The process for purchasing domain names (that are not immediately available) is generally a large black box to me. I am curious about both positive and negative personal experiences with domain name purchases – especially non-standard purchases such back-ordered names, domain drops, etc.
I've had good and bad experiences:<p>Good example: Domain is already owned, but the owner is in the business of buying and selling domains (you can usually tell these domains because when you visit them, they redirect to sales/contact-us page). I make an offer, he counter-offers, we're good.<p>Another good example: Domain is already owned and listed on a marketplace like Sedo.com. I purchase for the buy-it-now price, sedo takes care of the escrow and name-transfer, we're good.<p>Bad example: Domain is owned by some random person who bought it years ago and isn't really sure what it's worth. I check the Whois listing and email the contact address there. I might hear nothing back at all. If I do, I make an offer, their counter-offer might be an order-of-magnitude higher, or they're not interested in selling at all. Nothing you can really do in that situation.<p>Another bad example: The domain has not been renewed by its original owner, several folks have tried to backorder it, so the registrar puts it up for auction. This is worst case scenario. There is no option for tactful negotiation, just unbridled bidding against everyone else who wants the domain. I've never come close to winning such an auction, and I've tried several times.
I've purchased two £30-50k domain names through Sedo and one £300k two-letter domain name through a domainer – all experiences were pleasant and I felt the negotiations and price were fair.<p>More recently I purchased a .com for £7.5k for a new startup and the general consensus is the domain is worth a lot more than I paid for it - I have already had three speculative offers but I'm keeping it :) I also purchased the .co.uk for a very low price from the original owner who replied immediately and was very pleasant.<p>I tend to use an alias or third-party to purchase the .co.uk/TLD if I already own the .com as the seller will often bump the price.<p>I've had a couple of bad experiences, for example trying to purchase nihil.com and the seller wanted $65k – which it isn't worth imo, this was five years ago. I enquired again using a different alias a few months ago and they're now asking for $132k – meh.<p>There are some obvious techniques to not over paying, but all in all, it's timing and luck I feel.
Maybe I misunderstand, but my experience is that purchasing a normal vanilla domain name is very easy and very user friendly. The only common issue I have seen is annoying upsell (e.g. "we've dropped an $99 SSL package into your basket, remove it if you don't want it!").<p>Buying already occupied domains is always a huge hassle. No two ways about it, and a lot of the sites which sell/resell them are scummy as heck. I try and stay away from that as a general rule.