How much do domains sell for?

Ash_Pole

Hope this is the right forum.

Our business has a web address in the form https://www.our-business.co.uk

Someone else has registered the same without the hyphen, if you go to this it redirects to a holiday website (we're in that business).

I've contacted them and asked if they would be willing to sell us the hyphen-less domain and they said yes and "how much?".

I've no idea. Anyone know what sort of price these things go for? This is very much a "nice to have" rather than a necessity so we wouldn't be going overboard.

System

There is no set amount. It is how much you are willing to pay against how little they are willing to accept.
Why did you never register the other domain before? If you didn't need it then, do you need it now? How much trade will you lose to the other company by not having it?

esuhl

You can register a currently-unused .co.uk domain for about £2.50 a year. Sex.com sold for over £8 million. So it would probably be somewhere between those two figures.

As with any negotiation, you'd have to work out what it's worth to you, and what you think the other party would accept.

Psychofly

If it's a malicious attempt to syphon off business based on your domain name then you might be able to make a challenge regarding domain ownership. Not always effective but worth looking into it. Never had to do it myself so I'm not sure exactly where you stand but it's worth a look especially if they're not willing to sell the domain to you for a reasonable price and are effectively using your company name to get business. http://www.icann.org/en/faq/#udrp Have a read of that and see if it's of any use.

WLM21

Have a look here ..

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/

Jonnytwotimes

Find out as much info on the domain as you can, what's its alexa ranking demographics etc get detailed traffic stats. If there in the same business as you then that's a steady stream of free traffic in place already that you can redirect to your site, make a decision based on that. Nobody can tell you how much it's worth to you.

Little_Moo

It really depends on if the other person is using the domain name. It could be their business like it is yours and they may have devoted time building up the traffic to their site. As the reply above find out the Alexa ranking and see if they have any active PPC or advertising to the domain itself.

As for the cost of domains you can pick up co.uk domains from just £2.50 a year or .coms for about £9.99, but after sales are a very different thing than new registrations.

Good look with it!

zee_2

why the fuss ?you reg your domain in may 2011 [ I think ] other domain first reg in 1998 , age increases value offer £500 and go in stages up to £1000 if you really want domain

debitcardmayhem

4 days no response from OP would you go to their website , perhaps they are on holiday :cool:

S0litaire

personally (IANAL but this is my personal view of how i would proceed)
:
First offer I'd give would be the cost to register the domain for 2 years (if you use a whois.net and search for the domain name you can see what the registrars website is and then use that as a price guide)

Then see what his counter offer is if it's less than 4 times the yearly registration fee then it's up to you to accept it

If things don't go well (i.e. he starts to ask for silly money £500+) then you might try going the legal route.
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/center/faq/domains.html#7

It's all done on-line and costs around $1500 for a single person panel resolution and takes around 2 months.