How I got a premium domain for my bootstrapped startup
Wrote an in-depth article about this, but the short version is I looked for .com domains for sale then chose my name from there, instead of falling in love with a name and THEN trying to figure out what the domain would be.
I've read too many horror stories about startups spending insane sums to get the .com!
so where do you look for domains for sale?
I bought mine from hugedomains.com, more resources are linked in the article!
Thank you! I'll check it out.
Btw, I don't see any linked article to this post. I only see the message and the link goes to your profile.
Ah weird, here's the link https://lauraroeder.com/how-i-nabbed-the-com-for-my-bootstrapped-startup-without-spending-a-million-bucks-6dc35c4606e9
Here's the actual article: https://lauraroeder.com/how-i-nabbed-the-com-for-my-bootstrapped-startup-without-spending-a-million-bucks-6dc35c4606e9
thanks! didn't realise it didn't show up here, just tried to add it again and it's giving me a weird error and not letting me add cc @csallen
Hey, @Laura! Great to see you on IH again! Your "Creating Fame" course was the first truly useful online course I ever bought.
Your strategy sounds a lot like what Patrick Collison described in various podcast interviews about getting the domain for Stripe. Having many potential sellers is a much better situation than being completely at the mercy of one person's whim. In some cases, that person will just increase their asking price as the business that wants the domain grows.
that's awesome, and I'll have to look up the stripe domain story, hadn't heard that one!
Honestly wish more people did this, rather than pick a word and then spend years trying to acquire the matching .com.
Too many pick a common word they love and then go crazy when they realize the .com isn't available for less than five (or six, or seven) figures. The amount of people who think they should be able to own a one-word .com for $500 (or better yet, register it for $8) is mind-blowing.
By the way, Paperbell is a beautiful name, and that's a great price!
For anyone looking to catch a good .com at a good price, I recommend looking at Dropcatch and GoDaddy Auctions for a few weeks. They auction expired domains (sometimes dropped by the likes of HugeDomains, who, by the way, owns Dropcatch) and you can find great brandables under $100 if you're willing to spend some time looking. Of course, once in a while a big keyword drops and the auctions will go crazy, Gradient.com sold at one of these expired auctions for $130k when it dropped a year or two ago.
This is a good point @Laura. Looking for already available domain names can save some headaches, especially when you get fixated on a name before you check if the domain is available.
Never heard of horror stories, but some people on GoDaddy try to sell domain names for horrific amounts. Try to get one with "crypto"... Anyway, there are many out there, and e. g. a .net (as we chose to use) is also top tier.
Thanks for sharing, Laura!
I never really pictured this as a "horror story", though. I figured the approach was to
meetedgar.com,tryedgar.com, etcedgar.comonce you have enough success/revenue to justify it.This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Stripe only paid $12,000 to get the .com?! That's a hell of a steal.
You can't get .com's like that at wholesale for low five figures these days.
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Ah, I see. So I guess the potential "horror story" in the approach I outlined is: You buy
tryedgar.comand then you get really big and, for whatever reason, not havingedgar.comis a huge problem (maybe the current owner is stealing your search traffic or something) but the price on it is $X00,000.or at least that's the story they tell us...right? ;)
What is the domain name?
Paperbell.com :)
Might be her new company paperbell.com
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My last company was considering buying "cumberland.com" for $100k. I think a .com with one to two dictionary words is premium given today's environment.
I agree, I wouldn't call that a "premium" domain. Premium is either very short (3-4 letters), a single very important keyword or common word (or a common compounded keyword, such as "free-hosting.com").