.com website domain already taken — game over?

coffeehound

Would appreciate your input on this please. I’ve been trying to come up with a brand name for a small enterprise and after 100+ attempts, thought I finally had a good one:  minimal google hits and no preexisting commercial use to be seen.

However, the .com is being sat upon with the landing page just showing an email address.  What are the likely outcomes with this?  With the plethora of other website suffixes now available, could I use a few others like .net, .io, .xyz and just ignore the .com?  Bad for SEO?  Could the .com owner deliberately cause problems?

Any idea how much the site owner might charge to sell it?  S/he will already know there is interest from me checking it no doubt.  Better to just go back to the drawing board and find a new name?  Thanks for any suggestions

Neil_Jones

Nothing to stop you buying.co.uk, .xyz, .coop or whatever you like regardless of what state the .com is.  Domains are usually first come first served.

If this is a small business (in the UK) you might do as well just to get the initial.co.uk (and .uk) and then worry about any other domains later.

Sandtree

Who is your target market? Consumers or businesses? UK or elsewhere? Is it direct sales or indirect revenue streams?

.com is the preferred domain however if you are aiming at uk consumers having the .co.uk is very close second if not slightly preferable. 

Can they cause a problem for you? Probably if they are malicious or if your business starts doing well enough to make it potentially profitable. How much would they want? Depend on the domain... many trade at low values but sex.com has been sold a few times around $30m and reportedly the most ever paid is reputed to be over $870m for cars.com. Personally sold a few in the low £X,000s 

GeordieGeorge

Cars.com wasn’t really sold for $850m, that was the accounting value written in for “intangibles” on the sale of the company itself. This number will have been chosen for accounting and tax reasons, it wasn’t separately sold for an agreed value.

OP, have you emailed the address on the site and asked if they’ll sell it to you?

coffeehound

Neil_Jones said:

Nothing to stop you buying.co.uk, .xyz, .coop or whatever you like regardless of what state the .com is.  Domains are usually first come first served.

Sandtree said:

.com is the preferred domain however if you are aiming at uk consumers having the .co.uk is very close second if not slightly preferable. 

Is it a poor compromise do you think?  Or, since hardly anyone actually types in URLs these days, as long as the actual address is set up for SEO, then no problem?  I've got no feel for this stuff yet.

Neil_Jones said:

If this is a small business (in the UK) you might do as well just to get the initial.co.uk (and .uk) and then worry about any other domains later.

Sandtree said:

Who is your target market? Consumers or businesses? UK or elsewhere? Is it direct sales or indirect revenue streams?

.com is the preferred domain however if you are aiming at uk consumers having the .co.uk is very close second if not slightly preferable. 

Consumers initially, perhaps the product will be saleable to a (preferably, large!) company down the line.

Aiming to avoid any UK references as hoping to localise the product (mobile app) in multiple languages eventually.  Another good reason to hold out for a .com?

GeordieGeorge said:

OP, have you emailed the address on the site and asked if they’ll sell it to you?

Nope, I wanted to get some orientating opinions first.  From Sandtree's examples, and since the domain owner is clearly looking to profit, I would guess they will ask at least a five-figure sum.  I'm looking to minimise expenditure so suspect that won't be an option.  Edit, whatever happens, I will ask them just out of interest at some point.

Neil_Jones

Its whether you think the .com is worth five figures.  Remember if you're setting up a company for this product the whole point of having a company is to make money, and you're going to have shift a lot of produce to get that and your other start-up costs back before you'll make any money.  Only you can make that decision.  Depending on the product will decide whether .com is the right domain for it.  If your product was about chicken enclosures, .coop might be better.

Also note:  a .com is often seen as being American.  It actually isn't, .com was originally intended for commercial purposes, though it is effectively run under US Law.

pbartlett

I think you will notice little difference having a .co.uk domain rather than .com

Good luck with your enterprise

pbartlett

it's not decaf dog food is it ?

yksi

You might be wildly overestimating the average domain-sitter's expected return. If the .net, .org etc domains are still available, then the .com domain is going to have very limited demand and value to the general public, and they won't think they are sitting on a gold mine. Make the enquiry. Don't mention a home business, don't give any reason at all that you are interested. It's not unheard of for a camped top-level domain to sell for less than £100 - because I'm assuming it is one of hyphen-hyphen.com, wordwordword.com or madeupword.com . If you tell me it's dictionarysingleword.com I would change my story of course!

If the price is out of your budget, lowball them. They will often say yes. If you still can't get the domain you need, I'd personally skip anything that isn't .co.uk, .net or .com as people will simply not get your website correct and you'll be wasting your time. In that case I would give up on all flavours of Belimpo.com and go with BelimpoDecaf.com or BelimpoDogFood.com ie, put the product/service into the address.

forgotmyname

If .co.uk or other is acceptable, buy that before contacting them.

Maybe just me but if I was sitting on a domain and someone contacted me regarding a purchase I
would buy more domains with that name.

So cheap to buy, you only need to sell one decent one or a few smaller ones to pay for them.

cymruchris

forgotmyname said:

If .co.uk or other is acceptable, buy that before contacting them.

Maybe just me but if I was sitting on a domain and someone contacted me regarding a purchase I
would buy more domains with that name.

So cheap to buy, you only need to sell one decent one or a few smaller ones to pay for them.

That thought crossed my mind when I read this thread - if I'd bought the .com - and then someone started asking questions about it - i might buy up the other local domains such as .co.uk as well, as they're cheap, and that might mean a bit of profit. I'd likely buy the co.uk and then enquire about the .com - then initially keep both, redirect one to the other - and if after a while you only want to keep one, you can let the other lapse.