This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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I don't know about you, but I have too many domain names. I have so many domains that I have registered over the years and I just continue to pay for them. Typically about $10 a year. Sometimes it's a little bit less, sometimes a little bit more, but that's the average price. So if you wanna register a domain, that's what you gotta go do is pay a $10 fee approximately and then you pay it again year after year to renew it.
But what if, that's assuming your domain is not registered already. What if you go out to find the domain that you want and you're like, oh, this is the perfect website address for me and it's actually for sale. Like somebody else has already got to it. Now they don't want a huge amount of money for it because that would kind of take it off the table. But what if they want like a decent amount of money?
Like in this case, $2,000. Okay, 2,000 not being huge, but also definitely not being small. Like $10 is better than 2,000, right? When it comes to paying something. So in this situation, we've got a caller, they found what they believe is the perfect domain.
It's already registered the seller wants $2,000 for it. What should they do? Interesting dilemma, especially 'cause of the price point. So I'll touch on that a bit in my answer. Let's hear the detailed question from her and then my response.
Stay tuned. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Lorette from Houston, Texas. I've been listening to the show and I'm finally ready to take action. This is going to be a year of experimentation for me. My first side hustle idea involves creating a YouTube channel and a website centered around a topic that I'm very passionate about.
Starting out, I'm going to offer a course and I will also include affiliate links on my website. Here's my dilemma. The .com domain that I want is available, but it's $2,000. Do you suggest paying that much for a domain name or should I opt for the .net or .org extension instead? I've read the .com extensions rank higher in Google, but is it really that important?
Can't wait to hear from you and thanks. [Music]
Well, as I said, this is a real dilemma because of the price point. You know, if Lorette came back and said, oh, it's actually a million dollars, let's say, I'm going to say probably not. Like I'm assuming she doesn't have a million dollars to spend on a domain in the first place, but most likely there are very few domains that are worth a large amount of money and most ordinary people are not going to buy them. Now, if she came back and said, oh, that's for sale and it's a hundred dollars, then I would be like, just go buy it, right?
'Cause it's a hundred dollars. You know, you want this domain, you know you want it. When you get to something like $2,000, it's like, well, that's contextual. Like what does $2,000 look like to you? And we've got a pretty wide audience, you know?
So for some people, $2,000 is an insurmountable amount of money and, you know, they cannot imagine spending that much on a domain. And I understand, like I get it. Whereas other people are like, well, you know what? If I'm going to start a business and I've got some disposable income and the domain seems really good to me, then, you know, maybe it is worth it, right? I will say though, just to be specific, like I've actually never spent a couple thousand dollars on a domain.
I think I paid $700 for sidehustleschool.com, you know, long, long ago. I think that was the most I ever spent. And I think I only bought a domain on the secondary market one other time for maybe $300 or $400. I could be getting the details wrong, but almost every domain I have registered, and we're talking like a hundred probably at this point, I have just found, like if the domain that I want is not available, I will look for something else. And so it just takes some time to do that.
So one final tip though, in this situation, if you see a domain that's for sale and you want, you can actually offer, like try offering less. So usually these things go through brokers, there's usually somewhere on the website where it's like, here, contact this person to make an offer, and you should actually offer less. So I would say, you know, 50% of the sales price, I would make that offer because that person is probably not getting a ton of offers or even interest. So if you do move forward, hopefully that helps you save at least a few hundred dollars. But either way, I'm wishing you the best with your business, excited to hear what happens.
Always let us know. We will come back and provide updates for listeners. And listeners, thank you for being out there. Excited to get this new year underway. This is episode 3,297.
You can always access the complete archives of the podcast going back 10 years. Those are available at sidehustleschool.com. New episode comes out tomorrow. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
