What to do if a registrar quotes an exorbitant price for a domain

Is there a way around the ridiculous price listed for a domain name?


What to do if a registrar quotes an exorbitant price for a domain

by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com

One of my visitors wrote to say "The domain I want appears to be available. but the registrar want $3.5K to register it. Is there any way around the ridiculous price?" This article addresses the question.

Preamble

To make sure that we are talking about the same thing, a "domain name" (in this context) is essentially the address of your website. For example, the domain of the site you are currently reading is "thesitewizard.com". If you type the latter into a browser, you will end up at the main page of this site. You obtain such a web address by going to a registrar and buying one. People typically get a domain prior to setting up a website, although there are some who get it for the purpose of having an email address at their own domain.

When a domain is prohibitively expensive

When you go to a registrar, and type in the domain that you want, and the registrar's page says that it is available, but lists it at a prohibitively expensive price, it probably means that the domain has already been bought by someone else. The reason the registrar says it's available is because the current owner is willing to part with it for the amount listed.

Note that when I say "prohibitively expensive", I mean that the domain is listed at a price significantly above the usual price of such domains. For example, over the years, I have had numerous visitors complain to me about encountering astronomically high prices. One said that their desired name was listed at USD $5,000, and another, just recently, at "4 grand". In other words, I'm not referring to differences of a few dollars/pounds from the figures I mentioned. Small differences are merely the fluctuations which occur all year, every year, with every registrar, probably due to the intense competition in this industry.

So what can you do?

From experience, I'm fairly certain that the above answers are not really what my visitor wanted to hear. Most people want a special solution that somehow gives them the name they thought of originally without having to pay a hefty price for it. But as I said above, such a high price means that the domain has already been sold. You are too late. If you still want it, you have to see if the current owner is willing to sell it. And they obviously are, provided you are willing to pay the price they offered. It's a free market. They can set the price of something they own, and you can choose to accept it or not. You may be in their shoes in the future, when you (say) decide to retire from your online business and want to sell your domain.

Personally, though, I feel that if you don't already have a brand that you want to maintain, just think of a new name. It's cheaper, and you avoid any potential baggage (eg, bad reputation) that comes with a domain that someone else once used.

Copyright © 2020 Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.
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