The incentives there seem misaligned to me. The person negotiating the price for them gets paid a higher commission if the price ends up being higher?
There is a problem with that.
That system only works in the case of names that you don't care if you get or not. In the case of a domain that you really need (and most buyers that I've dealt with really want the name or names they have decided on) you run the risk of pissing off the seller and having him play all sorts of games that can result in paying more or deciding to not sell at all. The broker stands less to lose than the buyer does. They only lose their commission but a deal screwed up means you don't get your domain name.
But most importantly an incentive like that assumes that every seller is the same and can be manipulated with effort. I can assure you that is not the case.
And parking domains is indistinguishable from using them. Unless under "parking" you mean explicitly stating this domain is for sale. But with imposed restriction squatters will just remove those and park domains with "this domain is... well, you get the idea".
There's issues with what's considered value, but our existing system is nonsense.
Unique-er, shorter, has a cultural history with the company, evokes “Rise”.
Keep in mind that brands really become signifiers of the company, and have little meaning of their own over time. Beatles, Google, Radiohead, Amazon. All either bad or meaningless on their own.
Last i checked, doge transfers are 1-2 dogecoin for most transactions.
I think Ryza was the better choice.
In their shoes, I would have gone with something that was suggestive but not purely descriptive. For example, Kickstarter is a great name, and Indiegogo is pretty good too.
That said, naming a company a fucking nightmare, and as far as I'm concerned, anybody who has gone through it without gnawing a limb off or calling their company Drgnblv did well.
From the article:
It was just settling for a domain choice. In 40 years,
when I told my grandkids what I did, I shuddered at the
idea of telling them I worked at a company called ‘Ryza’.
Anyone worked with them before? I'm prepared to negotiate with them but also want to make sure I don't shoot myself in the foot and cause them to raise the price on me. I would ideally like to not spend more than $2k but the domain is really perfect for my project so if we have to bite the bullet then we will...
EDIT: To add more context here, I have purchased the getPROJECTNAME.com and PROJECTNAMEapp.com domains for normal registrar prices. PROJECTNAME.io is also available for the normal price of about $60/yr. So it's not a make or break situation, but since we're in stealth mode for at least another 5 months, I don't want to launch and then all of a sudden face a $40,000 domain acquisition situation rather than a $4,000 one.
I would start off by offering half (as a maximum, less if you can) and sticking to the offer. The thing to remember is that they may have acquired the domain for registration price so even $2000 will be a large profit, and they may not have another buyer for years.
If that goes nowhere, you can always go back later and pay the full price or whatever they have come down to.
IIRC, they also sell domains which they don't own, and have less leeway for negotiation on those.
> ....
> After weeks of gentle negotiating, they came to an agreement: $54K in cash for the domain.
Yikes. That's 3.6x the max budget they were hoping to spend. I really do hope that in the long run it pays off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbuscular_mycorrhiza
"experiment.com" sacrifices the neat science and the symbolism. The only appeal I see is utilitarian. Given their difficulties with "Microryza," I understand that this is enough to motivate the change, but it seems like the opposite of cool and quirky.
My only concern is that such a generic term negatively affects findability. E.g., it makes brand monitoring or web-searching very hard. You won't rise above the noise.
You could address the findability problem by adding a unique token to the name (e.g., 'Experiment42').
You need to tell people that you use Experiment the Crowdsourcing Website, not experiment with crowdsourcing or use your experiment to crowdsource funds. And the same for googling.
(And BTW I really liked Microryza; I do know that it may be hard to spell (still easier than mycorrhizae), but Ryza sounds nice too!)
And an anecdote: when I was mailing with Cindy Woo almost a year ago, I joked about the tagline:
"
Mic[r]oryza
Mycorrhizae spelled in the sane way
"
I really struggled on this point, but was coached by someone I trust that legal gymnastics were not in anyone's best interest.
What I really want is for experiment.com to become wildly successful, so that I can take part in some science projects.
The fact that the domain wasn't sold since 1996, even when there were better offers from domain flippers during the time, suggests that luck played a much larger role than the statement implies
It's quite common in the domain business to claim that you have offers that you have turned down. I would take that with a grain of salt. By the way while it is possible that the seller was telling the truth I have been in this business for a long long time. Most likely it was merely posturing. And for the record nobody flips domains quickly. It can take years and years.
(Also I strongly agree with the luck assessment..)
(I'm the original owner that sold the domain.)
I'm sorry for not having won the web for the google search on 'experiment', but I actually believe that this team is going to succeed where I have not.
I believe they are on the right track, and that they can grow into a variety of spaces/tools/utilities/education/information systems etc., especially if, as they have done so far, they "stay true" and focus on the bits that make for high quality investigations.
And use the savings to fill out a true, full rebrand
Stick with the person you love, right. Yeah, tell Brad Pitt to take a hike. Yep, that's definitely the right thing to do. Aww, high school sweethearts. That's lovely. What a nice story.
Oh. Wait. Huh? you dumped high school sweetheart for that wally off of the Chanel ads?
Sigh, I suppose it was... "inevitable" (http://youtu.be/mGs4CjeJiJQ)
So by that logic i think Cofactor.com is a much better choice than the more generic Experiement.com