My wife wants to start her own law practice. The domain name [wife’s maiden name]law.com is apparently owned, but there isn’t any website at the website. I used a domain name search to get the info on the person who owns it. According to that site, the person has the same last name (so I assume they got the website to actually use and not to squat on it to sell to someone later), have had it since 2001 and have it through 2013.
I’m not super-driven to pick up the domain name, there are plenty of acceptable variations that are free. But I figured if the person who has it isn’t using it, its costing them money, and selling it to me will at least get them some of their money back. Using the “way back machine”, the last “crawl” of the site was in 2001, and that just had a basically blank page (just text basically saying “Bobs law firm coming soon”). I assume that means they basically never used the page?
On the other hand, I’m not really willing to put up big bucks for it (maybe 100-200$ tops), as I said I’m alright just using one of the available variations, and browsing around it seems some domain names sell for many hundreds or thousands of dollars.
So I’m going to email the person an email with an offer, but was wondering what the collective Doper wisdom on domain name buying was. First, is it possible? Can someone transfer the domain name to another person before their lease on it runs out? Second, how much do they usually sell for (I realize this probably depends a lot on what the name is) and otherwise if Dopers have any other sage advice on the topic.
People transfer domain names all the time. There are a bunch of companies that squat on interesting sounding names in hopes of someday selling one them to make it worthwhile. Anything hits the news and suddenly “binladeninabbottobad.com” is taken.
There are domain name escrow services that will take your money (plus a fee), and “watch” to make sure the domain is transferred properly, and only then forward the money. But for something small scale like this, you may not want to pay out the $ for that. (They might also not really help in the transfer. They are sometimes just for escrowing the money, etc.)
Note that the info in a WHOIS is not always reliable. People put in fake names in order to avoid being accused of trademark-based squatting. They might put the owner as “Jimmy Ford” for jford.com in order to avoid a hassle from Ford Motor Co.
As for price: Make a modest, worthwhile offer and hope for the best. $100 is unlikely to make it worthwhile for just about anyone. $150 and hope they come back with $200 is your best case scenario. But it’s not all that likely. Realistically, maybe you should consider if you want to double or triple that.
If they ask for a lot of dough, forget it and move on. Don’t even bother checking again in 2013, they will definitely renew it now.
“I’d like to buy the <…> website name if you’re not using it. My wife’s maiden name, and the name she is practicing under, is <…>. I’ll give you $100 for it. I’m not super-driven to pick up the domain name, since there are plenty of acceptable variations that are free. But I figured if you aren’t using it, its costing you money, and selling it to me will at least get you some of your money back.”
This expresses mild interest and makes an offer, but also states that you don’t “have to have” that name.