[ Jakob.fun ] [ Blog ] [ Fun ] [ Contact ]
← Back

The tale of Dave the domain flipper

This is the real story of how a friend of mine, “Dave”, thought he was gonna make a huge profit on one of his entrepreneurial ventures because of a Spanish band with aspirations of entering the Norwegian market. This is the story of Dave the domain flipper.

Dave is the type of person, and I’m sure you also know someone like this, who cannot resist taking a shot on what he thinks might be easy money once he sees an opportunity come along. For better or for worse, if he smells easy money, his eyes turn to dollar signs. Sometimes this pays off (like when he jumped on the crypto craze - because of course he did), and sometimes it doesn’t. Unfortunately for Dave, this story falls in the latter category.

Now, Dave and I went to high school together, and with this being Norway in the mid-2010s, electric cars were rapidly entering the mainstream. As a tech-savvy teenager, this is where Dave saw one of his opportunities. He found a website where he could buy domains, and sucked up all the ones related to electric cars he could think of. Suddenly, Dave was the owner of a whole bunch of solid D-tier domain names related to electric cars, which he proudly showed off in our discord server.

One of these domains was “ladebil.no”, meaning “charge car” in Norwegian. And, don’t ask me why, but as soon as I saw this an idea formed in my head. Ladebil 
 La Debil? To my non-Spanish-speaking self, that kind of sounded like a Spanish band name. Maybe a band that wanted to expand into the Norwegian market, who would be really interested in a good domain name? The idea was the perfect level of stupid to potentially be pretty entertaining.

As luck would have it, I wouldn’t even have to dream up a fake identity for La Debil, cause one quick Google search revealed that there was literally a Spanish band with that name, with their own Bandcamp and everything. It seemed to be a pretty small band and their last activity was around 2012, so I figured there was no harm in emailing my friend on behalf of La DĂ©bil’s very fictional community manager, Pablo BotĂłn.

Your domain for sale

Pablo BotĂłn

Hello señor Dave,

I am communitie manager of La DĂ©bil, a experimetnal blues punk rock band of Spain. We are expanding our business to international surfaces, and are looking at website for norway crowds. I see you are owner of domain https://www.ladebil.no.

I do not know why you have taken such a domain name of random but i would like to buy from you the domain for use of our band. do you think we could agree on to this?

Your truly

Pablo BotĂłn,

community manager La DĂ©bil band.

LA DÉBIL
Moderna y emocionante
Contacto Bandcamp All right reserved

In hindsight, I do think I might’ve gone a little hard on the horrendous grammar and spelling here. The goal was always to try to keep it right on the edge of what could be believable. Had I done this today I think I would’ve saved some ridiculousness for later in the conversation. Still though, he replied!

Dave the domain flipper

Thank you for your email.

Lade bil means “Charge your car” in Norwegian. The domain name is not random nor a copy of your band name. However, I am not sure about the laws regarding .no domains and transfers to foreigners.

Mvh, Dave

Fair concern! .no domains are actually only able to be legally owned by Norwegian organizations or private individuals registered in the Norwegian National Population Register. Luckily, señor Botón is flexible -

Pablo BotĂłn

Hello señor Dave.

I am not conserned that you steal our name, we are recenlty grow much and therefore we want to make norwegian website for norwegian developer. We do not look originally for to change transfer of domain to spanish. We would like to keep it in norwegian server and then make it redirect to our bandcamp: https://ladebil.bandcamp.com/

Do you think this is possible also what price would you consider your web domain to be worth?

LA DÉBIL
Moderna y emocionante
Contacto Bandcamp All right reserved

- and he even has a legal team supplying him with blog posts on the issue!

Pablo BotĂłn

http://flippa.com/blog/the-top-3-legal-issues-when-buying-and-selling-domain-names/

I invite you to read this article that our law experts have preciesly choosed for your situation. It should clear any issues you have regarding not knowing of the law. Also as I ask please state your estimated value of domain name LaDebil.no please.

your tuly

Pablo BotĂłn, community manager La DĂ©bil band.

LA DÉBIL
Moderna y emocionante
Contacto Bandcamp All right reserved

At this point, Dave flexed his web dev muscles and added some text and audio to the page. He also states his price - which would net him a very healthy profit compared to what he paid for the domain.

Dave the domain flipper

I do not want to stand juridically of the domain if you will use it. Also see ladebil.no i updated it.

Estimated price of domain is 250Eur.

Read more about .no policy here (https://www.norid.no/no/regelverk/navnepolitikk/vedlegg-e/)

Pablo BotĂłn

Hello señor Skalin,

Your webside design skill is very impressive, although audio is a bit disturbing. I think euro 250 is a bit too much, is almost as much as my salary of a week. How would you like to develop our website for page for Norway? It seems you are very able at webdesing.

Where did you aquire your estimate of price?

Yours truly

Pablo BotĂłn, community manager La DĂ©bil band.

LA DÉBIL
Moderna y emocionante
Contacto Bandcamp All right reserved

At this point, Dave finally stopped answering. Maybe he realized somebody was messing with him (again, I kind of regret going so hard on the ridiculousness), or maybe he didn’t want to waste time on someone not willing to shell out 250 euros for his domain.

Regardless, Pablo BotĂłn and La DĂ©bil never got their domain, and Dave ended up moving on to other ventures. Last time I spoke to him he was reading up on patent law to see if he could patent the concept of roads that charge your EV while you’re driving on them. Never change, Dave.