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.
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 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.
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