Someone wants our domain name

[JMacBass65]

i don't think startup companies have this kind of money to spend on a domain name.

Right, that's one thing I am concerned about.

For one thing, the contact message was not a letter from a lawyer. That indicates there isn't a lot of money at stake.

I see that as more of a cost saving measure. As long as i wasn't exposing myself to significant risk, why not try to get something done before paying a lawyer? Why hire a lawyer when we can contact the band and see if the are:
- still together
- breaking up soon
- gullible schmucks willing to give it up for a few hundred dollars

Who knows?

See what they offer - I'll be surprised if it's more than 2000 dollars

Well, it would need to be more than $2K.

I'd take a minimum of $10K.

 

[JMacBass65]

Your intentions are to continue to prosper with your existing branding. Establishing new branding entails significant risk to your ability to maintain your current fanbase and continue your success. Bird in the hand...

prosper......
Maintain fan base.........
Continue success...............

LMBO!!!!!!!!!!

Trust me, there is very little risk for us in giving this up.

 

[kikstand454]

Your intentions are to continue to prosper with your existing branding. Establishing new branding entails significant risk to your ability to maintain your current fanbase and continue your success. Bird in the hand...

I would be telling them it probably isn't worth your while but if they want to make an offer to make you sit up and take notice, go ahead.

That'd be fine if you were someone like Tool. Tool isn't going to sell their dot come to a hardware store because they have a brand and following built......

The OP implies he could have all of his current dot com following show up at one show. Its not even remotely the same.

Sell it. Give each band member an equal bonus of personal money....and stick an agreed about majority of the money back into the band. Upgrade your equipment. Change out that rattling monitor noone wants to use, Replace all your old cords. New mics? New p. A. ? Etc.

You don't have to change your bands name at all....nor do you have to worry about Facebook changes. Keep on going just as you are with your current name+band as your dot com.

I would follow JSN 's advice to the letter, and even pm him/her for advice.

 

[E.J. T.N.T.]

Yup. I've sold numerous domains, and the first step is to ask for their offer. If possible, employ language that says, nicely, "skip the lowball offer."

Whatever their offer, it's less than they're willing to pay. Add 50%, and if THAT's a number you like, make it your counteroffer. Otherwise, just say "sorry, that wouldn't make it worth our while" and leave it at that. DO NOT throw out your own number, just repeat variations on "making it worthwhile,"

They'll come back with a new offer (if not, they were just lowballing in the first place.)

Repeat process.

At some point, your +50% counteroffer will be met with a +25% counter-counteroffer. Usually with language like, "let's meet halfway."

You can either accept that offer, or counter with, "yes, let's meet halfway. But that means between what I want and what YOU want," i.e. a 37.5% increase (25% + half the distance from 25 to 50, which is 12.5). It's a good tactic for getting the most out of the buyer, while still seeming fair.

I used this methodology for the last domain I sold. Ended up with a sum that was 1500% of their initial offer.

Now that is some solid advice on the negotiation part. To me the whole story sounds fine. My advice is get an offer out of them. You don't really have to change your band name. You can do something similar with what the band Mastodon does, their website is Mastodonrocks.com. If they really care about the name their offer would be rather considerable.

Also think from a cost point of view. How much would it cost you guys to change your domain name and move your website?

 

[two fingers]

1) Tell your guitar player to pipe down until you have any idea what you're talking about here. If they were to offer your weekend warrior band quite a bit of money and he tries to hold out, he's an idiot.

2) Find out if they are even offering money. They may not be offering anything at all.

3) If they are, simply change your web site to whatever your band name is plus the word "band" or "music" or "rocks your mom" or whatever you see fit.

You guys play out around once a month. Your web site obviously isn't making you the next big thing. (I'm not putting you down. You guys obviously aren't trying to make a living at this if you play out once a month or so.)

Here's what I would do if I were in a weekend warrior band and this came up. If they are offering any serious kind of money (like $10K), do this. Buy some Class D powered speakers and a digital board with the money. Then sell off your other gear and split it among band members. That way you will have a new PA that fits in a mini van (or less) and a board that will run off of an iPad/iPhone. Your whole operation will be streamlined. You guys will have a lot more fun with a lot less load in/load out time. And with the reduced stress and easier logistics you guys can even take on a few more shows just for kicks.

And all you have to do to get the same old information to the new web site is transfer the HTML (or whatever) code over to the new address. Simple.

 

[gastric]

Heh, everything in life is negotiable. I would at least entertain discussing it. What if they seriously offer $50K. You guys wouldn't take the money and run?

 

[N. Kentucky Bass]

The people who want your domains have nothing. They're a startup - retail no less, and it doesn't sound like online retailing so the domains would not be of intrinsic value to daily operations. They will be selling other peoples' products, they have no revenue, no customers, nothing. Just dreams. I doubt they'll offer more than $500. Maybe $250. There's no jackpot here, just a waste of time.

 

[Ric5]

I say sell the domain name and make your band site domain name-band ...

 

[two fingers]

The people who want your domains have nothing. They're a startup - retail no less, and it doesn't sound like online retailing so the domains would not be of intrinsic value to daily operations. They will be selling other peoples' products, they have no revenue, no customers, nothing. Just dreams. I doubt they'll offer more than $500. Maybe $250. There's no jackpot here, just a waste of time.

You have no way at all of knowing that. These partners could be wealthy investors who are going to manufacture their own clothes and have millions in start up capital. I find it hard to believe that anyone could start a business in NYC without having either their own money or some serious backers. I doubt that they would have a marketing person contact them if they are three poor cousins wanting to open a break-dancing clothes store in The Bronx and sell old school Adidas warmups in a run down store front with bars on the doors.

 

[Bassist4Eris]

This thread is all just so much sound and fury until we find out just how much money we're talking about. That being said, I'm subscribing, because I'm really curious what the offer is going to be.

Personally, I wouldn't take the $250-$500 Ukiah is predicting. But I'd take a lot less than some of you. Enough to record and release a decent EP would be all it would take to get me to sell out. That would be worth more to me and my band than not having to add "theband" to the end of our domain name.

 

[marko138]

I beg to differ. My band gets about 300 hits a month on our dot-com, and our Facebook gets MAYBE 20 in that same period. Granted we aggressively promote our dot-com through our email newsletter, but all my marketing friends have been telling me for the last year or so that Facebook is an inbound-traffic wasteland since they changed all their rules about 'post reach' and whatnot. In my experience with ~3 different bands and my self-promotional website, dot-com is still where its at.

I agree. Social media sites come and go. Remember MySpace? Either does anyone else. You've gotta have your own place on the web. The dot com is that place. We get a few hundred visits to our site each month as well. FB changes their "reach" rules seemingly every day.

 

[gttim]

If they have no money, take a percentage of the business or stocks. Remember the artist who painted a mural for some little company that had no money and took stock? Some little company nobody ever heard of. What was it, of yeah, Facebook. Big bucks. Tell them you would give it up for 1% of the company. Might bust, might make some money.

 

[carl h.]

If I was you I'd lock down xxxxxBAND or whatever you envision changing to asap so they don't turn around and sell it back to you after you sell them your name.

 

[N. Kentucky Bass]

To the OP: if I can judge this situation from information in your profile, your dot-com address is http://www.concrete-blues.com/. If this is true, I take everything back. The retail people who want your domain are probably Mafia. You don't want to mess around with this situation. Give them whatever they want. Or else!

(Just funnin' ya!

But seriously, according to NY State incorporation records, this company ("Concrete Blues") does not exist:
Invalid Link Removed

NYS Department of State

Division of Corporations

Informational Message

The information contained in this database is current through October 31, 2013.

No business entities were found for concrete blues.

Please refine your search criteria.

 

[MatticusMania]

So my band of six years has a domain name that an upstart retailer wants. The retailers name is exactly the same as our band and the domain, so it would seem to me they want it bad.

I don't know much more than that, other than the person who contacted us seems legit. New York based, marketing person, 400+ connections on LinkedIn, background in retail and marketing.

Anyway, my guitar player said no way, we have used that name forever.

I said "dudes, this could be serious coin, I'd sell for the right price, we can change the band name, who cares?"

Note: weekend warrior band playing 12/15 paid gigs a year. Following is small enough we could call everyone and give them the heads up on the name change, wouldn't impact our "following"......LOL.

The I got to thinking, we have Facebook and twitter too, they might want that.

Plus, we will need a new name, logo, etc, there is time and money involved there.

So.......anybody ever dealt with this sort of thing before? What sort of money might be reasonable, all things being equal?

I have a hunch it could be WAY more than we have ever made gigging with the name!

Why would you have to change the band name?

Couldnt you sell them the domain name and then buy a new domain, www.[bands name]music.com, or even Link Removed
You can still keep the Facebook and all that...

The people who want your domains have nothing. They're a startup - retail no less, and it doesn't sound like online retailing so the domains would not be of intrinsic value to daily operations. They will be selling other peoples' products, they have no revenue, no customers, nothing. Just dreams. I doubt they'll offer more than $500. Maybe $250. There's no jackpot here, just a waste of time.

I wouldnt even see $250 as a waste of time, being that a domain name is easily purchased and set up for $10/year.

 

[DWBass]

Happens all the time. No need to change the name. Secure a domain name adding 'band' to the actual name of the band. I.E. www.rush-band.com or www.rushband.com

 

[Fiset]

The people who want your domains have nothing. They're a startup - retail no less, and it doesn't sound like online retailing so the domains would not be of intrinsic value to daily operations. They will be selling other peoples' products, they have no revenue, no customers, nothing. Just dreams. I doubt they'll offer more than $500. Maybe $250. There's no jackpot here, just a waste of time.

This.

I work in the corporate law arena and have worked with many start-ups. I don't want to burst the OP's bubble but $50K? Ukiah Bass has it absolutely right. They'll likely offer something far less than $1K. Start-ups are not typically flush with cash and the ones that have held some sort of private placement to raise revenues would have already researched the domain issue. There might be a few bucks to be made here but the lotto this isn't.

 

[SuperK]

I don't think they're going to offer you anything at all. The letter that you were sent was merely a fact finding letter to see if you were still active and using your website. If you're not willing to give it up they'll simply register a similar domain name of their choosing (ie. concretebluesjeans.com, cbjeans.com, cbj.com, etc.). They have zero brand recognition right now so they can start with whatever they want. They're not tied down to any specific domain name.

For example, our company sells a line of vehicle lubrication equipment from a manufacturer named Graco. Mostly unheard of to the general public. There is also a company called Graco that sells baby gear (strollers, car seats, etc). I'm sure many of you know of them (I know I do!). Well Graco the lube company got graco.com first. What did the baby gear company do? They registered gracobaby.com. Done deal and it didn't cost them a penny. And people are still able to find their website with no problem.

I think once they find out that you are still using your domain name, they'll just move on to their second choice. In the end I think you'll be better off if that happens. In the off chance that this company makes it big, you'll get all sorts of random hits to your site from people searching for the other company.

 

[Mystic Michael]

Not to derail with a debate, but...
Let{s say a band is called "The Postmen" and their website is "postmen.com"
All of the sudden this shipping company wants the website because it is there name...the band declines. So they make a "postmenshipping.com" domain.
More and more people hear about the company by word of mouth and try to check them out by typing in "postmen.com" they get a band and are discouraged.
The shipping company realizes this and wants to secure that they get as much website traffic as possible, so they offer to buy the website (at a higher price) in order to have it automatically re-direct.

For the record, I mainly posted to subscribe but decided to offer my 2 cents on what I would personally do (assuming they offered a low amount first)

OK. I can see that...

MM

 

[the yeti]

4) who already owns the name - and stands to make a profit by selling it?

MM

maybe i missed it, but who is the registered owner?