Library

Domain Squatting

by: AllinOneWebServices.com

What is Domain Squatting?

Domain squatting is the act of buying common or obvious domain names, like “computers.com” and sitting on them waiting for somebody to offer to buy the name at a very large markup. For example, Joe Squatter buys the website name “computers.com” for $10. He doesn’t build a real website that has anything to do with computers—he just makes a site saying “domain for sale”. John Doe is a computer consultant and wants to buy the domain from Joe Squatter. Squatter gives John Doe a price of $500 to buy the site. Give us a break.

Our Philosophy

The staff of All In One agree that America is a free-market economy and there is nothing wrong with making a buck. There are middle men everywhere that take products and resell them. Many times, however they offer a value-added service. Either their buying power reduces the price. They offer greater selection than the original manufacturer. Or they bundle the resold product with other products or services.

There are also plenty of circumstances where a prospective website owner buys a domain name, but development takes longer than expected or they get busy with other projects. If that is you, we’re not upset with you. Even if you bought a domain to develop it, gave up, and are selling the domain to recover some of your development costs, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Domain squatters buy a website specifically to inflate the price and resell it. We feel that this type of activity borders on legalized extortion and price gouging. For those of you that partake in this activity—shame on you. This is a lazy, obtrusive, unimaginative business that serves no one but your pocket book.

Professional domain squatters generally create elaborate “for sale” signs on their domains. Many times these websites are laden with pop-ups, and other SPAM advertising. These websites are often marketed on search engines, clogging search results with sites that serve no purpose. These sites confuse novice visitors who often get trapped in a swarm of pop-up advertising that takes over their web browsers.

Fighting Squatters:

In today’s society, particularly in America, the common solution is to legislate this activity. While All in One hates domain squatters, this is an equally bad idea. People sometimes buy a website with the best of intentions—hoping to create a great website. But other things come up, or development takes longer than expected, and it may take a site a year or two to become something. Effective legislation would have to impose time limits on how long a site could be owned without relevant content. It might also ban the reselling of websites altogether. Can you imagine the headache of buying a website and having to make it active before its ready? Or you start a website to create a new product or service, your business tanks, and now you can’t recover any of your investment by selling the site? There are many legal, logistic, and business consequences of this type of legislation.

So how do you fight domain squatting without legislation? Be creative—don’t give in.

Ways to Find A Unique Website Name/Domain:

Add dashes between the words (joes-lobster-shack.com) Dashes won’t hinder website marketing and they actually make the keywords stand out.

Make singulars plural or plurals singular: JoesLobstersShack.com, JoesLobsterShacks.com, JoesLobstersShacks.com, JoeLobsterShack.com

Use a misspelling: JoesLobsterShak.com, JoesLobsterShaq.com

Use Synonyms: JoesLobsterHouse.com JoesLobsterShanty.com

Add Adjectives: JoesBestLobsterShack.com

Add Numbers: JoesBestLobsterShack1.com

The less people give into squatters, the less lucrative the practice will become and the more domains will be available to the rest of us who actually use them.