I have missed the opportunity to make a lot of money. Again. Mainly because I wasn’t clever enough to [a] gobble up a bunch of neat url names and [b] hold them for ransom. Here’s what the “About” part of the pirates’ site says:HugeDomains is a premium domain reseller site that strives to bring you brandable domains for your business at a fraction of the cost.
So this firm not only has Signalwriter (which is a brand name I invented) but also SignalDepot and SignalBay and – oh yes – HowToBeACopywriter. Dot com.
Still, fair is fair. I did create the Signalwriter name – it’s a trademark. But these folks thought hard enough about the subject to scoop it up and purchase the url before I (finally) got around to it. It is the part of the model of capitalism to offer for sale something that people want to buy.
I therefore admit to sour grapes. Arrrh!
(At least HugeDomains.com does not own www.sourgrapes.com – that’s a Warner Bros url.)
Signalwriter Marketing Blog is the property of Richard Laurence Baron. “Signalwriter” and “Signalwrite” are trademarks. All rights reserved. Painting: Muti, jene Trauben sind sauer, Joris van Son, c 1660-1665.
9 comments:
In Internet parlance, the term is not pirate but squatter. And yes...domain squatters are a HUGE problem. If you have the trademark/brand, you can petition for the release of the domain to you under the ICANN domain name dispute policy:
http://www.icann.org/en/udrp/udrp.htm
Essentially, the regulations state that if a domain name owner has done nothing with its domain and you have built the trademark or brand, you have more of a right to the domain than they do, even if they did spend the initial money to buy it. With your ownership of the trademark, it’s pretty much a done deal to take it back. Just requires filling out the forms and such.
I wanted to purchase a name from one of these "squatters" (buydomains.com), made a reasonable offer, and they came back with an unreasonable offer. I said no, and moved on...
Six years later (they bought it in '03 I offered in '04), the site I wanted still has ZERO traffic, is still for sale, and is of no interest to anyone (barely was of interest to me, & like 8 tracks is obsolete now), and 6 years later and I still have one of those clowns now offering what I was willing to pay to begin with (now I am not even willing to pay registration fees if they even drop it). One would think that after 3-4 years, maybe it's a good indication that nobody will buy it...but I guess not...
There are very few names that are going to fetch a boatload (which is their hope), and 00758.com (?$2,495? R U kidding me) isn't one of them, and neither is 99.9% of the names for sale on hugedomains.com (I mean really CholestrolMedication.com $19,995.00) who is going to pay that? Do they even know who their target audience is?
They are pathetic!
Sure enough, Anonymous - pathetic. But see my comments in the post re capitalism. MC/HNY!
Thanks Richard,
A belated MC and an HNY to you and your family as well.
The above guys, not the blogger, are very naive.
I just wrote a scathing note on this elsewhere, after a blogger's tale of getting a "deal" from these guys. Awful. Interesting Q, though: How is buying domains you don't intend to use different from placing trademarks you have no use for? I know there are businesses doing both. Pricing intangibles is an interesting concept.
I have no love for the squatters (actually not an apt term - squatters usually intend to use the land they seize) and am amused they seem to *be* sleazy as well.
Thanks for the note, Andrew. Even a year and a half later, the pirates still have the Signalwriter offer up - same price. (May their camels suffer from flies extravagantly!)
I noticed they picked up 8 names I let expire, appears they sweep up any name thats just expired thats at least a year old. Got to love this one "Glossary.com Only $7,500,000". This extreme squatting BS should be prohibited by ICANN. Come on, they sweep up recently expired names for $7 dollars then try to sell them between $2000 and up, all way to millions for doing nothing.
I too have had the misfortune of trying to deal with this company. Reports that I have seen elsewhere that indicate they are willing to negotiate are BS in my view. Huge domains will not negotiate full stop, in fact they are likely to raise the asking price if you make an offer.
I thik that there is very little difference between the domain resellers and a person scalping tickets to a concert, both should be illegal.
IMHO this is not a legitimate business model its simply holding legitimate domain users to ransom.
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