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What's a reasonable offer for a domain name buyout? And how?
Ein
CaliforniaRegistered User regular
CaliforniaRegistered User regular
Hey guys.
My fiance is starting up a bakery business and in an effort to help her with things, I offered to build her a web site. She picked the name of her business out ('Sweet Tweets'), and I immediately went to godaddy to see if it had been claimed yet. Of course, it had, which left me with the alternatives of either trying to piece together an alternative with hyphens and the likes or a domain that didn't end in .com.
Before I gave up and went after sweet-tweets.com, I did a bit of homework. First off, there's no site at that domain name currently, which I thought might be promising in terms of trying to obtain it... since whoever owned it might be willing to relinquish it.
Then I did some digging in the Internet Archives which showed me that this used to belong to someone who did Geocities-esque web design as a small business... at least up until 2007 or so. After that it dropped off the face of the earth.
I e-mailed the domain registrant, whose information I got off a whois, and explained the situation to them... told them I'd be interested in trying to get the domain name if they'd be willing to part with it. They simply responded with a request that I make them an offer.
Which brings me here, with two questions:
What's a fair price for this sort of thing? I've honestly never had to buy a domain name before - typically, when I set up web sites, the names I need are either unclaimed or I can make variations until I find one that isn't. I figure worst case scenario I make an offer that's low and offend her and she never answers me again, but I don't have any frame of reference for this.
Secondly, how does one actually effectuate the transfer? She's got the domain name bought until March of 2011, from what looks like a Yahoo! domain name registration service. I'm not sure how the transfer actually takes place assuming she goes for an offer I make.
My fiance is starting up a bakery business and in an effort to help her with things, I offered to build her a web site. She picked the name of her business out ('Sweet Tweets'), and I immediately went to godaddy to see if it had been claimed yet. Of course, it had, which left me with the alternatives of either trying to piece together an alternative with hyphens and the likes or a domain that didn't end in .com.
Before I gave up and went after sweet-tweets.com, I did a bit of homework. First off, there's no site at that domain name currently, which I thought might be promising in terms of trying to obtain it... since whoever owned it might be willing to relinquish it.
Then I did some digging in the Internet Archives which showed me that this used to belong to someone who did Geocities-esque web design as a small business... at least up until 2007 or so. After that it dropped off the face of the earth.
I e-mailed the domain registrant, whose information I got off a whois, and explained the situation to them... told them I'd be interested in trying to get the domain name if they'd be willing to part with it. They simply responded with a request that I make them an offer.
Which brings me here, with two questions:
What's a fair price for this sort of thing? I've honestly never had to buy a domain name before - typically, when I set up web sites, the names I need are either unclaimed or I can make variations until I find one that isn't. I figure worst case scenario I make an offer that's low and offend her and she never answers me again, but I don't have any frame of reference for this.
Secondly, how does one actually effectuate the transfer? She's got the domain name bought until March of 2011, from what looks like a Yahoo! domain name registration service. I'm not sure how the transfer actually takes place assuming she goes for an offer I make.
Ein on
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Posts
Well, yeah, but that's 70 bucks ontop of whatever you end up buying the domain name for and then a commission fee after that. I figure if I've got her asking me to make an offer, I probably don't need to add that many additional costs ontop of things.
Offer $100 and hope this person isn't aware of the "twitter tax" for domain names with the word "tweet" in them.
Anything over $200 would not be worth it.
A lot of times people will just buy the names and sit on them until someone makes an offer for ~$1000
I'd consider the owners first or last name followed by sweettweets.com like smithssweettweets or janssweettweets or maybe sweettweetsbakery or something like that.
I'd recommend using a different name. And then filing with ICANN to get a domain being squatted on on basis of a trademark/copyright. If it's a typical squatter "This domain is for sale" type of thing. It's a pain in the ass but you don't have to pay $500 for a domain name.
You're looking at sweet-tweets.com, he's asking about sweettweets.com
For cyber-squatters, you don't actually file UDRP complaints with ICANN, you file with one of their approved arbitration service providers.
Filing with WIPO, for example, costs $1500+.
Alternatively, you talk to your fiance about naming the place Sweet Retweets and register sweet-retweets.com
I made an offer, but I sort've expect it not to go anywhere, since I have to imagine they've been holding on to the name for this long for exactly this purpose.
I'll pitch Sweet Retweets to my fiance, too.
No. The fee is to pay the arbiter.
might be a bit lengthy though
Calling it "thesweettweets" or sweettweetsbakery" won't be any worse than getting sweettweets...