A bit of exploration on the internet’s underbelly…

So – a couple weeks back, EJ was sending me some links about some UGC/Web 2.0 sites and we came across ArmchairGM.  My first comment to that site was that it looked like one of those sites that squatters use – where if you mistype a name in or you’re just guessing for domain names – they put up a site that’s just ads – and try and make money off you clicking on one of the ads. The point was look and feel have a lot to do with someone’s initial feel about a site.

This week – Catherine came up with the idea of “babysmarts” for that parenting resource site that we’re trying out.  I like it – as it’s a play on whether the smarts are for the baby or about the baby. Oh – and a bit of a play on smarts meaning hurt.  But that’s less obvious from the name. YourBabySmarts – well, that makes it seem like you’re being accused of child abuse instead of very knowledge about. But without the “your” prefix, it sounds okay to me.  So we goto domains.yahoo.com and find that it is taken. Hmm – by what kind of site? Are they doing something really cool?

Nope – it’s by a squatter. And so I clicked on a link I’ve never clicked on before – the “this domain might be for sale” link.  And got into making an offer on the domain name.  I started with 50 USD.

ERROR.  Was the way the form responded.  Seems the minimum is 60 USD.  Okay – 60 bucks. The USD had me nervous, but the site that’s handling the transaction is just a UK site so I’m less nervous.  But feel this is all pretty shady anyway.

The owner will contact me within the 7 days that my bid is “valid”.  Okay. So I go back to the site and poke around  a bit more. They have a “more information about this domain” link. Which has informatin like – it averages 15 unique users a month.  Not bad for 60 bucks. That’d be 15 users more than we have now.  But I also figure 15 users a month doesn’t mean this is a hot domain name and maybe my 60 bucks will be enough.

So I was excited when I got the email saying I had a response from the seller. I read the message on my blackberry, but didn’t follow the link. Was sure the response would be – let’s do this deal. So I didn’t need to follow the link on the berry, cause I wasn’t going to input my credit card info that way anyway.  After a meeting or two, I’m back at the desktop ready to buy a domain name.

But it’s a counter offer that I get.  1000 USD.  With a note – I’ve had previous offers that were higher than this.

I don’t know if the “this” refers to their counteroffer or my initial offer. But either way I think – Then you should have taken it.

I counter with 80 and the message (from a drop down box) of – “This is my final offer.”

Within 10 minutes, they sent me back another counter offer of 999 and the same previous offer message. Maybe their interface has dropdowns too.

So – that was too much to spend. And we figure, we’ll be going for web based traffic and links – not tv or radio ads where people need to remember the domain name so much. So we bought babysmarts.org and within 2 hours, Yahoo webhosting had it up and perkolating across the web. The wordpress blog was pretty simple to set up there.

It would have been cool if the .com domain owners, when getting our rejection of their offer, went ahead and bought out the .info, .org, and .net suffixes of babysmart.  I would have been more impressed with the underbelly of the internet had that happened. Or if after telling Shawn this story, he had bought it. Then asked for 60 USD for it.  But instead, we got the domain name for free with a new account – and it’s only 8 bucks and change for each of the next two months.  This whole, setup an internet site has gotten so darn easy over the years.

Oh yeah – and that whole thing about look and feel having to do with someone’s initial feel about a site – well, yeah, we’re kind of screwed. 

Lots easier to critique than to create.