Ask HN: What is the most you've paid for a domain name? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the most you've paid for a domain name?

39 pointsmbarrett70 comments

What is the most you have paid for personal or business reasons? What extension? What domain? Mask them out fully or partially if you want but knowing the length is helpful.

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Never paid much for domains, but the biggest loss was exgfs.com

I registered it in 2005ish before that whole niche in porn took off, some dude offered me $100 3 days later, being young and naive I took it thinking it was a great flip. Year later I watched him sell it for $100,000. I learned my lesson that day.

Ouch. :(

exgfs - and there was me wondering what filesystem it was.

How did you find out he sold it for $100K?

I had worked with the guy, and a year later he was like "you remember that domain you sold me for $100? I just flipped it for $100k"

That hurts! Personally, I have lost a lot of money selling things quickly, or if I'm not feeling that great. I remember selling something on craigslist, and while walking through my carport, the buyer asked me what I wanted for the '63 karmen ghia. I was tired--I didn't like the dude--and just wanted to finish the deal. I told him I need to think about it, but I would take $200. I walked upstairs and said WTF is wrong with me? I had to block the dude from emailing me. As someone who buys stuff, I've noticed young people sometimes vastly undervalue their stuff, while a lot of older people overvalue.

Maybe 5-6 years ago I bought tgood.com for $300, negotiated down from $3,000. In 2014 I sold it to TGOOD Electric Co. out of China – their market cap at the time was ~$7B and a co-founder messaged me via Facebook. I was set on never selling it; that TGOOD was to become my VIRGIN brands. Over the years I tested different blog concepts on it. However, their offer was one I couldn't refuse and has provided a nice personal runway. My cousins law firm handled the dialog and it took 3-4 months from start to finish… since this nickname was originated by my birth name, I gave my parents about a third of the proceeds.

I sold a four-letter .org for $5000 once, original offer was $500 which I didn't think was enough. Whatever the buyer wanted to launch on it never got off the ground, and a few years later I was able to grab it back when it lapsed.

Doesn't that feel great? I had that happen. I was in negotiations with someone that fell through and then the next YEAR they decided to not renew and let it lapse.

There is a domain I really want right now that is being squatted. Any advice HN? I already own the '.net' version so I don't really _need_ the '.com' version but I want it. I doubt it is a high value name and I am considering just sending the the admin listed in the WHOIS an email like "Hey, I will give you $50 for .com, let me know." Is this a good approach or should I try to go thru an 'appraiser' or something like that.

I think that you have two decent options:

1) Have a friend send an e-mail asking if it's for sale. If they respond with a reasonable price, buy it.

2) Assuming the owner/squatter is remotely intelligent, they'll do their diligence and realize that the .NET is being actively used. In that case, you'll have to decide how bad you want it and/or if you would ever consider re-branding. You could try the: "This is the best offer you're ever going to get, so take it or leave it." But the owner could always call your bluff, and just hold onto the name knowing that it's getting ever more valuable to you as you grow.

I'd try option 1, wait a few months (depending on what they say), and then try some blend of option 2.

I did the same thing (sent an email to the WHOIS) to a name I wanted. The guy responded and we went back and forth a bit. He had just registered the name a few months prior from godaddy and had just paid the $12 or whatever. He however thought the value had skyrocketed since he bought it and wanted a lot more. I just found another domain that hadn't been registered and bought it.

If it's not already listed for sale somewhere for ~$50, it's very unlikely you're going to get it for a relatively low figure.

Once someone gets contacted about their domain, their estimation of the domain's worth automatically jumps. So if they're thinking it's not all that valuable, your contact will make them think it's worth something. Even a layperson will think it's worth hundreds or thousands of dollars.

I'd also check out the whois info and see how long it has been registered. Assuming it is a .com address multiply the number of years by $10 to get an idea of how much they have been paying to keep it registered.

They are going to want to at least recoup their cost in a sale (sunk cost fallacy?) so I'd offer them at least that plus 10% so they aren't insulted.

Use the To: field of your request to your advantage. Send him an email along with 20 other webmaster@domains asking all of them if their domains are for sale and for how much. You can even throw in a line that you're looking for a quick deal and whoever can respond with a reasonable price, say $50 or so, will get the buy.

Fred Wilson's blog post, but more specifically the top comment is gold. There is a template in there which may work for you: http://avc.com/2011/04/finding-and-buying-a-domain-name/

Subject Line: Whatever.com ($2,500?)

Hi,

I see you are the owner of Whatever.com. I'm in the process of trying to find a domain name for a client I am building a web site for and think your name could be a good fit. I am contacting different domain owners as we have it in the budget to buy a cool name and Whatever.com is on the list we came up with.

Would you be interested in selling it for $2,500?

Let me know and I can have the funds wired to you next day or PayPal'd to you. Just let me know your PayPal address.

Thanks for your time.

-YOUR NAME

What happens when you wire the money and get no domain?

Might be worth mentioning Escrow.com/Sedo upfront.

Yes. I always have..

Here's an email exchange I had with someone who bought a domain from me:

    Buyer
    Hi there,
    Is the domain-name.com domain for sale?
    Cheers

    Jotux
    I have future plans for the domain but I'd considering selling it. Make me an offer.

    Buyer
    Hi Joe
    How about $500?
    Cheers
    
    Jotux
    That works for me. You can paypal or dwolla money to me, I'll give you the auth code to transfer the domain.

Never hurts to just ask.

Paid $7000 or so for dailysnap.com, and $400 or so for gotacrush.com . Both projects failed.

Dailysnap.com is a pretty great name. You should definitely find something to use it on again during this era of selfies.

I really want to know how much the guys at RapGenius paid for genius.com

$70,000 ww.com, $50,000 camnow.com

What did you do with those domains?

He posted them to hackernews, to increase traffic, so he can sell them to someone else now. ;)

ww.com was my main source of income for about a decade, camnow.com was operational for a much smaller period.

Both were webcam related sites.

Nice. How much direct typo traffic do you get from ww.com?

$500

7 letters, .com address, six or seven years ago

Solid domain name, and I had an interesting product for it. Didn't materialize the way I hoped, so I shut it down. I've kept the domain though.

I've occasionally run across domains in the $5k range that were quite good, but I still seem to find good enough .com addresses that I've yet to resort to buying one. I'm working on a new product now that is a 5 letter .com address, I bought it straight from a registrar, and it's exactly what I was looking for.

I've probably only owned one that was stand-alone valuable. I bought a domain in 1997 via Network Solutions, and have held on to it since then. It's a six letter .com dictionary term.

I purchased myh2o.com for our SaaS billing platform (named H2O) in 2010 for $3500. I also purchased h2o.io sometime after that for $600. In 2009, an ISP client of ours, Rio Networks, sold rio.com for $450,000.

I purchased Texts.com while in high school (~10 years ago) for ~$15k. I had made a fair amount of money flipping domain names on sites like Namepros / DNForum / a few private forums. A mix of "tulip" LLL.com's, and then a few instances of snagging a name in the aftermarket and immediately flipping it to an "end user."

My biggest domain-fail was letting Naked-Celebs.com expire. I bought it for something like $300 in 2009 and forgot to transfer it to my main portfolio, and somehow let it drop... I still shudder thinking about that sometimes.

How much did you sell Texts.com for, and when did you sell it? Assuming you've sold it.

We make use of it now for my startup. One of the rare circumstances, probably, where the name happened to come before the idea.

Wait a second.... You had $15,000 to drop on a domain in HIGH SCHOOL!? That's crazy, and incredible. Ha

Back then there was a lot of easy money in domain names if you knew what you were doing. Also benefited from some questionable tactics I would never use now that I know better / have a real reputation to protect. IE typos, bulk-sifting Whois for deals, etc. Nothing crazy blackhat / shady, but stuff I wouldn't go near anymore.

I think it was $2000. We were operating in several countries with the same brand and when entering a new country we needed that TLD. It was rightfully owned by a woman who happened to have the name as a nickname (registered years before our brand existed). Her website was static, outdated and of geocities type quality (stars background, animated icons). A friend of hers negotiated and I think we caught him off-guard on the phone. Our budget was multiple times that.

7 characters.

I was once contacted by a hollywood musician to buy iSingr.com. I wanted to sell for $500. My Friends convinced me to ask for $15000. And the buyer stopped responding :).

Not my own purchase, but my previous employer paid somewhere in the region of £1-2 million (I forget the exact figure) for a 2 letter .com which was actively being used by a Brazilian company. They were using the .com and the .com.br and just used the .com.br as their main domain after the sale.

It was a huge amount of money but it made sense seeing as the buyer was a business with a 2 letter name.

Never paid more than the standard registration fee for a name. Nearly all the names I have are .com; I have one .org and one .us. None of them are particularly interesting. I did get an email once inquiring about buying one of my domains, but I wasn't interested in selling so I never got an offer.

For a company I organised a $5k AUD purchase. The owner didn't counter offer and took the initial offer. I had $20k initial limit, and could have likely taken an increased premium back to the company successfully. If you get an offer treat that as an opening, not what someone is willing to pay.

Reading some of these replies, I have to shake my head at the people who are expecting 100x or 2000x "profit" on domain squatting.

I agree with supply and demand, and letting market forces dictate pricing etc etc.... but domain squatting is one of my biggest pet peeves out there.

$ 9.99

I submitted a request for quote for hdd.com They replied back and said they'd accept nothing less than $100k. Seems ridiculous based on the numbers I'm seeing here.

They must be feeling stupid now that SSDs are becoming commonplace. :)

I offered $15k for a 4 letter non-english word domain and was turned down. That was 10 years ago. Now they want $42k. Still sitting on it. It's some sort of broker.

$5,000 for ipvm.com 3 years ago, we started with ipvideomarket.info which was long and unwiedly and have been happy with what we paid to go to a 4 letter .com domain

Bought orch.in for 300$

Which left such a big hole in my poor little bank account (I am a college student) But one year later, turns out it was worth it, every penny of it. :)

I bought pmn.org for 4k (my initials and username most places). I'd just sold a domain set (.com, .net, .org) for 10k and felt spendy :)

I bought gpu.graphics soon after the new gTLD availability for around $35. Still looking for buyers but it was probably a bad idea.

I paid $600 for 0v.org a few years ago. I was happy to get a 2 character .org for under $1000. I use it for my personal site now.

Can you still make decent coin buying and selling domain names? Are there alerts you can setup for when one becomes available?

I was offered $700 for wikawika.com, I asked for $800 and all communication stopped. Domain buyers are a fickle bunch I guess.

as are squatters.

I was offered $2000 for laptracker.com - I didn't sell it. Looking for 10 to 20x that amount.

Exponenti.al for $100. As a domain hack / shortener for our primary domain exponentialtv.com

I bought joypath.com for 450, personal project.

purchases for employer

party-------.com for 5500

---force.com for 12000

-----lite.com for 11500

bsd.io -- registered it for something like $120 at the time. It lapsed during hard times and the registration fees hadn't yet dropped. Now someone is squatting on it.

500k+ for one .com domain with between 7-11 characters.

Any more clues? :)

13k xmt.com '07 17k citytrip.com '08

i considered paying 5k+ for a domain once. instead I just found another one that was unregged. very happy with my decision.

I recently sold pnthr.com for 9k.

partyinda.club is for sale :) Anyone have 50 Cent's contact info?

My last name .com - $3500.

one Euro an fifty Cents

I bought ॐ.tv for $50.

mensk.com for $50.

c.gg for $50 EUROs

I own growthhack.how How much do you think it would fetch?

Anything other than dictionary words on the new gTLDs is not going to be worth much

Not a very good domain name to be honest. I doubt you will be able to sell it at all.

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