Ask HN: How much should a startup pay for a .com? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How much should a startup pay for a .com?

How much should a startup be willing to pay for a .com address? I'm currently bootstrapping a project that's entering private beta. The domain I'd like to get is currently owned by a "domainer" who is asking for way more than I'd like to pay.

I'm thinking <$1000 is reasonable for a pretty good domain that has no natural traffic flow. (think snapchat.com in 2010.) Am I way out of line? Should I be willing to pay more? If it matters, the domain I'm seeking has no existing trademarks.

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AppointmentReminder.com wanted $30k. AppointmentReminder.org was available for $8.95. You'll note that I'm still #1 on Google due to the exact match bonus, so mission accomplished plus $29,991.05 in my pocket. This is still an attractive option if you're doing something where brandability isn't all that important.

If you're going for something a bit more brandable, there are plenty of domains in the sub-$2k range which are at least as good as, say, Dropbox, Kabbage, Snapchat, etc etc, and probably many more which are not obviously attractive names but won't hurt your company at all (Twilio, Airbnb, etc).

There's also a virtually infinite number of NAMEapp, getNAME, NAMEnow, etc etc available on any TLD you care to name available for the registration fee. Many startups start that way.

that's awesome. I am looking for more of a brandable name however. so you think <$2k is reasonable? I'm just trying to establish a ballpark range.

If you want a .com and have 2k to burn? Possibly.

If you've already generated 2k+ in revenue - it's probably a more definitive "yes."

Really depends on the property. If it's a single word - you're looking at multiples of that. If you're looking for a made-up word version, you might be able to get it for closer to 1-5k.

Concerning .org tld, here's a relevant wiki paste: "It was one of the original domains established in 1985 and operated by the Public Interest Registry since 1988. The domain extension was originally created for non-profits, but this designation no longer exists and today it is commonly used by schools, open-source projects, and communities as well as by for-profit entities, some of which may use the suffix in an attempt to misleadingly suggest their non-profit status"

I bring this up because indeed .org tld is used generally for non-profits, or the non-profit/philanthropic arms of for-profit companies (google.org, etc.), so branding .org tld for your little startup would seem like a misguided decision, and may possibly impair the professional look one is going for. I know you've just said that this is an attractive option where brandability isn't important, but I'm hoping you can discuss this just a little bit more. Is using .org for one's startup a total no-no or is there some conceivable scenario in which it would actually work out?

You could of said a tl;dr version that .org is for organization and .com is for commercial.

If wiki articles start purchasing SaaS I will begin to care what they say, but office managers purchase SaaS quite routinely, and empirically they don't care. If you doubt this, you're welcome to chat up the office manager at e.g. your dentist. Ask them to a) name a TLD, b) name three common TLDs, and c) explain the difference between those TLDs.

But your first point stands: you can only use the .org because you willingly forego brand building. If you want to build your brand, you need the .com, because branding must agree with consensus, which is that powerful brands own the .com. I argue this is common fact.

So if you are not buying the .com, you are choosing not to build the AppointmentReminder brand. Why? Surely, more markets exist for you to sell to. The recognizability of a brand bridges market segments. Since every market segment communicates in its own language (because of varying contexts), they need standard identifiers of solutions to problems, which a brand provides. With a solid brand, you control a channel of communication between markets. Thus, you naturally expose the company to new markets.

There is nothing stopping you from growing AppointmentReminder 10x, at least. The markets exist for you to capture. So why don't you try to do capture them? The first step is paying $30k for the .com (maybe make the marketing materials first).

AppointmentReminder isn't a brand. For the reason that Snapchat is a brand while DisappearingPics is not (and probably wouldn't ever be) a brand.

My guess is that patio went for SEO boost over brandability when picking the name.

Did you actually try his experiment? You should. Find someone who might actually buy an appointment reminder service --- the person who manages the calendar for a professional services company --- and ask them the difference between .COM and .ORG.

Your "common fact" is "common" on message boards. You have message board blindness, and it's begging you in this instance to spend $30,000 on something that would potentially not improve sales at all. That's a disastrous decision for an early stage startup.

> The first step is paying $30k for the .com (maybe make the marketing materials first).

Isn't paying 30k for a "brand" piece the last step? You know, after making 30k with the business (or multiples of that?)

It seems really bad business strategy to vomit 30k on a domain name before you even get started in a business (and I love branding).

Apologies for the self-admitted low quality of this response, but this is a fantastic response.

"...but this designation no longer exists..."

Is this just the fine print? Or does it just not matter anymore.

Perhaps you should read a bit farther down that Wikipedia page:

Anyone can register an org second-level domain. Although org was recommended for non-commercial entities, there are no restrictions to registration. There are some instances of org being used by commercial sites such as craigslist.org.

Refer all complaints to Craig Newmark.

It's been decades since anyone cared what those suffixes used to mean. Just look at all the .co domains. And how many of those .cc domains are really in the Cocos Islands?

Depends on your audience. There are people who type "facebook.com" into the google search bar. Do you think those people know what a .org is?

You may have saved nearly $30K, but how much business are you losing to those people that type in the .com version trying to get to you. The parked page may have ads from your competitors. What is the value of all that potential (albeit difficult to quantify) business?

I keep hearing this weird reasoning, but have yet to come across anyone who confused a poorly designed, ad-filled placeholder site for a real website.

Put differently, if you're losing people who click shady text ads on a shady website, they probably weren't potential customers to begin with.

The "shady" ads are usually adwords ads - yes, adwords allows some shady ads, but they also include lots of legit advertisers too.

Yes, the parked pages are nothing but ads, but users who land there are looking for an escape and a surprisingly high number click on the ads.

You can find out more from Marchex which is a public company (ticker: MCHX) that runs a large domain portfolio (since it is public, they disclose lots of info).

If you can get it at a steal, take it. Otherwise, a "perfect" domain is something to be purchased at a much later stage (e.g., Series B). Startups are all about priorities -- where to best spend your time and your cash -- and this is a perfect example of that.

As soon as the startup get any press, all domains will be gone and kept at ransom for you to cash out for insane amounts.

If a startup has managed to grow successfully and raise a Series B, as the parent says, then I wager they can continue operating with their own domain. There's no reason why they cannot continue ignoring the .com (and the "ransom") and focus on growing their real business.

Personally I wouldn't pay for an expensive domain at the stage of being bootstrapped ... if the project is good, it shouldn't matter much what the name is?

True, I don't need this exact domain. However, it was a pretty good one amongst the ones I brainstormed, so I don't mind paying some amount >$10 to get it. Trying to brainstorm now to see if I can think of a better one.

Along these lines - I would find spending a lot of money on a domain a red flag as an investor

"Domainer"? When did we stop calling them "scalpers"? There's no reason to give purely parasitic middlemen the benefit of a euphemism.

Well there's a reason I put quotes around it.

Fair enough.

Another option is to rent with an option to purchase.

If they want $5000, you can say, "I'll give you $100 in year 1, $1000 in year 2, and purchase it for $10,000 in year 3"

If the business is successful, $10,000 hopefully will not matter. If it isn't, you don't have to pay and the owner keeps the domain.

I would be happy to go with that option, but I doubt the current owner will be reasonable about negotiating. (They seem to be a large scale professional domainer.)

If you haven't sold anything yet, $15. If you have and it looks like you're going to make money this year, $1000.

Just for an anecdote that somewhat differs with the popular sentiment here: Thumbtack paid 5-figures for the domain (thumbtack.com) on seed funding long before any traction.

There is no way to prove whether or not we would have been as successful with a random domain, but I think in the early days it helped make us seem more established to the non-tech savvy user (which was and still is the majority of the users) than we were at the time. I think if your users are more tech savvy it doesn't matter as much, but for "consumer brand" types of things, I think if your name is good, and your name and domain name match, that will be noticed and will make you appear more reputable.

Use whatever money you are willing to spend on a domain on the company instead. Given the current stage of the company, I strongly recommend the mindset of "anything greater than $0 is expensive". That mindset has kept me (I am also bootstrapping) from spending money on things that are not important in the short-term.

If you absolutely must get your desired .com domain, I would recommend finding a new name for the company that has an available .com. You might even find that you like the new name better.

The most you should pay is the $10 or so to get the same domain name but with a different TLD.

Once you're up and running and generating revenue, then you can worry about paying for the .com.

(The price that the "domainer" is asking isn't going to come down. It comes him practically nothing (<$10/year) to hold onto the domain name -- which he'll definitely do now that he knows someone is interested -- since he is your only option if you really want it.)

I'd expect the "domainer" to increase his asking price if the different-TLD site seems to be doing well.

yea this is why I'm not eager to get working on a different TLD. I don't want to inflate my own market. Apparently Dropbox trademarked their name and filed a complaint against the dropbox.com owner so I could conceivably pursue that route but it's somewhat shady.

> The price that the "domainer" is asking isn't going to come down.

That's not really true - they don't ever make money unless someone buys it - so it's not like they're sitting on all their domains waiting for million dollars offers for them.

your total domain related costs including. com must not exceed 50K per year once you are big, 10000 per year once you got a 7 figure investment and 1000 when you get traction and 100 when you dont have customers, all in usd.

Can you explain? I don't understand. Why those numbers? Why not just $10/year regardless of company size? Or ($10 * numDomains) per year regardless of company size?

I just summarized my previous search on the same topic, from multiple resources. Fred Wilson of USV has an article on avc.com on this matter too. I tried to relate the investment into different parts of a startup. Main idea is to start slow, as you are more sure, go on to buy more. So if you don't yet have customers don't invest crazy sums.

When vine ran up against a similar issue they registered the .co tld and it hasn't held them back. Plus, .co's are selling for around $10 still for decent names. This might be a good area to look at.

Thanks I was not aware they used .co

There are plenty of decent domain names available for startups that you can registr for $10. If you can't think of a good name, try using a domain name generator like www.namestation.com

I agree. I think $1000 is perfectly reasonable in almost any serious project, but anything higher is only rarely worthwhile.

Unless you have money coming in or are especially committed, either keep brainstorming or add a prefix/suffix to your name to find something available for $10. You can still see success this way and it doesn't encourage the domainer.

It depends on whether you already have an established brand and name. If you don't then find a name that hasn't been taken. Unless it is THE PERFECT NAME, it isn't worth more than your standard new name.

Given that Facebook used to be thefacebook and Dropbox used to be getdropbox, I think you should go with the cheap option.

$0. If you become famous, people won't have trouble remembering any name you come up with.

Just remember that dropbox started out as getdropbox.com, istock.com started out as istockphoto.com. As long as you are free and clear on the trademark, get something close. Also technical start-ups are having great luck with .io

Yea ... I just read some rumors of how Dropbox paid several hundred thousand to get their domain. That would make me sick...!

Non-technical startup in this case, consumer facing.

But they didn't buy the domain until the company was over a year old. And they've had $250 million in financing over the years.

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