It's just a name, if your idea is really that great, just make up a verbish type name that doesn't exist and use it.
"I believe that a good domain name is an important success factor in building and launching consumer web services. It's not in my top ten but it could be. It's certainly something we think about a lot when making investments and working with companies post investment."
Check out his article to read his reasoning.
$500 also doesn't pay for a professional naming service. That can cost upwards of $10k, sometimes much more because it gets bid up by people like P&G who need new names all the time. You can always rename and buy a better domain when you become successful enough to afford it.
Also, in his case, the price was fixed. Should he email the owner directly, the owner can ask for a different price based on who asked (i.e, if you're well known, a simple google search can be useful to see who you are and if you're likely to buy at a higher price 499 vs 4999.)
That is actually the point of using an escrow service such as escrow.com for domain transactions. Escrow.com in essence makes sure each party has the proper outcome.
"the owner can ask for a different price based on who asked"
Nothing prevents the owner, when dealing with a middleman, from taking advantage of the buyer even with Sedo in between.
At a certain point in the transfer process with SEDO the new owner of the domain is revealed. Nothing to prevent the seller from deciding to not sell the domain. Doesn't even matter what the legal status is. Fact is nobody is going to sue over some small amount of money. [1]
Let's say you own "slig.com" domain. You decide to sell it by way of SEDO. You list it for $2500 which you think is a good price. Then you see (later on) that Facebook is the buyer. You decide "hmm maybe I should not sell it" and you find some way to get out of the deal knowing that facebook probably isn't going to file a lawsuit to get the domain but will most likely decide to give you more money and just be done with it.
This industry is ripe for disruption from a company that charges less and allows sellers to push to an intermediate account rather than waiting 5 odd days for a transfer the old AUTH code way.
The only thing that could wreak havoc on the existing system (which has multiple players) is hiring a consultant who is knowledgeable about this in order to help you navigate the obvious bullshit that anyone will encounter when purchasing a domain name.
For people who deal with this type of thing all that the OP has described is often anticipated and is worked around.
For example I had a case recently with buying a name (for someone) where the seller told me that "the transfer has to be done with godaddy that's the only way that escrow.com works". For someone who doesn't know "how it works" unraveling (and getting the seller to change their opinion) would take many phone calls to get to the point of being able to simply get the auth code to transfer the name to the registrar of their choice (which is not godaddy).
There is not a technology answer to this issue. It's a knowledge and people answer.
That said if anyone thinks they have a way to disrupt this I would be glad to hear about it and tell them what I thought about it (based on my 18 years approx in this business.)
I see the problem as follows: Buyer/OP found and purchased the domain from a broker/escrow agent/middle-man, as a result the buyer was subjected to the additional time required for seller to transfer the domain to broker/escrow agent/middle-man.
Solution: Once the domain was transferred to broker/escrow agent/middle-man it appears the buyer had the domain a few hours later. Therefore, the broker/escrow agent/middle-man could require all domain listings be transferred to their account upfront. In theory after the payment, the buyer will have the domain within hours with no need to rely on the seller. Perhaps the only downside is the seller agreeing to an exclusive listing, but there is nothing prohibiting a system where the seller could cancel the sale and request the domain be return prior to any closing.
Well to start domains aren't transferred to these parties these parties merely facilitate the transfer by way of others that have a stake for one reason or another.
Perhaps it's best to state how this typically works.
a) A person owns a domain b) A person may be acting as a broker or middleman for some reason on that domain. c) There is the current "old" registrar of the domain. d) There is the new registrar that the new owner wants to transfer to. e) c&d may or may not be the same company. f) There may be an escrow service, say escrow.com in between. Purpose to make sure the right thing happens and the ownership is actually transferred.
If Dave is the buyer, Joe is the broker, and Jane is the seller, Godaddy is the existing registrar and namecheap is the registrar that Dave (buyer) wants to use, here is what should happen.
1) Joe gets the auth code from Jane or Dave gets the auth code from Jane etc. 2) Joe or Dave gives the auth code to Namecheap. 3) Namecheap gets the name transferred over from Godaddy (I'll skip the exact details on that part for simplicity). Much happens here obviously to make this actually happen. 4) Both buyer and seller agree the transaction is "ok" and the escrow company releases the money to the seller.
Another tool I'm using frequently is http://www.leandomainsearch.com/ (originally a Show HN) where you put in a word and it will look up thousands of popular pre and suffix combinations in a second. The same DNS constraints applies but it's easy to click the domain name to see if it's really available.
Other times I've had great, easy service with sedo and other sellers.
Last domain I sold was notify.me, which was I thought an amazing domain. Wonder what will happen with it.
My experience as Sedo, even as a seller, has been slow, as once I submit a message, it takes a day for Sedo to respond.
Where the "site owner" is someone's name. You can also use this same search and use someone's email address, as well. Or any of the data that shows up in whois, such as an address.
Internet audience sure, not as big of a deal (but still a deal).
I'm sure as each year goes by and older people die out/adapt .com won't be that big of deal
It's something that is still in flux, I believe it was within the last 12 months that Google officially switched over to treating ".io" as a generic TLD instead of country specific.
For reference, they have a listing here:
There's no way that it should taken 20 days, that's just totally unacceptable. And as someone who buys and sells lots of domains on a regular basis, I can tell you that this is not the norm, it's unusual for it to take this long.
One thing that you probably didn't check was whether or not the domain name was listed for sale at other venues. If the domain you wanted (based on a whois lookup) was at GoDaddy, then most likely it would have been listed at GoDaddy as many sellers will list their domains on several sites.
https://flippa.com/buy-domains
However because it is an auction site, they may not currently have listed what you are looking for. They also recently started a domain "catalog" which is not auction-style, but there aren't many listings yet:
The best way to buy domains is to do it directly. After negotiating a deal, I have used escrow.com many times and it works great.
