Buying Web Domain Names - Some Tips and General Precautions
Last week, I acquired an existing web domain digitalinspiration.com from a domain reseller since the URL matches just perfectly with my blog title - Digital Inspiration.
The web domain broker company initially quoted $1,600 for this domain but after some quick negotiations, we closed the deal at around $1,100.
Essential background checks for web domain names
When you are in the market to buy an existing web domain name, always ensure that the site you are about to buy has a clean track record. Here are some online tools to help you run background checks against any domain for free:
1. Archive.org - The Internet Archive Wayback machine maintains snapshots of web pages as they change over time. You can use this service to find the kind of content that was earlier hosted on the domain that you are looking to acquire - stay away from porn and hate sites.
2. Dogpile - The next step is to find web pages that mention that domain name in their content. This is again to get an idea about the previous owners of a domain and what kind of content was available.
Always do a search with and without ‘www’ added to the domain name (e.g., abc.com OR www.abc.com). You could either perform these searches on different search engines individually or use Dogpile that will simultaneously search Google, Yahoo, Ask and Live.com from a single page.
3. AdSense Sandbox - You want to make sure that the domain you are about to buy is not banned by Google AdSense.
Type the domain URL in the sandbox to confirm that Google Ads are available for the domain else you may miss an opportunity to monetize the site via AdSense in future.
4. Yahoo! Site Explorer - This tool shows a list of web pages that are linking to a particular domain.
Yahoo! Site Explorer, in combination with Technorati Search and Google link: operator, will help you ensure that the domain is not part of any bad neighborhood.
Related: When the Web Domain You Want Isn’t Available
And here are some additional tips for buying domain names:
1. Always bargain with your domain broker - digitalinspiration.com was an AdSense parked domain with a "buy it now" price tag of $1,600. Since this was my first deal, I was not very sure if brokers offer any discounts on domain names and therefore directly asked the representative if he could make a lower offer. He did agree and we finally settled at $1,000 plus some transaction fee.
2. Never ask for feedback in public forums - This is obvious but never ask a question like "Should I buy xyz.com at this price ?" because you never know if another member of the forum is also interested in the same domain. (Also see: "How to Sell Blogs and Websites")
3. Always Google for the reseller - I bought this domain from buydomains.com which seems like a good company to deal with but I did Google them to read first-hand experiences of other customers who have previously bought web domains from buydomains.com.
4. Forget e-mail, use the phone - If you are in a different time zone, it’s always good to negotiate over phone than email.
Why buy such a lengthy domain name ?
Sometimes people assume that my site address is digitalinspiration.com as the blog name is Digital Inspiration. This could be an insignificant number but when Manu Khanna tipped me that the domain was up for grabs, I really did not want to miss the opportunity.
Going forward, I will either redirect this new domain to labnol.org or build something completely new. Do you have any ideas or suggestions?
Subscribe in a reader
Surely its a good thing.Better redirect to labnol.org than a brand new one as many peolpe love this site and may be that many people have bookmarked as not able to remember the site name and so now they may find it difficult to differentiate between two if they exist.
Hi Amit,
am agreed u bought ur domain before someone grab it. i has experience with it after i forgot to renew it and someone grab it after expired, Well that is a good to remind me and i renew my 10 domains to maximum year for 10years!
Congratulations on your domain purchase. I recommend that you use this domain to showcase all your blogs and sites. More or less like a placeholder of your corporate entity in the future. Simply forwarding it to existing domain doesn’t do any good.
You could put some widgets that will highlight most popular, most recent posts from all your sites, or future sites.
Interesting dilemma—considering your very large reader base. It is probably unfair for them to go the other way, I think, for the sake of those trying with the new domain name.
In this case, they take priority, I suppose. So +1 redirect, as you said. It’s perhaps the best, and the simplest option.
(If you still like the new domain, may be you could do it like you did the transfer from blogspot—flawlessly, and which was impressive to say the least.)
And congratulations!
Excellent tip. And Congrats on getting the domain.
Amit, it depends basically if you have the time to develop a far more better blog ie a blog with advanced tools, multi authors etc go on this new domains and try to setup a blog similar techcrunch for Indians. Redirecting would just be waste of money since there would be no future of that domain name. Also another option would be to sell some digital products / recommended ebooks/ self written books and put it up as a showcase website. There are many ideas but it would depend on many factors like your plans, investments, time investment etc
Good day!
Very useful advice, but I think there’s a caveat, if you’re buying an expired name at least a few aspects of the problems you mention don’t matter, because Google refreshes a domain when it expires and is then bought up again. It only really matters if you’re transferring ownership of an active domain, which of course you’d want to do in most cases to gain all the ranking benefits.
db
Very practical and apropos!
As for what to do with your new domain, that’s a difficult one! At first look, it seems that simple redirection would be best - it’s always harder to remember sites that have titles that are very different from the URL; so you’d probably get some of the traffic that would otherwise give up.
But then, as Amit Bhawani said, it’ll be a waste of the domain name, it’d be mere eye candy. Of course, shifting totally to this new domain would mean that you lose all your rankings!
This is a tough one, I hope you find a suitable solution.
i think you just forward the new domain to “Domain Forwarding” to labnol.org, easier for someone to google it, just remain whatever u have now…
Hey Amit,
I tried using your Sandbox tool. It shows me only Public Service ads via sandbox, but surprisingly the ads appear on my website just fine.
Anything that you think I’m doing wrong?
Acquiring that domain is really a smart move on your part.
at first glance 1K may seems to be a large sun for such a long domain, bu still i strongly feel that it was a good bargain for you. Digital Inspiration is more like a brand now.
I have checked that URL in my browser. For now you can provide a clickable link to labnol.org on that page.
Once again congrats.
domain business is very high especially on ebay and sedo
1000 $ is too much for a domain
Congrats. Good move. I had typed in http://www.digitalinspiration.com when I wanted your blog so you have an evidence of an actual user typing the name. As suggested above, Domain name forwarding maybe the answer for you.
Congratulations on being the premier Indian international blog.
And congrats on that car. Boy, am I jealous.
My congratulations, Amit! Well done. You’ve done a very good purchase, because you are ‘a brand name’ with a high value for some time, yet.
Brand names are a kind of virtual realities with a value, which you could trade separately of you direct business, even though they are tightly connected.
domain forwarding is the best answer since the title of your blog is the same as the url. it is rather confusing when your title and url doesn’t match.
Here’s my experience…
Few months ago, when I wanted to move this blog to my own domain, my preferred choice was enidhi.com, but it was not available that time and I had to settle for enidhi.net
On march 15th I got an email which read “Recently we have acquired enidhi.com, since you own the .net version of this domain we would like to know if you are interested in buying it” The link they gave said I will have to pay US $ 450 to buy enidhi.com from them. That was not practical for me (INR 18000 for a domain name) and said I can’t afford and not interested.
Few weeks later I ran a whois check for endhi.com and found that it is available for registration-so bought it right away for 10 dollars…
As noted by Moin,I have book marked under the current domain/site name - but still know your site as Digital Inspiration - because it’s worth knowing, regardless of it’s actual domain name…
Make DigitalInspiration.com a big platform for discussing digital gadgets, where users can interact with each other, share their opinion about some particular gadgets. In other words,
1)It should be forum for electronics and computer products discussion.
2)There should be honest reviews of these electronic gadgets, computer softwares etc like you did on your blog labnol.
I have more input on this idea.. By the way do you like this reply to the comment.
its really very usful advice and and I too faced some problems with brokers and their quotes are very much marginal differece. so, take care. these tips will very helpful for new domain name buyers.
You could create a script like techmeme for indian sites only. It could include a variety of subjects like blogrunner. The source blogs could be your Indian Blogs Board you maintain.
Probably you are the only indian who has the skill and willingness to do it..
Just noticed that I cannot access your new site. It says blocked by Websense and category as hacking. Any Ideas why ?
Whatever the site might turnup in the future, congracts on grabbing the domain. Its a bit over priced but given the fame of your blog, I would say, you should buy it even if its $2K.
Good luck.
That can be the contest ! for the HP laptop , who gives the best idea with what to do with that domain wins … now just bcoz I told you that I should get the laptop :)
Hi Amit ,
Labnol.com is also for sale why u not buy that domain like Darren
” problogger.com after problogger.net”
some times by mistake i visit labnol.com
Any way congrats for ur New domain
Congrats, Amit. You definitely got a bargain because digitalinspiration.com was a natural acquisition for your brand. I would suggest you redirect labnol.org simply because this blog is associated with the name. Anything else you have planned can always go on some other domain name and create its own identity.
Here’s a quick question: If you redirect your domain name to the same site, will Google penalize you for duplicate content?