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I’ve been going through the domain name searching process. Again. For those of you who haven’t been through this, it goes something like this:

1; Brainstorm dozens of possible domain names
2; Find out which ones your friends hate
3; Realize the good ones are squatted
4; Search for related concepts or the obscure ancient Germanic/Latin/Greek/Cyrillic root words
5; Aha!
6; Search to see if the name is registered
7; Kick yourself for doing the search on Network Solutions since they are now squatting that domain
8; Repeat step 1-6
9; Scream into a bucket for five minutes to calm yourself
10; Go back to the first domain name you thought of and try to buy it from the squatter

So I’m at step ten. I haven’t been successful at buying registered domains in the past, since many weren’t up for sale, and the rest were all too expensive. But today I encountered a new situation. The current owner was only interested in leasing the domain that I was interested in.

So the thought process for these squat-tards goes something like this:

{

Domain names = Internet(real estate);

If(real estate = leased property to businesses) = true;

Then(Domain names = leased property to businesses) = true;

}

Now, there might be a shred of logic in this type of thinking. If you happened to be one of the first hundred people on the internet and managed to register “profitablepopularname.com” then you might be able to convince some Fortune 500 company that the value would pay off.

However, I just didn’t feel like saying “Here’s a great idea- go ahead and screw me.” to the squat-tard today, and here’s why.

1; Cash money- We rent apartments and houses because we might move one day, or because the average rent is half the cost of the monthly mortgage payment that it would take to own it. With domain names under ten dollars, a domain name lease should cost about three cents a month for a 30 year fixed. However, the rates I’ve been quoted are closer to $20-$50 a month.

2; Rose.com by any other domain- A name is important, because it is usually the first layer of exposure and interaction with your brand. However, if you’re starting at ground zero, your content is far more important. People will remember a good name if they associate it with good content- as long as you stick to some simple rules. If you can make it easy to pronounce, easy to spell, and not too obscure, customers won’t have an issue remembering it. After all, what does a rain forest have to do with shopping, or a “one” followed by a hundred “zeros” have to do with search? Great brands are molded- not defined.

3; Google is my address bar- With RSS feeds, email links, tweets and google, how often will people be typing in your domain name by hand? If you have good content/value/service, your customers will remember your name and type it in if necessary, but the days of hoping that a valuable new user will stumble across your site by “guessing” at domain names are over.

4; allofthegoodnamesweretaken.com- It’s true. Maybe. Well, at this point, anything that resembles a word in a language that uses Roman letters is being used or squatted. The iCANN system is broken. Domain squatters might technically have a “first come first serve” right to the names they own. However, I equate this type of behavior with going to CVS and buying all of the meds, then standing in front of the store hoping someone might have a pre-heart-attack. We really shouldn’t support these people, and domain leasing rewards them for their scummy behavior more than buying the domain outright. It would be much wiser to spend the resources building up your site so that you can one day rightfully and legally take the squatted name.

5; Leverage- Rather, anti-leverage. (Is there a word for that?) When your site hits it big, your internet landlord will have major leverage against you. All of the work that you have put into associating value to that name becomes a liability. You can try to give them the finger, but they’ll give you the car door. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t even play one on TV, but my understanding is that you wouldn’t have much choice but to pay the ransom that is set each year by the actual domain owner. They could probably even sell it to your biggest competitor if they wanted. And the worst thing is, the better that you do, the more money they would demand. Could you try to take the legal route mentioned in the previous point? Maybe. Although I would suspect that by entering into an agreement with the actual owner, you’d have less of a case against them for squatting on your trademark.

So with that said, have any of you entered into a domain leasing agreement? What were the terms? Are there any major sites out there that rent their domains? Did i miss anything?

Discuss.

[Photo credit: Shadphoto]

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