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Acquired thankbox.com and made it primary domain

In July I finally managed to acquire the thankbox.com domain for $3000. Last weekend I did the transition of redirecting thankbox.co to the new domain.

Why change domain?

Being a B2C business I have had people tell me that the .co looks a bit doubtful. A large part of my customers aren't tech savvy so having a .com does make them feel better. When serving end users, having something they're more used to is not to be underestimated.

I also had a lot of people already trying to email me @thankbox.com and then get annoyed that I wasn't answering their emails 😂

The story of the acquisition

The acquisition was actually a very straightforward and pleasant process.

I had actually contacted the previous owner at the start of 2021. At that point they didn't want to sell though.

I tried again in June and, surprisingly, had a good response! He suggested the price - $3000. I thought about it and thought it was reasonable.

He offered we use escrow.com and even offered to pay for the fees, which was a kind gesture. Once I had sent the funds and Escrow had confirmed it he transferred the domain the same day - through GoDaddy.

I'd heard horror stories of buying domains off someone like this before but I was pleasantly surprised at how easy this whole thing was. I guess I was lucky?

The owner was super awesome and, when he found out what I was doing, wished me luck.

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Downsides and things breaking

The main downside of changing the domain is that, for a while, I'll take an SEO hit. I hope it'll bounce back within a couple of months since I have done all of my 301 directs correctly (I hope 🤞)

I also found an issue where old secure URLs to Thankboxes (the one I send recipients) were redirecting but were giving a 403. I quickly had to scramble and send an email to all recent recipients with a new link to their cards - that's 7000 emails going out, hah.

Suffice to say, I'm expecting to have an increased level of customer support for the next couple of weeks, though.

This was totally worth it, though. I feel so much better having the .com

  1. 3

    great move Valentin. In buying the .com you are also protecting yourself over someone else creating a site and taking your traffic. Good purchase for $3k! Good luck with it

  2. 2

    You got the domain at good price. As a person who has worked in domain flipping market I have seen sellers randomly throwing prices like 10k, 40k, 50k, etc when get to know you already have a business with same name. The surprising thing is buyers end up paying high price due to brand value and fomo risk to loose domain to competitors.

    1. 3

      Agreed. I just sold a domain for $85k, that I'd purchased for an idea I'd not started with. They REALLY wanted it!

      1. 1

        Wow, nice going! I should really become a domain hoarder haha

        1. 1

          That's the BEST I've ever done. By a long way - very lucky

  3. 1

    Did you consider just redirecting .com to .co ?

    And also adding an auto-forward for any email that went to the .com email address?

    1. 1

      I did but since I am in the B2C space I felt that having the .com as primary is better. I already had seen people online misstype it as thankbox.com so I decided to take the short-term SEO hit and go with the .com

  4. 1

    Good move. Com's are standard that people definitely remember so its better for promotion via word of mouth and branding.

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