Need your advice, please! Value of owning (YourBandName).com? (time sensitive!)

Dave Muscato · #1 10-03-2007, 02:44 AM

Hey folks,

I could really use some advice, and time is of the essence. Thanks in advance for your input. We really appreciate it.

First, some background:

My band has been together for 4 years, and we plan to stay that way for a long time coming. The three of us are best friends and live together, in addition to being bandmates. Our band is called Treasure Junkie, and we play original funky/heavy jam rock.

Our website is http://www.treasurejunkieband.com, only because http://www.treasurejunkie.com was a parked domain (someone owned it, but it was just a place-holder page with no website). We spent a lot of time and effort choosing the name Treasure Junkie and decided to nab & use http://www.TreasureJunkieBand.com instead, rather than come up with something else.

Okay, here's the situation now: The owner of TreasureJunkie.com has made us an offer to sell the domain name for $1,000. She had planned to use the domain name for her eBay business, selling collectibles on behalf of clients and taking a commission. She just left her full-time job on Friday to commit herself full-time to this endeavor. She said that if she is going to sell the domain name to us and come up with something else, it will probably have to be at this point in time, before she gets everything off the ground.

$1k is a lot of scratch for three 19-24 year-old musicians, but at the same time, I can't help but think, "In 5 years, are we going to be kicking ourselves for not buying this for $1k when we had the chance?"

She does not know (as far as I know) that we already have a band called Treasure Junkie, or that we already own treasurejunkieband.com.

I asked her if she would be willing to come down on the price at all, and she said she will think about it.

I should say that we do have $1k, but we are also saving up for our next album/tour, and that we are currently without a cargo trailer, and we also have stickers, etc on our wish-list.

My band-mates are leaning toward skipping on this offer, unless she comes down considerably from $1k. I think that the future value of owning ourbandname.com justifies the current expenditure.

What do you think? How important is it to have YourBandName.com? (especially if you already have YourBandNameBand.com?)

We greatly value your input.

Thanks very much,

Dave

P.S. Our current website costs us $247/year for the hosting ($20/month) & domain name ($7/year), just as a frame of reference. These costs would not change if we also owned TreasureJunkie.com; it would just cost us $7/year in addition to what we're paying now for the additional name, once we own it.

K2000 · #2 10-03-2007, 02:52 AM

I wouldn't spend the money, personally. The "band" part of the URL will serve a useful function (ie, make it obvious that TJ is a band).

If it was 100 or 200 dollars, then you might have a tough decision. For $1000, you definitely don't need it. I see loads of band URLs with "band" or "rocks" after the band name. I wouldn't give it a second thought.

bongomania · #3 10-03-2007, 03:04 AM

OTOH, as a consumer I hate URLs with "band" or "rocks" or "music" in them. How am I supposed to remember an URL like that? I don't know about $1K, that's a bit steep unless you really plan to storm the charts... but it's honestly hard enough to remember everybody's clever (and not so clever) band names on their own, never mind with some random word appended.

I've actually made most of my recent band name and company name decisions based largely on whether the URL was available, and how memorable or easy-to-pronounce it is.

Dave Muscato · #4 10-03-2007, 03:13 AM

Bongomania, I feel the same way. That's why I wanted more opinions, lol.

Personally, I hate it when I have to Google a band name, too. For example, imagine how unprofessional it would be if Metallica did not own Metallica.com, but used Metallicarocks.com, or something like that, and Metallica.com was a website about metallurgy? Or, if U2.com was a dating website, and U2theband.com was U2's website?

I don't doubt that whoever owned JohnMayer.com before John Mayer got famous is a very rich man now, lol.

What if it were $850? Would you still think that was too much? It's all a sliding scale, really. The worst part is that this is a one-time opportunity. If we are going to stick with this band name, IMO, we need to own the domain name if we want to look professional.

What do you guys think?

funeralfiend · #5 10-03-2007, 03:16 AM

Dude, I wouldn't worry about it. Tour/Album is much more important. Just make sure that EVERYTHING you have printed up has the band site on it somewhere, and get who ever does your website to make it as google friendly as possible. Believe it or not, most people don't just blindly try www.*insert band name here*.com, they google first. Make sure it is first when ever someone types it in google, or at least on the front page. Just had a go at google, and it is the first entry, so keep that up

Just had a listen... v. cool, good luck with it all

IanStephenson · #6 10-03-2007, 04:09 AM

Are you going to make $1000 back from it? Probably not. Is SHE going to make $1000 from the name, other than by sellin it to you. Not unless it can make someone else $1000, which I doubt. She's got something you want which isn't actually worth that much to her, so call her bluff.

Grab yourself: TreasureJunkieS.com, and tag an S on the band name. I presume there are more than one of you, so most guys are going to try that first anyway. Also look at either a US domain (go on - be a patriot. US websites are always ashamed of being american) or an info domain.

Our band site is pvrocks.co.uk. The band is Permanent Vacation, but realisticallly even i can't always spell Permanent Vacation, so even if its available PermanentVacation.com isn't much use...

ian

Ibanezzer · #7 10-03-2007, 04:19 AM

buy yourbandname.net instead, thats what my latest project did.

1000 bucks is way better spent on studio time, imo.

Dave Muscato · #8 10-03-2007, 04:25 AM

I should point out that we already own treasurejunkie.net, treasurejunkie.org, treasurejunkies.com (with an S), treasurejunkies.net, treasurejunkies.org, etc. We grabbed as many permutations of the name that we could think of when we decided to use it in the first place, except the one which was taken, treasurejunkie.com (what we call ourselves, lol). All of the other sites redirect to http://www.treasurejunkieband.com

RADUB1 · #9 10-03-2007, 07:12 AM

my .02....with the way the culture is today, your better of using mysapce! lol Good luck with your decision....I will add $1000.00 seems steep for a domain.

Dave Muscato · #10 10-03-2007, 07:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RADUB1

my .02....with the way the culture is today, your better of using mysapce! lol Good luck with your decision....I will add $1000.00 seems steep for a domain.

We have a MySpace, too... actually, there's an obvious link to our MySpace on our website when you first go to it, and as far as I can tell, we get a lot more traffic to our MySpace than our website, anyway.

However, not everybody uses MySpace, and IMHO, you still can't beat (yourbandname).com when it comes to web presence. It's more just that I don't want somebody *else* to our ourbandname.com.

Is that worth $1,000? I don't know. She might come down on the price, but either way, like I said, that's a lot of scratch!

Maybe I should have made a poll... actually, I might do that (website vs. MySpace)...

Diggler · #11 10-03-2007, 07:42 AM

I don't think it's unprofessional to have *band in a URL.

You know that official movie websites have *movie in them, right?

Dave Muscato · #12 10-03-2007, 07:47 AM

Yeah, but isn't that only because they don't want to shell out an extra $75,000 to buy http://www.titanic.com, instead of just using titanicmovie.com, etc?

If it's something you're going to continue to use long-term, do you still think so? Just curious if that changes anything.

QORC · #13 10-03-2007, 08:09 AM

I've found that myspace band sites are a much better way of getting out your info. My last band? We were getting 8x the hits daily on the myspace site compared to the .com. So much so that the .com site basically became an "enter" gif into the myspace site.

But sites are so cheap to get now, why wouldn't you at least grab the name and use it as an entry portal? Before someone else grabs it.

That being said, you mentioned that someone else already has it. $1000? Nah. I wouldn't bother. It's not like you guys are Guns & Roses or something.

Diggler · #14 10-03-2007, 08:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Muscato

Yeah, but isn't that only because they don't want to shell out an extra $75,000 to buy http://www.titanic.com, instead of just using titanicmovie.com, etc?

If it's something you're going to continue to use long-term, do you still think so? Just curious if that changes anything.

I don't think they're worried about shelling out $75k or whatever for a url; that's probably less than they pay for catering per day! Movie budgets are millions and millions of dollars!

invader3k · #15 10-03-2007, 08:17 AM

I wouldn't spend it.

I actually decided to cancel our website...it was partly due to the fact that I'm not that technically inclined to begin with (along with no one else stepping up to help with it), and we were only paying about 9 bucks a month for it through Godaddy, but I got sick of changing everything anytime our band went through some lineup change (we've had quite a few in the past couple years), and more people were visiting our Myspace anyway.

Your current website is probably fine. Use that thousand bucks towards studio time or something more tangible, like others have suggested.

lpdeluxe · #16 10-03-2007, 08:20 AM

I think $1K is too much. Don't rush into things. What if the band breaks up in two weeks (been known to happen).

Our band is The Rose River Band and our website is roseriverband.com. Nothing to steal...but we wouldn't have paid $1K for the domain name, and we're all mature guys with good incomes and could pay that out of gig money without a problem.

Any time you're being rushed to pay for something, you are being pushed to pay too much.

MakiSupaStar · #17 10-05-2007, 03:37 PM

Offer her 200 bucks if you really want the url. She's not going to get anyone else offering to buy the url. Otherwise I would say keep the url with "band" in it.

Geddyfleaharris · #18 10-05-2007, 09:08 PM

I would not pay the $1000. Yes just having "yourname.com" is simpler and easier to remember but as long as people know the name of your band they will find you on line. The official KISS website is kissonline.com and I think Gene knows a thing or two about marketing. After your first stadium world tour if you want to pay the grand then it probably won't be as big of a problem.

NickyBass · #19 10-07-2007, 09:49 AM

I just googled Treasure Junkie and your site was the first to show up. So, it is VERY easy to find. I don't think anyone who is interested in veiwing your site will be lost. It would be nice to own the simplest domain name, but if you spend all your money on advertising, there will be no product to promote.

If you had the extra cash, I would say, jump on it. But, it sounds like you need the money for other band related things.

Dave Muscato · #20 10-07-2007, 01:38 PM

Thanks for the advice, guys. I still haven't heard back from her about lowering the price, but unless she goes down to, say, $200, I think we will pass.

Thanks again,