The tale of Dave the domain flipper
This is the real story of how a friend of mine, âDaveâ, 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 Iâm 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 doesnât. 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 âladebil.noâ, meaning âcharge carâ in Norwegian. And, donât 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 wouldnât 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©bilâs very fictional community manager, Pablo BotĂłn.
Your domain for sale
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.
In hindsight, I do think I mightâve 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 wouldâve saved some ridiculousness for later in the conversation. Still though, he replied!
Thank you for your email.
Lade bil means âCharge your carâ 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 -
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?
- and he even has a legal team supplying him with blog posts on the issue!
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.
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.
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/)
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.
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 didnât 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 youâre driving on them. Never change, Dave.