The founder of RemoteOK.com, an online repository of “digital nomad” jobs, complained on Twitter about having to pay to acquire the domain.
Referring to the domain’s seller as a “squatter,” the enterprising founder of RemoteOK revealed how much he paid for the domain and the privilege of upgrading from the .IO:
After 6 years of dealing with domain squatters this week I was finally able to buy the REMOTEOK.COM domain (before was on .io)
I paid $102,000 for it
What’s with the “domain squatters” reference, bro?
Hundreds of enterprising founders come up with a unique brand annually and seed their project with an available domain name. When it’s not available, they often negotiate and acquire domain names in the aftermarket, paying fair market price for these digital assets.
Domain squatting is the practice of registering and holding onto premium domain assets that infringe on trademarks, provided that the domain arrived after the mark was established. Otherwise, it’s pretty much an open market that leads to domain sales reaching millions of dollars.
RemoteOK.com was registered in 2014, two full months before the .IO was registered. It’s clear that at the time the reference to “remote OK” was a trending phrase for remote work and someone else beat the RemoteOK founder to it.
Wrapping up the tweet, the RemoteOK founder bragged about the financials of the deal: it will take 250 job posts to recoup the money he paid for the domain. That translates to $408 dollars per listing; if that’s accurate then he probably hasn’t heard of Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Humans.net, and several other such platforms that provide job listings aimed at remote workers, for a much lower cost to corporations.
On a good note, the domain’s former owner made $102,000 dollars which is a steep discount from the previous asking price of $250,000 dollars. The domain was previously listed on Sedo with that price tag!
Story kudos: Elliot of DomainInvesting.
Y’all are domain squatters. Not that hard to understand.
Cojones Dude : Now that’s one argument with lower intelligence than Donald Trump.
DomainIQ shows the creation date of RemoteOK.com was 30-APR-2012, not in 2014.
This must be up there in the top 10 most overpriced domain sales of all time. Most would pass on this for reg fee.
Logan: It’s October 16, 2014 (not 15th per DomainTools). But yes, it existed in 2012 and dropped.
they called the land, citrus, railroad, oil barons “squatters” too
F*** You, Just Pay ME or settle for some lousy domain where the sun don’t shine, hotshot….
110 K for REMOTEOK.COM – Hotshot got a lucky deal
Asdf
overpriced domain, you say?
Yeah, any short .com domains with key words such as “remote”, “casino”, “bet”, nft”, “meta”, “crypto”, “pay” are so “overpriced”, so I’ll be charitable and just take them off your hands for half-price? lol
So much salt in this post I can taste it
Keep the midwit takes coming Elliot / domain squatters et al.
I agree with the new owner of remoteok.com – you’re all domain squatters, nothing less. You’re extracting value by literally doing nothing but sitting on some digital property.
Sdev & Paul: Approved these two comments to document the amount of ignorance and abject stupidity overflowing among some young entrepreneurs and programmers – assuming you aren’t just random trolls.
You know nothing about the legal requirements of cybersquatting and spew garbage just because someone who chose to pay $102k (wasn’t forced!) to upgrade from a much lesser ccTLD (.io) has buyer’s remorse.