Thoughts on a $50k domain name

Ryan Ewen · Mar 21, 2018

My client bought bridging dot com for £11k recently.

I negotiated on there behalf - the original price was $50k and it took 2 years.

The site is for short term finance.

Just wondered what your thoughts were on spending this kind of money on a domain name?

philiporchard · Mar 21, 2018

A no-brainer if it fits the business perfectly.

Adam H · Mar 21, 2018

Project and budget dependent for me. If the budget is there and I could clearly see the domain being an asset and route to profit then absolutely.

dee · Mar 21, 2018

If you're trying to set up a go to brand in any niche it's absolutely worth it I would have thought. It's the 'instant credibility ' impression

martin-s · Mar 21, 2018

Absolutely yes, from experience.

Ryan Ewen · Mar 21, 2018

Its a £50k project with design and build. For me the domain is key for branding etc

Adam H · Mar 21, 2018

Robert Smith said:
Its a £50k project with design and build. For me the domain is key for branding etc

Do you have plans on protecting that brand with purchases of the UK tlds ( Assuming you didnt/don't already own them ? )

Ryan Ewen · Mar 21, 2018

They are owned by someone else. They value the .co.uk & .uk at £30k each!

Adam H · Mar 21, 2018

Robert Smith said:
They are owned by someone else. They value the .co.uk & .uk at £30k each!

Probably value it even more now knowing you'll be building on the dot com lol, either that or will see you paid 11k for the .com and realise they are punching a bit for their price

maybe motive of this thread ?

JMI · Mar 21, 2018

Never in million years - I pity your client!

DaveP · Mar 22, 2018

If they're going to spend that on the domain they should at least fix up the current live site a bit. May as well not have anything there at the moment?

philiporchard · Mar 22, 2018

When we launched SPAG dot com, I made sure I had the .co.uk and .uk and the twitter name too. Would be crazy to launch anything substantial on the .com in the UK without owning the uk and couk imho.

GCHQ · Mar 23, 2018

If they are specific to the uk market then they had to get the .co.uk/uk imho

scottmccloud · Mar 23, 2018

GCHQ said:
If they are specific to the uk market then they had to get the .co.uk/uk imho

If they get good rankings on the .com and build a string and identifiable brand, then the .co.uk and .uk will arguably we worthless.

I can't see anyone willing to risk £30k on the .co.uk and .uk if there's already a strong presence for bridging.com in the UK. Even if they did build a site based around short term finance (there's not much else bridging could be used for commercially) then surely they'd also be at risk of being accused of 'passing off'.

GCHQ · Mar 23, 2018

scottmccloud said:
If they get good rankings on the .com and build a string and identifiable brand, then the .co.uk and .uk will arguably we worthless.

I can't see anyone willing to risk £30k on the .co.uk and .uk if there's already a strong presence for bridging.com in the UK. Even if they did build a site based around short term finance (there's not much else bridging could be used for commercially) then surely they'd also be at risk of being accused of 'passing off'.

I agree about the price with you, very expensive imho but thats the fun about domains the value is with the beholder and we all value our domains to much...albeit i know little about .co.uk compared to .com apart from .co.uk seems so undervalued it's quite incredible.

I think £11k was not a bad deal but i would of preferred bridgingloans.com at that price but because bridging is a generic term in finance i highly doubt it would be an issue otherwise if the case then the owner of bridging.com is is in trouble as bridgingloans.co.uk has been around a long time and could file a passing off against bridging.com but i doubt that could happen but you never know as i have seen some strange arbitration decisions in my time.

Everything is just imho thats the nature of the beast in domaining, various opinions=various prices.