Why the name you pitched got taken before the client signed

Why does this keep happening?

The check was a DNS check. The tool you used to “confirm availability” looked for nameservers, found none, and said free. The domain was registered the whole time. This is the most common of the eight reasons a name won’t sell.

Two weeks is a long time. Availability is a snapshot. Good names are searched by many people. Some of them buy faster than a client’s approval cycle.

The name went out in an email. A deck with three names went to eight people at the client. One of them, or their cousin, registered it. Not malice, usually. Enthusiasm.

Nobody owned the buying. The studio assumed the client would register it. The client assumed the studio would. Neither did, until the domain was gone.

The three-step habit

1. Check at the registry, the day of the presentation. Not a week before. Use a tool that queries the registry for each extension and hides anything it can’t confirm. Note the time of the check on the slide.
2. Register the shortlist before you present it. A year of a standard domain costs less than the coffee for the meeting. Register the two or three names you’re presenting, in the studio’s name, and transfer the winner to the client after sign-off. Bill it as a line item. Most clients are relieved someone thought of it.
3. Put the domain in the contract. “Name selection includes registration of the chosen domain, transferred to the client on payment.” Then the buying has an owner, and it’s you.

What if the client won’t pay for holding names?

Then present names with the caveat on the slide: “Checked free at 09:40; availability changes daily.” It protects you. It also tends to make the client approve faster, because a deadline that comes from the world is more persuasive than one that comes from you.

What if it’s already gone?

Look up the record. If it was registered last week by someone unrelated, it’s often recoverable for a few hundred dollars through a broker. If it was registered by someone who saw the deck, that’s a conversation rather than a transaction.

And if it turns out to be a registry premium that was never $12, then you presented a name without a price, and the fix is structural: show prices next time. A hunt that prices every name is harder to misread than a list that doesn’t. See how the check and the price arrive together.

Plainly

Names vanish between the pitch and the sign-off because the check wasn’t a registry check, because two weeks is long, and because nobody owned the buying. Check on the day, register the shortlist, put it in the contract.

What Webault does about this

Webault checks every name at the registry and only shows names it can prove are free, with the price. Studios use it to build the shortlist the morning of the presentation rather than the week before.

Questions

Related reading

• Why did a domain show as available, but I couldn’t buy it? — the eight reasons, and how to spot each one.
• How to write a one-sentence naming brief — what belongs in one sentence, with five keyword lists rewritten.
• What is a premium domain, and why does it cost 100x? — who sets premium prices, and whether they renew that way.