 Welcome to The Journey. Today we're talking about how to buy a domain that someone else already owns. Alex, and joining us as a very special guest today, we have Joe from GoDaddy. Joe, tell us a little bit about yourself. Hi, I'm Joe. I work in the aftermarket, and one of the things that we do there is help people buy names that someone else already owns, and I've been doing that for more than 10 years. All right, Joe, so let's say I have the perfect business idea. I have the most picture perfect domain name in mind. I go and search for it, and somebody else already owns it. Such a bummer. Why is it so important to have that perfect domain name and essentially spend some time and energy into making sure you get that? You can always go with another alternative, like a longer name, or maybe another TLD like a .NET or .org, but if you have this perfect name in mind, why not try and go for that exact name? It helps with marketing, it helps with branding. If you think it's great, I'm sure other people will. So why not give it a shot? Okay, so if you've found yourself in this situation, you're ready to give it a shot. What is that first step that you need to take in order to try and get that domain? Well, the first thing you want to do is find out who owns the name, right? So you can go to the website and see if there's any kind of contact information on the site if it's live, or you can go to who is, which is a public database that's kind of like the white pages for, you know, your phone numbers, and it gives out the owners of the names in most cases. And even if there's privacy, like an unlisted number, there's usually a link on that who is. That'll let you contact the actual owner. So you can go find out who owns it and see if they were willing to sell it. I love using that who is extension on Chrome. I mean, it's a great way, super easy. You're already at the domain. It gives you all that information, but there are some instances where it's not foolproof, right? If they have privacy, like I said, they might mask it because people don't want you to know where their home is, and that makes sense. So in those cases, there's usually a link that'll let you contact the registrant, or it'll have a very long kind of obfuscated email address, but you can still send emails to it and it'll forward to the actual owner. So basically you might need to use some of your detective skills, but it'll be worth it. So now that we know who owns the domain name already, you know, now we get to the fun part, negotiating. What's the first step in that process? The best thing to do when you start to negotiate is try and find out who the decision maker is, who owns the name. If it's just a small company, it's usually pretty easy. If it's a bigger company, it might have a webmaster or other information on who is, and they're not going to be the decision maker. So you really want to get to who can make the decision to actually sell that name. So do a little bit more research, look at the company online, see if you can find out who's in the right position for that. It's usually, you know, if it's a bigger company, CEO, CFO, marketing person, you want to find the right point of contact to actually sell you the name. Yeah, because if you're reaching out to the website administrator, you may never hear back and that's just going to get lost along the way. So definitely really important. The next thing, what about budget? I mean, how are we determining how much money you should offer? Well, there's some tools that you can use online to try and find out what a name is worth. You can use Godet's valuation tool. You can use Estabot.com. There's NameBio, which will show you comparable, similar sales. And then the other thing you have to think about is put yourself in that owner's position. They spent time to figure out the name that they wanted to get. They spent money on it, buying it. Maybe they bought it in the aftermarket or even if they had it for a long time, they're paying these renewal fees. So they've already invested quite a bit in the name. So if you go and offer them $50, they're probably going to ignore you. You need to put yourself in their shoes and what would be interesting for you? Yeah, and is this a domain that they've invested a lot in? Or is it just kind of sitting there? What's kind of the current situation? Right, exactly. So you really have to think about what is the name worth to you and what do you think it would be worth to them to be able to part with that name? So then of course, as entrepreneurs, we're all really excited to get things rolling in the quickest amount of time possible, but realistically, how much time should we kind of expect for this process to take? I think realistically, Ballpark would probably be about a month because you have to do the research and find out who owns the name, figure out who the decision maker is, and then negotiate back and forth. And once you reach an agreement, you still have to transfer the name so that can take another week or so. And if you add everything together with your busy schedules and entrepreneur and whoever owns the name going back and forth, it'll probably take about a month. All right, so I've talked to the person. We've settled on a price. Now let's talk about the nitty gritty actually paying the person. Do I just Venmo them? How does this work? No, you don't want to do that. And you don't want to use a site like PayPal because there's not enough protection for you as a buyer. So what you want to do is you want to go with a company like escrow.com or you can use Goode with our auction service. And what they do is they take in the domain name and they make sure that the funds are good. And then once everything is clear, then they'll say, okay, the parties can move the names. So if you use escrow.com, you know your money's safe. If you use GoDaddy, they're going to buy the name and then sell it to you. So they're going to make sure that those funds clear and that you get the name. Yeah, and then the owner of the domain feels a little bit more secure because they know that your payment is coming through on time, everything along those lines. Exactly. And using a third party that people recognize as a brand that they can trust, that adds a lot to the transaction. It'll help it to go a lot smoother. Now I'm an impatient person. You know, I'm all about that instant gratification, just like a lot of other people. So I mean, you know, if I go on eBay, I'm going to get something right away. Why in this scenario do I have to wait a little bit longer? Well, if you're trying to buy a domain name, it has value to you to begin with, right? So names are valuable. Some names are worth millions of dollars. So there's a lot of security around the name. You don't want to, you know, build your business on a name and all of a sudden it just disappears out of your account. So because of the different security mechanisms that they have, it needs both parties to kind of, you know, do a handshake and say, yeah, we're okay with moving this name. There's a lock on the name. You have to give a specific code for the name in many cases for that transfer to happen. And if it goes between two companies, they both have to verify that information as well. There's third parties that look into this and make sure that when you transfer a name, all the security protocols are met. So it makes your name, you know, a lot safer. So that's great. That was a ton of really valuable information. But let's say that I don't necessarily want to do it myself. Is there anyone that I can get to help out with this process? Yeah, and that's probably a good idea. You know, there is a lot of things that you have to keep in mind. So if you get a broker, they have buyer brokers. Go Day has the domain broker service and there's other buyer brokers that are out there that you can contact. They do this all the time. They understand all the transfers, you know, how to make that smooth. They understand what to do with money. They've been negotiating for names so they know a fair market value and they can give you a little bit of education about, hey, this name that you're going after, it should cost you about X amount of money and that's a reasonable value. You know, what do you want to do? Do you want to offer that upfront? They can negotiate in volume because many times if they're buying names from the same person over and over again, they have a good relationship with them and they know that they're going to continue to bring them deals. So that's going to help you. And they also can help with anonymity. You know, if you're trying to buy a name and you're a big company or they think that you're a famous person or whatever the case may be, they're going to say, wow, you know, that person wants my name. It must be really valuable. Let me charge more money. So having the broker act on your behalf, it's going to help with anonymity and kind of keep the negotiations going in a way that's going to benefit you as a buyer. And another thing is, you know, it helps you focus on your main business that you know, you don't have to spend all this time worrying about all the details. And with somebody else negotiating, it keeps all the emotion out of it. So you can just, you know, say, here's what I'm willing to pay. You deal with all the negotiations and I'm going to sit back and, you know, wait for you to get that done. Well, thank you so much, Joe. That was really helpful. And now you know how to buy a domain that someone else already owns. 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