I have nothing to do with domain squatting, but I do own a .co.uk domain for over 20 years and 18 years ago I tried to buy the .com from what I then found out was a squatter, out of principle I turned their offer down and the .com domain remains vacant, it’s not a particular interesting or valuable domain, so I’m not surprised no one else bought it.<p>Fast forward to a few months ago, and I let one other domain expire, it was for a brand I was creating, the domain was a made up word and a squatter registered that domain as soon as it expired, assuming some service registered it without any human supervision as that made up word holds no value to anyone else and I consciously decided to let it expire.<p>Since I made up that word and it was 14 characters long, are they just going to keep it for 20+ years?<p>This just made me wonder how many vacant domains we have today, that it must still be (unethical and) profitable and if it’s time to do something about it?
I had a personal website where the URL was literally my full legal name. The domain would be of no interest to anyone other than me. I let it lapse around 2019 because I didn't want to pay for renewal, and figured I'd be fine leaving the site offline.<p>Immediately upon letting it lapse it's bought by someone who I believe lives in Russia. They took my website, rehosted an old version found on archive.org, and then put advertisements on the site. It was not rehosted well, half of the links were broken. I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to embed malware on there too.<p>I emailed the hosting company (DigitalFyre) with a DMCA request to get it taken down. Their support assured me they'd take it down but they never did.<p>After a year of it being up the domain expired and I bought it back just to prevent someone else from doing the same. I figured it wouldn't be profitable for them so I made the decision to wait them out early on.<p>I'm thinking the entire process is automated, where they'll buy up expired domains, rehost archived versions, and hope for either the previous owner to purchase it back or for ad revenue to make it worthwhile.<p>Absolute scum of the earth.
I saw this on another HN post sometime back about “Space Jam 2”. Best form of squatting ever!<p><a href="https://www.spacejam2.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.spacejam2.com/</a><p>I’m not sure that squatting makes sense anymore. Getting generic names like “pets” or “travel” isn’t important today as it once was.<p>As for someone snatching up your old domain of a nonsense word, that sounds like someone looking for a quick buck. There will always be people looking to do that.
A few years ago I registered a short (five letter) nonsense word as a .com domain for a side project. I ended up using a different name so I let the .com expire. It was instantly registered by someone else.<p>But I just checked, and it’s available now. (Not squatted.)<p>I think some people run systems to buy up domains that expire, in case the expiration is a mistake. Then they can make a few bucks selling the domain back to the dummy who let it expire accidentally.<p>There’s a limit to how much you can make doing this, though, as any big company probably has a trademark on their domain. And if they do, they can just ask ICANN to seize it from you.<p>I think that’s different from someone who registered a common word (or many) and holds onto them, hoping to sell them to people who want them.<p>The domain squatting business is kind of like poker. You have a slow bleed of costs from annual domain fees (the ante in poker) and few deals to offset that (winning a hand in poker). Over time you have to either score some big deals, or eventually cut your costs. This limits the utility of squatting random nonsense domains for very long.
I invest in domain names, probably about 100. More recently I purchased a few single character emoji domains (specifically country flags just so others couldn’t) and a few “crypto domains” which function as both web 3 domains and plain English ethereum wallet addresses.<p>About 2 years ago I bought a lot of crypto themed domains seeing some of the secondary sales…the way I saw it if artificial scarcity is what gave cryptocurrency it’s value, then I’d rather invest in domain names that have a real use - like gold digging, the real money being in selling shovels.<p>I recently listed a few for sale and almost immediately someone bought cryptocomicbook.com for $1,250 which I registered and renewed only once. However I almost feel like that purchase was part of a scam by the domain registrar to encourage me to register more domains through them.<p>The number of domains is infinite, so the only real way to make money I think is to be able to buy/sell 2N or 3N domains or generic single word domains, but you probably need a big bank roll to get started in something like that, otherwise you just luck out buy owning something like ethereum.com.
I'm shocked by how many commenters here sympathasize with the domain squatting/parking business. Sure it may be a fun side-project or profitable long-term investment.
But trying to make money from people who actually create value is not really the future of the web I want to see.
I’m surprised comments are saying it isn’t a thing. I was reading another thread a few days ago and people were saying it was very much a thing still and .com names were going for insane prices and limiting opportunities for real ideas and websites to be made.<p>I feel like there should be some process where you have to put a real website at the domain name in a certain time period or you lose it. And I mean a real website not those godaddy placeholders. It’s just another rent seeking scam like we get in real estate without something like that.
It's not a thing anymore, for two reasons:<p>1, It used to be that the only 'real' domain name was .com. Nowadays this artificial scarecity is over. If you want to launch a service as foo.io, that is fine.<p>2, You can sue to have a domain name confiscated if you own the trademark with the same name<p><a href="https://cyber.harvard.edu/property00/domain/CaseLaw.html" rel="nofollow">https://cyber.harvard.edu/property00/domain/CaseLaw.html</a>
I think it's important to differentiate between domain name squatters and domain name investors. Squatters are typically registering trademarked names with the hopes of flipping them to the trademark holder, or registering accidentally expired domains names with the hopes of selling them back to the previous registrant (as in OP's case). This is wrong.<p>Legitimate domain name investors are typically investing in generic words, brandables, or exact search term match domains.<p>I used to get mad about domain investors having every name I wanted to use for a project, until someone analogized it to real estate investing. Everybody would open their store on Fifth Ave. in New York City if they could afford it. Unfortunately, storefronts there are very limited. This is basically what generic, one-word .com domains are (frequent sales of $1M+). Domain names are just digital real estate.
One potential solution is capping how much you can sell a domain name for. That reduces the incentives for squatting. That might cause other problems though, like making it more difficult to acquire a domain that someone else is already using, even if you are willing to pay a lot for it (but maybe that is a good thing?).<p>Something that might specifically help with squatters buying lapsed domains is making it significantly more expensive to purchase a domain for some period of time (say a year) after the domain expires if you aren't the original owner.
I think most of the domains being squatted on are worth nothing, people don’t want to deal with squatters, who pay registration fees every year, etc. ‘.com’ doesn’t have the cachet it used to, many TLDs are viable, plus the number of two and three word combinations plus neologisms is so great squatters can’t stop anyone who is creative and flexible from getting a good domain.<p>I’d imagine somebody gets a big payout once in a while and that hope keeps squatters squatting. I know (from trying to sell a few domain names) that it doesn’t happen often.<p>An alternate approach is to hold on to old domain names that get some traffic and hyperlinks. Alternately there is ‘SEOmaining’ where you develop simple sites on the domains you hold. If you can make $1 a month with a site you can hold the domains forever and you can even sell links from those sites, link to your own ‘real’ sites, …
If you believe Peter Askew's writing, then yes, I do believe domain squatting is still a profitable venture.<p><a href="https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-business/" rel="nofollow">https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-business/</a>
I don't mind squatters in general. It seems like something many people would do. I have bought a domain name for a business 10 years ago for USD 500 from a former music band.<p>But now, people often want 30k-50k per Domain. If you have a few hundred it may make sense to wait until you find an idiot. But I doubt that it is a very profitable business for many. It may be a long tail business. Many losers, a few make a killing.
> Since I made up that word and it was 14 characters long, are they just going to keep it for 20+ years?<p>Usually they set up analytics on the holding page, and only renew if it reaches a certain threshold of traffic.
A couple years ago I heard a domain mentioned in a tv show episode and found out it wasn't registered. I snagged it partially for the novelty and partly to see if I would be contacted to purchase it back.<p>I remembered years ago there was an incident on Conan's talk show where he offhandedly made up a dumb domain name and the network was forced to buy it so it didn't get bad things put on it.<p>Well the show has since ended, and I got a handful of emails and comments from fans but nothing ever from the network itself. Still a fun experiment.
I have a lot of domains. I think it is worth it if you develop the domains and interlink them. Especially on some of the growing marketshare TLDs. You've seen the massive growth on NFTs, and domains are just another scarcity asset. Eventually domains being auctioned for ethereum, even if they're on the alt TLDs like .dev and .app, will go for a lot of money. If you develop several sites with very decent domains as MVPs and interconnect them you can still make a killing.
I created my business with a not common name. There was a .com for it. I have been trying to buy it for 14 years. The person wants over $1500 for it, when I believe its only worth maybe $200. I check every year to see if it fails to renews, but no such luck. And the site is just squatted - at one point just ads and now just a "please buy me!". So since then I use other domains, with the full business name or .biz etc. It still annoys me from time to time.
> some service registered it without any human supervision as that made up word holds no value to anyone else and I consciously decided to let it expire.<p>I'm not an expert at this but some years back some SEO gurus were teaching to buy domains with age and already existing backlinks. I don't know if there is any truth to it (and i hope it doesn't) but could be one of the reasons why someone brought it.
I was really into startups 10-15 years ago and at that time I would register a domain almost every few weeks. Back then it was much easier to get a decent .com and I've ended up keeping a few domains I really like because in the past I've regret letting good domains go which I later realised I wanted.<p>You could say I'm squatting on those .com's as most of them are just empty sites. It's not so much that I'm trying to profit from them, but I still feel I have to squat on them because this is how the game is played. I know if someone offered me money for them I would probably sell, and I have thought about listing them in the past for this reason.<p>I'm sure it's the minority of cases but I often wonder how many squatters are in a similar position to me. I've read a few stories about people buying .com's and it's very often cases like this where someone once had a great idea for a site but then never found the time or the money to execute on their idea so now they just keep hold of the domain for a better time.<p>There's a lot of people being critical of squatters here, but if you own a domain which could potentially be worth several thousand dollars are you realistically just going to let it go and allow someone else to squat it and profit from your loss? If you're explicitly buying a domain to squat it then I'm more understanding of the anger, but even then this is just the game unfortunately. You deciding not to squat a domain doesn't mean it won't be squatted, in all likelihood it just means someone else will squat it and likely profit from your kindness.<p>The solution here isn't to shame squatters but to remove the value domains have. Adding more top-level domains achieves this to some extent, but because .com's will probably always be considered the default domain by most internet users they will likely always demand big valuations. One potential solution I thought of in the past would be to crowd source domain resolution. Instead of a domain being something you buy, what if it was something we just agreed on? Although this idea probably works better in theory because in reality I'm sure those with resources will inevitably try to game the system or simply bribe users to get the domain they want.
Not sure about profitable, but it’s still definitely a Thing. Look at .eth domains for the most egregious case today. I just saw <a href="https://indiebrands.io" rel="nofollow">https://indiebrands.io</a> the other day. Basically a domain squatting operation but the guy operating it is convinced it is <i>him</i> that is creating the value rather than… you know… someone actually using the domain for something other than selling it. So, yes it’s still out there and just as obnoxious as ever
I believe so, there are a few companies built around reselling brandable domains:<p><a href="https://www.brandbucket.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.brandbucket.com</a>
<a href="https://www.squadhelp.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.squadhelp.com</a>
As someone who is experimenting with domain squatting, I have found it to be profitable up to this point. You just have to find good names that are expiring. Good available domains are getting harder and harder to find... Roughly 300% profit up til now.
It's definitely stuff profitable if you get lucky but maintaining a portfolio of 100 .com's will eat up your potential profits on a nasty slow burn.
Hello, How much are your domains?
They are free
Good, I will take them all.<p>That is what low cost domains do - encourage hoarding.
If a person had a valid use, then a renewal of $100 - 200, would be acceptable. However, he would not want to pay for something unused - this is much like old cars you see behind houses, ready to scrap - few have up to date licences.
I feel that ICAAN should increase renewals to ~~$200 - which is a reasonable annual cost for something of value in use, but too expensive for something parked and rusting away.
This would up-end the domain squatting business model - a model abetted by the people that control the web.
Each country can set their and adjust it to rein in squatters.
Another way is to traffic monitor (with some smarts) to cancel unused domains after a few months measured unuse. This would need some oversight, with a reclaim period of ~~6 months for a valid reason