# Purchasing domain name



## Ryan_BPC (Mar 14, 2008)

Im looking into purchasing my domain name, but the one that I want is currently taken. The only thing is that when I go to the website itself, its nothing but links to other websites... Its not an actually website for anything..

How do I go about Buying this domain name off the person that currently owns it? I know that GoDaddy has a way to do it, but i was wondering if there was any other alternatives


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## splathead (Dec 4, 2005)

You could contact the owner and ask him if the site is for sale. There is a link to the whois database on Godaddy's site that should reveal the owner.


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## Ryan_BPC (Mar 14, 2008)

Ya, i checked out the whois on Godaddy, but it doesn't have a person that owns it. NAMEVIEW INC owns it. does anyone have any clue on what i should do?


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Are you sure you're looking in the right spot on the domain whois record?

Try Domain Tools: Whois Lookup and Domain Suggestions and type in the domain you want.

It should show more details on who owns the domain. Then you can contact that person by email or phone and ask them if they are interested in selling the domain.

There are some services like Godaddy and Network Solutions (and a few others) that will allow you to make an "anonymous" offer on any domain name. You tell them how much you're willing to pay and they will contact the domain owner on your behalf.



> but the one that I want is currently taken. The only thing is that when I go to the website itself, its nothing but links to other websites... Its not an actually website for anything..


This could mean a lot of things. It could be that the domain owner is earning advertising revenue off of the domain. It could be that the domain owner is using the domain just for email and hasn't decided to put up a website yet. It could mean that the domain owner just bought the domain so they could turn around and sell it later.

The only way to really find out is to ask them directly.

I've purchased a few domains this way (that someone already owned) and I've sold a few domains that way (from people contacting me through the whois records of a domain they wanted to buy from me).

It's usually a pretty simple process. You can send them a quick email saying something like:

"Would you be interested in selling example.com? I can offer you $200 for it".

It doesn't have to be $200, it can be less or more. 

They will either say yes, no, ignore the email (or it might get accidently spam filtered) or they may make a counter offer.

If you go through one of the offer/broker services, they may want to charge a transaction percentage of the sale. However, the seller may feel the offer is more "official" if it came through one of those services.

If it was me, I'd just send a short email to the domain owner to inquire about the domain.


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## TiD (May 8, 2008)

If i were you, I'd just pick another domain name. They're less then $10 a year at godaddy or namecheap. Unless of course this domain is a must have for your business. Chasing after an owned domain name is not worth the hassle IMO.


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## 3mrhythm (Apr 27, 2008)

yeah if its already taken.. its taken because the owner intends to try to make a bundle off it .. if he or the company that owns it knows that you want it .. they'll try to charge you an arm and a leg for it.. 

you could... (i know cause this happend to me ) if your business name was created before the person purchased the domain name could file a cease and disist for squatting on a trademarked business name.. 

i used to own a site which was my DJ name back in HS .. the company 3m threatened to sue me and try to sue me for lost potential income for having a name that had 3m in the begining of it claiming i had it there to steal traffic away from thier business.. which was absolute rubbish. It had nothing to do with thier company.. but after talking to a few lawyers.. they said to not fight it .. just dont re register the domain name.. they have bottomless pockets and me (being 19) didnt. 

anywho there is some law that protects companies from people who buy domain names that are exact to business names to later sell to them.. they call it like domain squatting or something .. 

if you email the guy and he tries to sell you the domain you can inturn use that as evidence that he had it to squat on it .


but IMO get a different domain name lol its alot easier.. or email them and see what they want for it .. if its worth it to you ..do it .. if not go with somethign else .. like yourcompanyonline.com or some other varient


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> anywho there is some law that protects companies from people who buy domain names that are exact to business names to later sell to them.. they call it like domain squatting or something ..
> 
> if you email the guy and he tries to sell you the domain you can inturn use that as evidence that he had it to squat on it .


Actually, the cybersquatting law only applies to people who register the domains of existing trademarks to try to sell them.

It doesn't apply in the case where someone registers a domain with the intent to sell it later. Or if someone registers a domain first and then you come up with your business name later.


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## 3mrhythm (Apr 27, 2008)

in my case i made the site obviously after they came up with 3m.. but i had no intent to sell it .. but 3m has deep pockets so i just avoided the situation


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## razzy3d (May 22, 2008)

I found a domain name before I decided what my company was going to be called


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## 3mrhythm (Apr 27, 2008)

yeah thats what I normally do too


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## 3mrhythm (Apr 27, 2008)

best to pick something random too .. makes getting to the top of the google searches easier.. thats why i went with my domain... if you google it i'm already in the top .. after just a couple days


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## razzy3d (May 22, 2008)

3mrhythm said:


> best to pick something random too .. makes getting to the top of the google searches easier.. thats why i went with my domain... if you google it i'm already in the top .. after just a couple days


I agree.
I climbed up there pretty quick and its hard to forget


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## sunnydayz (Jun 22, 2007)

You also have to remember as far as google goes that you start at the top, its called the sand box. They start you their and then see where you fall 

As far as the domain, I would definately send an email to the owner and ask, nothing ventured nothing gained


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## loftgolf (Apr 17, 2008)

The domain name I wanted was taken, so I purchased dot net and dot org. After applying for my trademark (the people that own the dot com had abandoned their trademark) I contacted them to see if they were interested in transferring the site to us as they were doing nothing with it. Well, these genius' think they own ups.com! I'm going with the dot net and marketing "for the greatest gear don't forget, it's NOT .com it's loftgolf.net. As much as I'd like to cash in my CDs and pay 38 gazillion dollars for the .com site, I think I'll do fine with the .net. Good luck to you!


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

loftgolf said:


> The domain name I wanted was taken, so I purchased dot net and dot org. After applying for my trademark (the people that own the dot com had abandoned their trademark) I contacted them to see if they were interested in transferring the site to us as they were doing nothing with it. Well, these genius' think they own ups.com! I'm going with the dot net and marketing "for the greatest gear don't forget, it's NOT .com it's loftgolf.net. As much as I'd like to cash in my CDs and pay 38 gazillion dollars for the .com site, I think I'll do fine with the .net. Good luck to you!


When dealing with property that belongs to someone else, it's important not to assume that you know what a person is doing with that property.

Sometimes that empty lot on the corner that seems abandoned might be planned for a future big project.

Likewise, that domain that you see out there on the net, that is registered by someone else, but with no active site, is still someone elses property. A property that they bought and paid for, that they may or may not be actively planning to use. Even if they plan to use it only for advertisements or for later sale, that is still their use.

It sounds like you may have approached the owner of the .com with the attitude that you may be "entitled" to the .com, when nothing could be farther from the truth.

It's possible you could have negotiated a purchase price that was reasonable. Especially knowing that this name will be the future of your business. If you think of it as an investment that could easily pay for itself once your line starts taking off (or a liability if sales are lost by people going to the .com), it can change the way you approach the negotiation process for a domain name.

Last year, or the year before last, there was a guy who started a t-shirt line and the .com was taken. So he registered the .net and just moved forward with his marketing. His story got picked up by the media and he ended up on CNN and Fox News, talkign about his t-shirt line. Thousands of visitors hit his .net site each day. I found out that he didn't have the .com and I did a little research. I find the .com version of his domain name for sale on one of the domain name related forums for $50. I was able to purchase the domain and give it to the t-shirt seller. We tracked the traffic that came when he got more media mentions, and 100's of visitors still went to the .com even though the screen or the newspaper said .net. 

If your business is long term, the .com is definitely worth it. Especially if you plan any offline media marketing. Radio ads, TV, newspapers, people away from their computers will type in the .com when they get back to their computer.

For a "web centered" type business, the .com version becomes a bit less important. When most of your traffic comes from search engines, social media sites like digg, myspace, youtube, or links from other sites and blogs linking to you, your domain name and extension become a little less important. The .com is still good to have, but you can still be very successful without it.

Just my two bits


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## loftgolf (Apr 17, 2008)

Hey Rodney,
Thanks for your "two bits" .


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## Girlzndollz (Oct 3, 2007)

Rodney said:


> We tracked the traffic that came when he got more media mentions, and 100's of visitors still went to the .com even though the screen or the newspaper said .net.


Rodney, would you say the opposite would ever happen? Do you think more people generally go to .com first? Can I get your opinion on something? Say, for instance, I bake homemade cakes, and my biz name is Kelly's Homemade Cakes, and I have a website for folks to see my cakes, prices and delivery times.

I have two domains I use, kellyshomemadecakes.com, and I pick up homemadecakes.com as a second domain. If someone asks me where my website is, and I answer, "Go to homemadecakes." how many folks out of 100 do you think will go to homemadecakes.com and how many will go to the .net? 

My next Q is about .com vs. net, and why it's good to have both and what's bad about having only one. I'm trying to fit the pieces together, and I am thinking they go like this:

If you have .net, try to get .com so you don't lose misdirected customers who lead themselves to the wrong site.

If you have .com, try to get .net so other businesses do not try to purposely misdirect your customers and lead them to their own site.

Is that going in the right direction? Thanks, Rodney.


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## splathead (Dec 4, 2005)

Girlzndollz said:


> I have two domains I use, www.kellyshomemadecakes.com, and I pick up homemadecakes.com as a second domain. If someone asks me where my website is, and I answer, "Go to homemadecakes." how many folks out of 100 do you think will go to homemadecakes.com and how many will go to the .net?


100 will go to .com and 0 to .net



Girlzndollz said:


> If you have .net, try to get .com so you don't lose misdirected customers who lead themselves to the wrong site.


If you have .net it's because .com was already taken



Girlzndollz said:


> If you have .com, try to get .net so other businesses do not try to purposely misdirect your customers and lead them to their own site.


That, plus think about american apparel. The poor guy who has americanapparel.com abviously got so many inquiries on his site for americanapparel.net (.com was taken when they started their business?), that he has had to put a notice on his home page redirecting people to the correct shirt site. Get .net, .biz, etc. because they are cheap to have and it could avoid confusion in the future.


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## sunnydayz (Jun 22, 2007)

I agree, I buy all variations just due to the fact that I also dont want someone else to capitalize off a site name I have built up. This way I am sure I am the only one with the name irregardless whether it is .net .com .org or any of the others.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> Rodney, would you say the opposite would ever happen? Do you think more people generally go to .com first?


People will generally go to the .com first. See Joe's example above about americanapparel.com



> I have two domains I use, kellyshomemadecakes.com, and I pick up homemadecakes.com as a second domain. If someone asks me where my website is, and I answer, "Go to homemadecakes." how many folks out of 100 do you think will go to homemadecakes.com and how many will go to the .net?


Again, I agree with Joe. 100 to the .com and 0 to the .net. If you have some geeky customers, they may try to check out the .net out of curiosity to see if you have that too 



> My next Q is about .com vs. net, and why it's good to have both and what's bad about having only one. I'm trying to fit the pieces together, and I am thinking they go like this:
> 
> If you have .net, try to get .com so you don't lose misdirected customers who lead themselves to the wrong site.
> 
> ...


That's exactly right. Once you have the .com, you want to get the .net and .org to protect your brand. So other people can't register the .net/.org and put up competing sites that may confuse your customers. 

If you just have the .net, you want to try to get the .com to also protect your brand and to make sure your customers to the .net stay your customers and don't mistakenly go to the .com and get someone else's business.

With domain names only costing $9-$10 a year these days, a $30 investment in the trifecta (.com/.net/.org) is a good business move.

If you are planning a long term business on the net and your business name is set in stone, but for some reason you forgot to check to see if the .com is available first, it could be a good business investment to try and purchase the .com if the current owner is open to selling.


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