, what is anyone really going to do?

At your farmer’s market? Probably nothing. But if you came across a particularly grumpy person with time and money to burn on lawyers they would have a case against you. Not actually going to happen at that scale. But if you owned vidaliaonions.com and started selling fraudulent vidalia onions at scale, the farmers would likely get together and pursue legal action to protect their prices.

It’s almost like a brand. You can sell LEGO-style bricks but you can’t call them LEGO because they didn’t come from the LEGO company.

> You can think of the name as being inclusive of the region, not simply descriptive of the variety.

The term of art is terroir [1], which is the "character" of the environment the plants are grown in. It's often that a region will have some special characteristic due to geology that allows a unique flavor profile to grow so these trade names are the equivalent of a terroir brand.

Some designations are more strict than others, though. IIRC in the case of Vidalia onions the soil is low in sulfur so the biochemical pathways in onions that produce astringent compounds are nutrient starved. As far as I know most sweet onion varieties nowadays are grown in similar soil, but they're not legally allowed to call them Vidalias.

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

The geology-centered conception of terroir in wine that you're giving is actually rather controversial and not generally supported by any science we've done to date.

For wine, "terroir" rather encompasses things like climate, local customs and practices (viticulture and vinification), and sometimes things like local strains of grapes or of yeast.

If you grow them in the Vidalia region (20 counties around Vidalia, GA), you're aok... but if you grow them outside of that area, and call them a Vidalia, you'll get into hot water. The law mainly came into existence cause Texas farmers began growing regular yellow onions and slapping the 'Vidalia' name on it, and customers would get pissed. So all the Vidalia farmers got together and got a Federal law passed that says you can only call an onion a 'Vidalia' if it's grown in our special region down here where we have sandy, loamy soil that contributes to the mild, sweet taste.

It’s only Vidalia if it’s grown in the Vidalia region of France, otherwise it’s just sparkling onion.

Yeah thanksfully in Europe we have AOP / AOC (protected name of origin) so that names can have a meaning. Good that Vidalia farmers seem to have managed to do the same somehow.

Regarding Champagne, the funniest part is that Russia granted exclusivity of the name to some local sparkling wine, such that actual wines from the Champagne aera need to use some alternative names there ^^

It's similar to French wines and cheese. News to me that we have this in the US but it totally makes sense. We have a few of these in the PNW, like Hermiston melons and Walla Walla onions.

It's a broader EU thing (named AOP - protected designation of origin) rather than French only, though you are right that France has plenty of those for wines and cheese. But it's also protecting Greek Feta, Italian Parma ham, Scottish Shetland Wool, etc

Nürnberger Rostbratwürstchen and Munich Beer come to my mind from Germany!

just came here to say that this has been one of my favorite pieces of writing i came across on hn ever (i read it back in 19)

appreciate that, phl.

I live in a mountain valley in Mallorca where hundreds of tons of perfect Canoneta oranges fall to the floor and rot each year because the cost of picking them outweighs their market value. The valley became wealthy from this fruit in the 19th century but the economics no longer add up. [0]

At the same time the price of orange juice (elsewhere) has skyrocketed [1], yet this rural community seems unable to take advantage.

What would you do?

[0] https://ruralhotelsmallorca.com/guides/The-History-of-Soller... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c397n3jl3z8o

I was shocked by this in rural Spain as well. Just tons of high citrus and olives rotting on trees because their harvest can't be done mechanically.

I'm sure I've seen video of oranges being harvested mechanically. I'm sure it can be done but probably not economically everywhere especially if the terrain is difficult. For mechanical olive harvesting see: https://ilcircolo.eu/olive-harvesting-by-hand-or-with-machin...

Orange farms are on flat land and all the trees are on a grid and trimmed to exact sizes

That may be true of modern farms elsewhere but is not the case for historical groves here. They are sometimes spaced appropriately but that's about it. Usually on vehicular-inaccessible mountainside terraces.

You have Mr. Kraus making sorbet and selling that on the internet, don’t you? Though I guess he doesn’t come close to using up all of the supply… and his domain name is a bit more complicated than what Peter usually goes for. I can’t, to this day, remember how to pronounce Sòller. We keep asking the locals every time we visit. Do you own a grove yourself?

Not familiar with Mr Kraus. Shortcut to remembering how to pronounce Sòller is to say 'So yeah'. We're surrounded by scarcely-maintained groves with owners pleading to do something with the fruit and there's only so many marmalades (wrong kind of oranges) or Aperol copycats one can make. Orange blossom ice cream a big success this year.

Fet a Sòller. The guy is a German who noticed the same problem in the 90s and figured to use the surplus for making ice cream & marketing it to the Vitamin C starved people in Germany.

Perhaps an artisanal single-origin soda could work? Use the pulp and the oil from the peels to make some form of syrup or concentrate locally. Mix it with water and label it in Hamburg, London, Stockholm.

Can you ask your neighbors if they’ll sell an all you-can-pick pass in Febrary? I know two families who would buy it in an instant. There's an email address in my bio here.

In fact, I think I haven't met a tourist on the island who wasn't interested when I told them that we visited a grove and picked some oranges. Especially those with kids! Someone could set up a website that allows you to buy such a pass that directly routes you to the appropriate grove. You can spread the word about that website by collaborating with small local businesses like car rentals, hotels, Airbnbs, etc.. I’m sure many of them would be delighted to put such a flyer into their welcome kit.

I tend to avoid projects where the economics are challenging, or where the demand has fallen off. Vidalia is unique because it's a boutique item, not a commodity. Because of it's unique nature, we're able to charge premium pricing, allowing us to stay in business (& even at our premium prices, the margins are razor thin, so we're constantly watching bottom line). While I tremendously enjoy this project, this is not an easy business to operate.

Do they let anyone pick for free ?

Plenty of orange trees in public places, plenty of abandoned groves around and a handful of eco-fincas where you can pick for next to nothing.

Got some addresses? I know Ecovinyassa, but they don’t let you pick.

How tough is it juice them and make orange juice that can be sold (to Spanish or EU standards)? I would think you could start small and grow over time.

Mallorca is a mountainous island in the middle of the med. Exporting something from Mallorca seems like a logistical challenge to me. Exporting something refrigerated or frozen, even more so...

Maybe store-shelf product such as gummies or something?

Fresh juice takes 2kg of oranges per ~1l/~1kg. Plus electricity and handling costs...

Still, you'll need a large multiplier on the transformation process: organic EU orange are 1.7€/kg, standard are 1€ wholesale market price (meaning its origin is continental spain or italy I guess). Frozen orange juice is 3.93€ (Brazil)

I think the best bet for juice would be to export frozen concentrate.

And despite the logistical challenges you cite, lemons imported from places like Argentina are now cheaper to buy at Palma's wholesale market than the average wholesale price paid for local fruit, which has subsequently plummeted even further.

Except that lemons are picked for "cheap" in Argentina (and oranges in Morrocco or Valencia), industrially packaged to ports (most likely to BCN or VLC ports) and then shipped in containers to Palma.

Pick the oranges in the middle of the island: not cheap, as stated. Squeeze & freeze the juice (likely around Palma): not cheap, not even including transportation. Ship them back to the continent: probably not cheap either.

Transshipment is extremely costly and even more so at a smaller scale, and that's what we're comtemplating here.

There was a company in Mallorca that tried something similar with lemons about 12 years ago: Pep Lemon. I remember hearing that they noticed huge amounts of lemons lying unused all over the island and wanted to do something worthwhile with them.

They stopped production in 2019, citing a “lack of investors.” During their operation, they were involved in a legal dispute with PepsiCo over the use of the name Pep. I’m not sure whether this was because of their cola product, Pep Cola, or simply due to the similarity of the brand names. Pep is a diminutive of Josep in Catalan and is very common, so it may have been just a coincidence. They tried to export their products, but this turned out to be expensive, so they instead hoped for strong local support within Mallorca (see point 1 below). In that article they say that they produced 1000 bottles a year in their factory. That sounds very little; I wonder if that is correct?

1) News that they are on the verge of closing: https://ib3.org/pep-lemon-liquidara-lempresa-a-final-dany-si...

2) YouTube video attached to the news article, see 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXEsIbSkWQU

3) News that they are closing: https://ib3.org/pep-lemon-tanca-les-portes-definitivament

The story of soft drinks on the island is astonishing. 130 drinks companies at one point. My understanding is that Coca Cola took over distribution for the countless small companies and - once embedded - said we don't need your product any more, adios. Don't know if true but a tale often told here.

I guess my question is: why is this better for me the customer than just buying them at my local supermarket? The shipping must make them very expensive, relative to my store. Are they that much better onions?

most grocers don't carry Vidalias. If they do, they sometimes mislabel them, so you don't know whether you're receiving an authentic Vidalia. Also, grocers often charge more than we do - we had a customer from California one year mention that they found some out there for $8-$10 a pound (our 10# box is $50, and that includes shipping to lower 48 usa).

Interesting. Maybe I’m just lucky, I’m in northeast Ohio and we have them regularly.

But $5/lb including shipping is not bad at all for something from the internet.

Just curious do you make a living primarily from this or is it more just a side income?

I run a few projects that support me; this is one of them. This project did allow us to buy another neat domain, though: onions.com (used profit from one season to purchase)

Huge fan here! I read the article when it was new and was enamored with the story. I ordered a small box. The onions were terrific. So I order a large box every year.

Absolutely insane way to start a business. “Let me blow 2 grand on a domain name. Not sure what it’s for, yet.”

I wonder if the sunk cost worked in his favor here. If he'd only spent ten dollars on the domain, he probably would have built nothing.

author here... you're correct - it's highly unlikely I would have built anything unless I had this unique, exact-match domain. I needed that unfair advantage to start, as the name sortof branded the project for me in the early days and helped drive new customers.

“ The way Faulkner treats his characters, I treat domain name projects. I buy them with an intention to develop. And I let them take the lead. They’re the inspiration for the business itself. They guide me towards what they need to become. I’m just the dude behind the keyboard (sorta).”

To me it makes sense. Without a domain name, it’s just an idea. The domain name makes it real, and it’s a foundation the biz can stand on. Too many people try to start a biz without a foundation.

I wonder how you can then produce onions as a side business.

He doesn't. He partnered with a farmer.

I've been doing some version of this since college. ...holy shit that's almost 20 years.

It started as a bit of a joke on the "That's a good band name" line. It became "That's a good domain name". Yes, I went to a stem college.

Anyway, i've started 4 pretty decent businesses based entirely off that bit. My friends and I would be riffing out behind the pizza place/bar we frequented, someone would say something and then "That's a good domain name" comes out. I'd make a quick note and think about it for a few days. I found that if I come back to it after a week or so then it's maybe worth something.

Business and domain names can make or break a company.

On top of all that, i've also bought and then sold hundreds of domains for a profit based off this bit. I use various registars when they have sales, buy em up cheap for a few years, then park em.

After reading the OP, it's kinda funny. I did something similar with a garlic grower back in the early 00's. I had a domain, my brother worked for a garlic farmer, the farmer wanted to export to asia. It worked out well for a few years.

Very interesting, I feel like domain names definitely have values but I don't know much about domain names that much but how do you buy or sell hundreds of domains?

I found websites/newsletters like https://ungrabbed.com/

Personally It would be interesting to see some domain names for cheap and if I have an idea, I can perhaps have domain name for cheap or something similar to it but I don't really know if I should go into this hobby perhaps and no guarantees that I would but I am curious about resources basically and I wish if you can tell me more about it

I feel like the issue I feel as if is that most domains would just be parked in there or would be sold for losses perhaps.

> Yes, I went to a stem college.

I don’t understand this.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)

Yes, that part I knew.

Science is the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.

Okay, but why?

My guess is that he took a meme for normal people ("that would make a good band name") and twisted it into a more nerdy version ("that would make a good domain name").

That makes sense. I assumed posting on hackernews implies the nerdiness.

Lots of nerds go to regular colleges so perhaps he’s saying he’s extra nerdy. (Though I think at this point we’re overanalyzing, the worst thing you can do to any joke.)

Yeah but if you keep analyzing it hard enough, the funniness underflows and then it's maximum funny.

Probably: "band names" -> Science, Engineering, TECHNOLOGY, Math college -> "domain names"

Learned about more things tech, started thinking about domains more than bands.

been sitting on fullstackjavascript.com for years. been too busy writing javascript to do anything with it and now I work almost exclusively in elixir.

It's a good domain name for what its worth. But are you/ anybody not worried about the javascript trademark by oracle and the lawsuit of oracle vs deno and the times oracle sends cease and desist to even books about javascript one time or any conference with javascript as an example

This I think is the reason why javascript conferences are instead called ecmascript conferences

I’ve had swiftbestpractices.com forever and still haven’t done anything with it. Meanwhile I’ve been going ham on my latest purchase of myfacespacebook.com. It’s weird the things that actually motivate us.

I was going to make a joke on how fullstackelixir.com would probably still be available, but I checked just in case and it's not ^^

author here... in my defense, it was an accidental purchase : ) I thought it was gonna sell for $5k or more... but the music stopped when I bid ...

I was also quite chocked that you did this ^^ I'm not sure who is the naive one, either you or me, but I would never have assumed that such a name would sell for more than 2k (but at least it was worth it for you here).

I'm really wondering how important the domain was here. I feel it's more just what got you the motivation to do something rather than anything else then your hard work and the quality of the product made the rest (that makes me think of Dumbo's magic feather) but I read in another comment and your bio that you seem to feel strongly about domain names and how much they impact the success of a business (you probably know better)

The domain is the main driver for success in early days. It provides a tailwind to help the project get off the ground. After that, the product & service we provide helps it grow. I have another friend who runs Bobbleheads.com and he had the same experience as me (starting from scratch). I mention him in this essay I wrote: https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-business/

Not really sure what's so crazy about that. A brick and mortar shop will spend way more than that on renting a good location for their business when they have no clue whether they'll turn a profit. This is just the digital equivalent of that. People trust authoritative domains like vidaliaonions.com way more than something like vidaliaonions-direct.net and they're given more SEO weight as well. At least I know that used to be true; not sure how true that is today but I'd imagine it still is.

Yeah, exactly. Go price the equipment it takes to rig out a new upstart plumbing biz (trunk/van, all the hardware, insurance, etc). Startup web businesses is insanely cheap, even with a couple grand on a domain.

You believe brick and mortar shops put money down on a location with no plan at all? This is what OP did, your analogy is pretty weak.

Yes, I have seen it happen many times.

I've hung on to spellign.com for a bit over twenty years now. Creation Date: 2005-10-19T05:59:21Z

The name still makes me giggle. I'd love to build something relevant and silly enough to put there, but I haven't found it yet.

Suggestions are welcome! :)

One place where I genuinely believe LLMs could be beneficial is correcting spellign mistakes. I just don't think the interface is there yet. I want to keep control over my writing. After feeding it through an LLM, it doesn't sound like me anymore and changes random stuff. Rather, i'd like something like a diff viewer that shows you your sentence and the LLM's corrected sentence right next to each other. You can review each suggestion individually and decide whether to incorporate it yourself.

Isn’t that pretty much Grammarly?

Your could do a spofo Wikipedai cloen.

This feels like a relevant wiki page to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act

Very interesting page, left me with a lot of mixed feelings after I read it. First, it seems like the biggest issue was not onion futures per se, but manipulating the market. It seems like banning onion futures was just a band-aid while ignoring the true cause. Second, if it really is the case that onions' perishable nature caused the problem, why not at least extend the ban to all similarly perishable products? Again it seems like they attacked the symptom rather than the root cause. But those criticisms aside, I kind of love that the government back then was willing to shut down shady money making schemes from finance bros. That would never happen in America today, so that part was pretty cool.

I wonder how aggressively this would be enforced. Like, if this website let people place an order a year in advance for a specific price, would the regulators come knocking?

This is one of those articles that pops up here once every few years, and I love it every time. I love these stories of low-hanging, boring businesses that succeed in simple, yet strange and satisfying ways.

And of course, this helps me continue, like many others, to go domain-first on ideas that sound good at interesting times. I have enough domains to be ashamed of in numbers, but I will continue to register more, as more ideas hit me in the shower and on my walks. My wife has seen me walk out of the shower halfway more often than not to check availability and register domains. I’ve also had my share of well-sold domain names, so I don’t regret my hobby/obsession.

I have registered a one domain bydav in my cctld, and now all of my future apps are like timer.bydav.cctld

I love this post. I read it a few years ago and tried the same thing. I bought and then built riverreports.com (https://www.riverreports.com/).

What a cool story. Not tech for tech's sake, but tech that grows into something simpler, more efficient, and more world-opening for something as wonderful as the Vidalia onion

> but for kicks & giggles, I dropped in a bid around $2,200 ’cause I was confident I’d be outbid

Boy do I wish I could just drop 2k on a whim for a vanity project

A lot of people pay a lot more than that for vanity vehicles, kitchens etc

Not to minimize the amount (2k is a lot), or obligations you may have (family, etc), but sometimes you can change your life in small ways to make those sort of impulse buys more affordable. Renting a room instead of a house, buying an old used car instead of new, etc. These kinds of changes are (to me) a small inconvenience, with big rewards

Peter appears to still be at it.[1] Very impressed by his commitment to the bit.

[1] https://xcancel.com/searchbound/status/1996247844080996549#m

peter here... we're still at it... entering our 12th(?) year

Hey good to see here!

I have a quick question if I may ask but your whole journey and even the article starts with the "I’M ADDICTED TO DOMAIN NAMES" / Addiction to domain names.

So I am wondering was there anything specific that caused this "addiction" (in a good way?) perhaps and has the addiction stopped after www.vidaliaonions.com/ or is it still continuing?

What mainly caused it: I kept getting laid off, and that nonsense infuriated me. So I was actively trying to find ways to save myself. Great domains, via the expiry marketplace, slowly became an unfair advantage I could lean into and compete with larger companies, just because I owned this unique .com domain. Hope that makes sense. I've written a few essays on my experience being laid off, if you're bored and wanna read: https://www.deepsouthventures.com/how-on-earth/ ; https://www.deepsouthventures.com/on-being-laid-off-unplanne...

oop, didn't see your 2nd question... yes, I still monitor expiring domain names... it's a very sticky habit, and ruthlessly fun... it's sortof like my morning paper.

Where do you go to buy expired domains? Also, are there that few domains expiring on a given day that you can actually go through them?

Here he writes about where to find domain names:

https://www.deepsouthventures.com/window-shopping-expired-do...

Oh at this point I am trying to stop myself from getting into it since I know that I would get sucked into it like you too :) since I wouldn't have the funds to buy websites anyway and with things like PPP (Power purchasing parity) working against my favour it would be hard.

I did buy fossbox.cloud for less than a $ per year (81 cents iirc) when I wanted to build my own cloud with its own nice-ities.

Currently its just hosting some simple python servers and nothing much because I feel extremely lazy to host anything there because of lack of time mostly due to the fear of studies or similar but yea (read my another comment here for more context, sorry if it got long)

Let me know if you want the domain xD, I will transfer it to ya for free so that people like you can work in cloud industry too perhaps xD. We need people like you working in vps/cloud industry and maybe I can try to better explain some other things too!

Imagine if this domain of fossbox.cloud supercharges your journey into vps provider/cloud provider xD (let me know what you think, maybe we can collaborate which can be insane haha, 100% tell me more about your thoughts on the whole thing please!)

Also another question but how much do you think a domain like fossbox.cloud is worth? Not that I am selling it to someone to be honest but Did I make a profit xD?

Thank you for your response :)

I had seen your comment 5 minutes after you sent it but decided to read both of the articles and think about it

You are one of the few people who can say that they declined the offer at google and I am sad that you didn't get the bean bag :<

Now on a serious note, I feel like there are some immense similarities between your story which happened 20 years ago and what's happening now with the AI hype

> It was a gut punch face slap. My replacement, who’d only been there a few months, avoided the hatchet (cheaper salary, I presume). I would have stayed and worked for free if they would have asked. They didn’t.

I am also like you, perhaps the thing which interests me is that for me coding/tinkering with homelabs/servers are just things which I want to do even as independence or even for free :)

Shame that the company didn't work out. In retrospect, its all good now but that does feel like an action of mismanagement from the company's part because you clearly loved the company and who knows what might happen with the person you trained for months and how much they loved the company or benefitted the company ykwim

You write really clearly and I really appreciate it a lot and I feel like this sense of flow guiding us to where we are is definitely true :)

I recently spent a quick chunk of my month or two thinking about a problem that I solved for myself but it felt like that it could have abuses to the point that maybe most large cloud providers/providers might shut things down or would be an hassle. So I thought of an cloud provider which can understand the idea of things similar to the fact that there are different instances and dont shut down the servers due to complaints or anything

I wanted to build a cloud where saas providers wouldn't have to worry about servers. The servers can be deployed for the people themselves and have hourly pricing for what they use instead of how most saas stuff work nowadays of fixed pricing.

I am not sure but this idea required me to build my own cloud of sorts or build on another and I am just a 17 year old guy so I thought that most major cloud providers are really kind of no go so I looked at more hidden cloud providers like upcloud and scaleway and so so many others and I think OVH could be good for that idea or upcloud is good too but the thing is that upcloud has some nicer features like auto-scaling in vps's/a really good support system that I liked.

Well I still didn't have a credit card but since I wanted to buy vps's or similar. I started looking at lowendtalk and black friday and started talking to vps providers on lowendtalk and here and I think that its a very resource/cost intensive process and I just didn't feel right about reselling

Then I started feeling like how to build my own cloud. I found WHMCS + virtualizor and they were paid and so I started tinkering even more and just today found incus and started to self host incus and I bought myself some domain name and some cheap netcup server to play with things.

All while I was preparing for one of the toughest exams (JEE) so that definitely took a hit but talking to vps providers about finances and etc. makes me feel like right now is just not the time about it and the best thing I can do is to familiarize myself more with hardware stuff and buy cheap laptops and create homelabs with incus and play with hardwares too and get a job at IT/any related perhaps. Lets hope that any company looking to hire can take hackernews points into account too :)

I am still in school and I feel like coding is something that I can do too (Although vibe-coding hell is real so I am probably gonna learn it and give it time) and then contribute to real projects along the way

Honestly I still don't know what I want to do with my life but I feel like working at such providers or any similar things where I can do things like this, maybe perhaps even working at any massive hyperscaler perhaps if I "grind" extremely hard from here on out for career opportunities.

This is also the reason why I got interested in your story of domains because the vps providers usually provide domains too and I wanted to know the finances of it and why you got addicted and other things so once again thanks for telling me about it

Its funny but I used to be a coding -> finance -> started using linux ..... -> extremely coding oriented (both software and even appreciation of hardware nowadays)

I find your story really inspiring because one of the issues I felt is that I will always be judged by the degree I have and things like these don't really matter but your story is something that I resonate with a lot in my own way and I am super happy that you are now doing things which you are satisfied with. I wish to do something like this in my own way. I just want "enough" and I don't know if it would be jobs/business which would be the key to that (I hope jobs personally) but I am keeping an open mind on the whole situation and sorry for the long message

But your articles are something which have just resonated with me unlike none other right now. I am going to join the newsletter and have a merry christmas and a new year from here on out. Wishing the best for you, your family and your business and have a nice day Peter!!

I think I might take a drop year perhaps just to study JEE again to focus to get into a good college since the competition here is immense if things don't work out but from here on out, I do wish to keep these ambitions in check as they impact my studies but I study so that one day these ambitions/hobbies can be my job :)

Although I love the idea of a business and I might start one from my extra funds of jobs perhaps but the thing is I just want a job one day of things which I enjoy doing because I thought about it from sides of finance in the sense that retirement/financial independence would just mean doing things I like and I can have something like this in the IT/CS industry and I am young enough that I am still in school and even right now I can spend 1 year again to just prepare to get a good college which can play a massive role in my country atleast to get a job.

I wish the job market was less of a fear mongering pester right now where I feel like I need a degree for which I need to study things like chemistry (No offense chem, but you just don't tinkle me the same way containers do) and the immense competition and everything makes me feel like odds are definitely stacked against me but we don't know how it pans out but hopefully I can carve a niche for doing the things I enjoy as a job one day and get highlighted from this "passion" that other people name so. My mother says that I should stop doing these things and focus on my studies and she's probably right but man oh man I can't really explain it to anybody how I feel sometimes but its something that I am gonna have to figure out I suppose. Probably gonna go back to studying. Took a one hour long break :) writing it and thinking about it but well worth it.

Once again have a nice day peter!

congrats!

> Some folks can eat them like an apple. Most of my customers do.

My grandfather and my cousin, who he pretty much raised were eating regular red or yellow onions like apples like that. I had never seen anyone else do that. They would make an onion "salad" which was just cut up onion with olive oil and salt.

There is also a follow up article: https://www.deepsouthventures.com/part-two-i-sell-onions-on-...

Got these many years back after having been posted here. Very happy with the purchase, but wouldn’t order again as my wife hated the smell. Highly recommended everyone order these at least once.

I love how I came into this thread going “it would be fun if this was actually about onions, but it is probably something about Tor” but was wrong!

Sometimes you start a business. Sometimes a business starts you. Awesome that the author saw this as an opportunity and not a down side to owning a name he never really wanted to begin with.

Sometimes the right business just finds you and you’re at the right place at the right time to see it.

233 points and 89 comments back in 2022 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32053044

It got over 3000 back in 2019!! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132

I feel as if 3000 definitely is one of the most highest rates

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefix=false&qu...

I checked and its the 47th most upvoted post in all of hackernews. (Btw each algolia page gives 30 articles so it could've been simpler for me if I didn't manually read till 30 :) but yea, hope it gives some context)

47th most upvoted story is wild but so true. I feel like although we might upvote AI and what not posts in HN which can casually reach 1000+ at times. Deep down what really sells us more isn't AI but rather a fever dream of sorts that one sells onions and maybe the freedom we attach to it

Thanks to both of you! Macroexpanded:

I Sell Onions on the Internet (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32053044 - July 2022 (89 comments)

I Sell Onions on the Internet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132 - April 2019 (435 comments)

This is the kind of thing I’d like to do. I have so many ideas, but I’m not sure how to actually make them happen.

How much money does it take to start something like this?

I love the inversion of the usual startup narrative: domain first, idea second; purpose first, scale later (maybe never)

I rabbitholed into that another essay of buying domain names. The author juggles ideas by domain name. I have one called Banadana Girl .in and I was like sell bandanas lol - gotta check now the TAM for bandanas in india with women as TM. Give me ideas folks. Do you know of a bandana expert?

> Them: We leverage automated machine learning to enhance your existing BI visualizations with more proactive insights

> Me: I sell onions on the internet

That's exactly how I feel about AI! Instead of all that useless nonsense, just keeping it real, doing something that's actually useful for individuals and for society.

This crosses from quirky to unhinged:

During a phone order one season – 2018 I believe – a customer shared this story where he smuggled some Vidalias onto his vacation cruise ship, and during each meal, would instruct the server to ‘take this onion to the back, chop it up, and add it onto my salad ‘.

Eccentric at most. Unhinged would be chopping it yourself, at the table, with a Civil War cavalry sabre.

I also recently bought liteclient.com just because it was available. Finally, decided to create a vs code extension around it; I don't even know how to make one but learnt so much in the past few weeks :)

Great advertising for vidalias. I simply have to try one now.

Good luck finding them anywhere right now

They're really good. The apple thing is no joke. Vidalia and Walla-Walla onions are top tier alliums.

author here.. our Vidalia season usually starts in late April - FYI. If you visit our website, submit your email there and I'll drop you a note when our order lines are open.

If I could run a few services like this that just provide useful and predictable services to a community of people I'd be perfectly happy with my life

That's very interesting. My domain purchased in 2015, finally seems to make some meaning due to recent tech advacnes. Time to do something with it.

What's the domain name if I may ask?

ai.com

I love this guy's marketing honest and compelling

(2019)

I love onions, but never tried a Vidalia. We have Walla Walla sweet onions out here and I suspect they’re pretty similar.

They’re similar enough that my aunt, who has lived in the PNW for ages, but grew up in the South, described Walla Wallas as “basically just like a Vidalia, but grown here”.

There’s nothing particularly special about the onion variety - it’s just a mild yellow onion. It’s the soil.

I bought djangosquare.com with exactly the same thought a year ago and till today I haven’t done anything with it!

Do people still buy domain names and build businesses around them?

Very probably.

I am also curious to know wether a domain name still confers a solid advantage. Now that so many people use social networks like Instagram, does (the SEO or domain name, etc. of) your website remain a critical part of the process?

Actually the SEO plays an important role in some areas, for sure.

okay, at first I thought you are selling Tor access or vanity hidden service domains as Tor stands for The Onion Router, but it turns out you are selling real onions

That was wonderful.

I wonder what this guy would think of what I'm doing with poop.net

correction: https://x.com/searchbound/status/1007015211486900229?ref_src...

It's kind of funny this guy doesn't understand his own business.

It's not onions. It's lead generation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com