> The way Faulkner treats his characters, I treat domain name projects. I buy them with an intention to develop. And I let them take the lead. They’re the inspiration for the business itself. They guide me towards what they need to become. I’m just the dude behind the keyboard (sorta).
I feel the same way about personal projects and blogs. A good idea tends to be self-reinforcing. It just needs someone to uncover it. Selling onions on the internet seems unusual but to the right person that idea is gold.
author here : ) happy to answer questions if you have any. We also have a twitter account here if you want to follow along: https://x.com/vidaliaonions
How would you market such a business in 2026? I am from an Italian region where farmer grow many special coltures, and I was always a bit surprised why they don’t try selling on the internet. I ended up convincing myself it is not a viable business model.
I'd still lean into a great .com domain, as it still gives you instant credibility. Also leverage Facebook, as my typical buyer hangs out there a good bit. YouTube has been helpful as well, as we try to share "behind the curtain" what life is like as a Vidalia farmer.
There are a lot of food and drink items with official legal definitions that include the region of origin. The most famous one is champagne, which can only be called champagne if it comes from a specific region.
You can think of the name as being inclusive of the region, not simply descriptive of the variety. So if someone made a sparkling wine in a different region and sold it as champagne then they would be committing fraud.
> Like if I plant some in my yard and start selling them online or at the local farmers market, what is anyone really going to do?
At your farmer’s market? Probably nothing. But if you came across a particularly grumpy person with time and money to burn on lawyers they would have a case against you. Not actually going to happen at that scale. But if you owned vidaliaonions.com and started selling fraudulent vidalia onions at scale, the farmers would likely get together and pursue legal action to protect their prices.
It’s almost like a brand. You can sell LEGO-style bricks but you can’t call them LEGO because they didn’t come from the LEGO company.
It's a brand name, like any other. Usage of it requires fulfilling the brand requirements. It's like how you can't say a burger from Burger King if it's actually from McDonalds, even if it's a very similar hamburger.
But even then, this isn't uncommon for food and beverages. You can't call it "whisky" unless you follow certain requirements about the mash bill, barrel, etc.
(My dad, before his death, had started growing "Pennsylvania Simply Sweet" onions. Because you can't call them Vidalia.)
The internet was originally promised as a way to disintermediate these kinds of supply chains, yet we often ignore these "boring" businesses for hype trains. The fact that he added a phone number and it sometimes out-sells the website is the cherry on top.
I've found more and more often the last few years that a lot of the long time businesses I use still do most of their ordering by phone. Or some version that involves talking to actual person.
The restaurants I go to still generally do phone ordering because they care about the quality of their ingredients. They want to discuss and talk about it with someone before placing an order.
The engineering and consulting firms I work with are the same. The engineers I enjoy working with are all phone based, not a lot of emails unless there are details involved.
I'm a bit of the same way. There is a lot of peripheral information that we miss out on when everything is done via automation/email. Those dead moments when our brains wander, then we ask a silly question, tend to bear fruit.
It's gotten to the point where I generally don't order anything online anymore because I can't trust I'll get what I ordered. When I have to deal with support it's an automated system that only gives me 1 or 2 options, neither of which satisfy my needs so I have to make a compromise. I'm not interested.
I've been doing some version of this since college. ...holy shit that's almost 20 years.
It started as a bit of a joke on the "That's a good band name" line. It became "That's a good domain name". Yes, I went to a stem college.
Anyway, i've started 4 pretty decent businesses based entirely off that bit. My friends and I would be riffing out behind the pizza place/bar we frequented, someone would say something and then "That's a good domain name" comes out. I'd make a quick note and think about it for a few days. I found that if I come back to it after a week or so then it's maybe worth something.
Business and domain names can make or break a company.
On top of all that, i've also bought and then sold hundreds of domains for a profit based off this bit. I use various registars when they have sales, buy em up cheap for a few years, then park em.
After reading the OP, it's kinda funny. I did something similar with a garlic grower back in the early 00's. I had a domain, my brother worked for a garlic farmer, the farmer wanted to export to asia. It worked out well for a few years.
Very interesting, I feel like domain names definitely have values but I don't know much about domain names that much but how do you buy or sell hundreds of domains?
Personally It would be interesting to see some domain names for cheap and if I have an idea, I can perhaps have domain name for cheap or something similar to it but I don't really know if I should go into this hobby perhaps and no guarantees that I would but I am curious about resources basically and I wish if you can tell me more about it
I feel like the issue I feel as if is that most domains would just be parked in there or would be sold for losses perhaps.
author here... you're correct - it's highly unlikely I would have built anything unless I had this unique, exact-match domain. I needed that unfair advantage to start, as the name sortof branded the project for me in the early days and helped drive new customers.
Not really sure what's so crazy about that. A brick and mortar shop will spend way more than that on renting a good location for their business when they have no clue whether they'll turn a profit. This is just the digital equivalent of that. People trust authoritative domains like vidaliaonions.com way more than something like vidaliaonions-direct.net and they're given more SEO weight as well. At least I know that used to be true; not sure how true that is today but I'd imagine it still is.
been sitting on fullstackjavascript.com for years. been too busy writing javascript to do anything with it and now I work almost exclusively in elixir.
I’ve had swiftbestpractices.com forever and still haven’t done anything with it. Meanwhile I’ve been going ham on my latest purchase of myfacespacebook.com. It’s weird the things that actually motivate us.
It's a good domain name for what its worth. But are you/ anybody not worried about the javascript trademark by oracle and the lawsuit of oracle vs deno and the times oracle sends cease and desist to even books about javascript one time or any conference with javascript as an example
This I think is the reason why javascript conferences are instead called ecmascript conferences
“ The way Faulkner treats his characters, I treat domain name projects. I buy them with an intention to develop. And I let them take the lead. They’re the inspiration for the business itself. They guide me towards what they need to become. I’m just the dude behind the keyboard (sorta).”
To me it makes sense. Without a domain name, it’s just an idea. The domain name makes it real, and it’s a foundation the biz can stand on. Too many people try to start a biz without a foundation.
Very interesting page, left me with a lot of mixed feelings after I read it. First, it seems like the biggest issue was not onion futures per se, but manipulating the market. It seems like banning onion futures was just a band-aid while ignoring the true cause. Second, if it really is the case that onions' perishable nature caused the problem, why not at least extend the ban to all similarly perishable products? Again it seems like they attacked the symptom rather than the root cause. But those criticisms aside, I kind of love that the government back then was willing to shut down shady money making schemes from finance bros. That would never happen in America today, so that part was pretty cool.
What a cool story. Not tech for tech's sake, but tech that grows into something simpler, more efficient, and more world-opening for something as wonderful as the Vidalia onion
Got these many years back after having been posted here. Very happy with the purchase, but wouldn’t order again as my wife hated the smell. Highly recommended everyone order these at least once.
I have a quick question if I may ask but your whole journey and even the article starts with the "I’M ADDICTED TO DOMAIN NAMES" / Addiction to domain names.
So I am wondering was there anything specific that caused this "addiction" (in a good way?) perhaps and has the addiction stopped after www.vidaliaonions.com/ or is it still continuing?
What mainly caused it: I kept getting laid off, and that nonsense infuriated me. So I was actively trying to find ways to save myself. Great domains, via the expiry marketplace, slowly became an unfair advantage I could lean into and compete with larger companies, just because I owned this unique .com domain. Hope that makes sense. I've written a few essays on my experience being laid off, if you're bored and wanna read: https://www.deepsouthventures.com/how-on-earth/ ; https://www.deepsouthventures.com/on-being-laid-off-unplanne...
oop, didn't see your 2nd question... yes, I still monitor expiring domain names... it's a very sticky habit, and ruthlessly fun... it's sortof like my morning paper.
> Some folks can eat them like an apple. Most of my customers do.
My grandfather and my cousin, who he pretty much raised were eating regular red or yellow onions like apples like that. I had never seen anyone else do that. They would make an onion "salad" which was just cut up onion with olive oil and salt.
Sometimes you start a business. Sometimes a business starts you. Awesome that the author saw this as an opportunity and not a down side to owning a name he never really wanted to begin with.
Sometimes the right business just finds you and you’re at the right place at the right time to see it.
author here.. our Vidalia season usually starts in late April - FYI. If you visit our website, submit your email there and I'll drop you a note when our order lines are open.
I checked and its the 47th most upvoted post in all of hackernews. (Btw each algolia page gives 30 articles so it could've been simpler for me if I didn't manually read till 30 :) but yea, hope it gives some context)
47th most upvoted story is wild but so true. I feel like although we might upvote AI and what not posts in HN which can casually reach 1000+ at times. Deep down what really sells us more isn't AI but rather a fever dream of sorts that one sells onions and maybe the freedom we attach to it
> The way Faulkner treats his characters, I treat domain name projects. I buy them with an intention to develop. And I let them take the lead. They’re the inspiration for the business itself. They guide me towards what they need to become. I’m just the dude behind the keyboard (sorta).
I feel the same way about personal projects and blogs. A good idea tends to be self-reinforcing. It just needs someone to uncover it. Selling onions on the internet seems unusual but to the right person that idea is gold.
author here : ) happy to answer questions if you have any. We also have a twitter account here if you want to follow along: https://x.com/vidaliaonions
How would you market such a business in 2026? I am from an Italian region where farmer grow many special coltures, and I was always a bit surprised why they don’t try selling on the internet. I ended up convincing myself it is not a viable business model.
I'd still lean into a great .com domain, as it still gives you instant credibility. Also leverage Facebook, as my typical buyer hangs out there a good bit. YouTube has been helpful as well, as we try to share "behind the curtain" what life is like as a Vidalia farmer.
Is anyone really getting into trouble growing Vidalia onions not in Georgia?
Like if I plant some in my yard and start selling them online or at the local farmers market, what is anyone really going to do?
Seems kinda weird they have a government granted monopoly on them.
There are a lot of food and drink items with official legal definitions that include the region of origin. The most famous one is champagne, which can only be called champagne if it comes from a specific region.
You can think of the name as being inclusive of the region, not simply descriptive of the variety. So if someone made a sparkling wine in a different region and sold it as champagne then they would be committing fraud.
> Like if I plant some in my yard and start selling them online or at the local farmers market, what is anyone really going to do?
At your farmer’s market? Probably nothing. But if you came across a particularly grumpy person with time and money to burn on lawyers they would have a case against you. Not actually going to happen at that scale. But if you owned vidaliaonions.com and started selling fraudulent vidalia onions at scale, the farmers would likely get together and pursue legal action to protect their prices.
It’s almost like a brand. You can sell LEGO-style bricks but you can’t call them LEGO because they didn’t come from the LEGO company.
It's a brand name, like any other. Usage of it requires fulfilling the brand requirements. It's like how you can't say a burger from Burger King if it's actually from McDonalds, even if it's a very similar hamburger.
But even then, this isn't uncommon for food and beverages. You can't call it "whisky" unless you follow certain requirements about the mash bill, barrel, etc.
(My dad, before his death, had started growing "Pennsylvania Simply Sweet" onions. Because you can't call them Vidalia.)
we also film a lot of the growing process here: https://www.youtube.com/@vidaliaonion
Is your website accessible over the onion network by Tor?
the only tor joke I have: https://x.com/searchbound/status/1263578735724433408?s=20
Perfect opportunity for you to get your site on Tor then!
I am an onion farmer - Tor is way above my pay grade : )
The internet was originally promised as a way to disintermediate these kinds of supply chains, yet we often ignore these "boring" businesses for hype trains. The fact that he added a phone number and it sometimes out-sells the website is the cherry on top.
I've found more and more often the last few years that a lot of the long time businesses I use still do most of their ordering by phone. Or some version that involves talking to actual person.
The restaurants I go to still generally do phone ordering because they care about the quality of their ingredients. They want to discuss and talk about it with someone before placing an order.
The engineering and consulting firms I work with are the same. The engineers I enjoy working with are all phone based, not a lot of emails unless there are details involved.
I'm a bit of the same way. There is a lot of peripheral information that we miss out on when everything is done via automation/email. Those dead moments when our brains wander, then we ask a silly question, tend to bear fruit.
It's gotten to the point where I generally don't order anything online anymore because I can't trust I'll get what I ordered. When I have to deal with support it's an automated system that only gives me 1 or 2 options, neither of which satisfy my needs so I have to make a compromise. I'm not interested.
Absolutely insane way to start a business. “Let me blow 2 grand on a domain name. Not sure what it’s for, yet.”
I've been doing some version of this since college. ...holy shit that's almost 20 years.
It started as a bit of a joke on the "That's a good band name" line. It became "That's a good domain name". Yes, I went to a stem college.
Anyway, i've started 4 pretty decent businesses based entirely off that bit. My friends and I would be riffing out behind the pizza place/bar we frequented, someone would say something and then "That's a good domain name" comes out. I'd make a quick note and think about it for a few days. I found that if I come back to it after a week or so then it's maybe worth something.
Business and domain names can make or break a company.
On top of all that, i've also bought and then sold hundreds of domains for a profit based off this bit. I use various registars when they have sales, buy em up cheap for a few years, then park em.
After reading the OP, it's kinda funny. I did something similar with a garlic grower back in the early 00's. I had a domain, my brother worked for a garlic farmer, the farmer wanted to export to asia. It worked out well for a few years.
Very interesting, I feel like domain names definitely have values but I don't know much about domain names that much but how do you buy or sell hundreds of domains?
I found websites/newsletters like https://ungrabbed.com/
Personally It would be interesting to see some domain names for cheap and if I have an idea, I can perhaps have domain name for cheap or something similar to it but I don't really know if I should go into this hobby perhaps and no guarantees that I would but I am curious about resources basically and I wish if you can tell me more about it
I feel like the issue I feel as if is that most domains would just be parked in there or would be sold for losses perhaps.
> Yes, I went to a stem college.
I don’t understand this.
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
I wonder if the sunk cost worked in his favor here. If he'd only spent ten dollars on the domain, he probably would have built nothing.
author here... you're correct - it's highly unlikely I would have built anything unless I had this unique, exact-match domain. I needed that unfair advantage to start, as the name sortof branded the project for me in the early days and helped drive new customers.
author here... in my defense, it was an accidental purchase : ) I thought it was gonna sell for $5k or more... but the music stopped when I bid ...
Not really sure what's so crazy about that. A brick and mortar shop will spend way more than that on renting a good location for their business when they have no clue whether they'll turn a profit. This is just the digital equivalent of that. People trust authoritative domains like vidaliaonions.com way more than something like vidaliaonions-direct.net and they're given more SEO weight as well. At least I know that used to be true; not sure how true that is today but I'd imagine it still is.
been sitting on fullstackjavascript.com for years. been too busy writing javascript to do anything with it and now I work almost exclusively in elixir.
I’ve had swiftbestpractices.com forever and still haven’t done anything with it. Meanwhile I’ve been going ham on my latest purchase of myfacespacebook.com. It’s weird the things that actually motivate us.
It's a good domain name for what its worth. But are you/ anybody not worried about the javascript trademark by oracle and the lawsuit of oracle vs deno and the times oracle sends cease and desist to even books about javascript one time or any conference with javascript as an example
This I think is the reason why javascript conferences are instead called ecmascript conferences
“ The way Faulkner treats his characters, I treat domain name projects. I buy them with an intention to develop. And I let them take the lead. They’re the inspiration for the business itself. They guide me towards what they need to become. I’m just the dude behind the keyboard (sorta).”
To me it makes sense. Without a domain name, it’s just an idea. The domain name makes it real, and it’s a foundation the biz can stand on. Too many people try to start a biz without a foundation.
I wonder how you can then produce onions as a side business.
He doesn't. He partnered with a farmer.
This feels like a relevant wiki page to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act
Very interesting page, left me with a lot of mixed feelings after I read it. First, it seems like the biggest issue was not onion futures per se, but manipulating the market. It seems like banning onion futures was just a band-aid while ignoring the true cause. Second, if it really is the case that onions' perishable nature caused the problem, why not at least extend the ban to all similarly perishable products? Again it seems like they attacked the symptom rather than the root cause. But those criticisms aside, I kind of love that the government back then was willing to shut down shady money making schemes from finance bros. That would never happen in America today, so that part was pretty cool.
What a cool story. Not tech for tech's sake, but tech that grows into something simpler, more efficient, and more world-opening for something as wonderful as the Vidalia onion
This is the kind of thing I’d like to do. I have so many ideas, but I’m not sure how to actually make them happen.
How much money does it take to start something like this?
Got these many years back after having been posted here. Very happy with the purchase, but wouldn’t order again as my wife hated the smell. Highly recommended everyone order these at least once.
Peter appears to still be at it.[1] Very impressed by his commitment to the bit.
[1] https://xcancel.com/searchbound/status/1996247844080996549#m
peter here... we're still at it... entering our 12th(?) year
Hey good to see here!
I have a quick question if I may ask but your whole journey and even the article starts with the "I’M ADDICTED TO DOMAIN NAMES" / Addiction to domain names.
So I am wondering was there anything specific that caused this "addiction" (in a good way?) perhaps and has the addiction stopped after www.vidaliaonions.com/ or is it still continuing?
What mainly caused it: I kept getting laid off, and that nonsense infuriated me. So I was actively trying to find ways to save myself. Great domains, via the expiry marketplace, slowly became an unfair advantage I could lean into and compete with larger companies, just because I owned this unique .com domain. Hope that makes sense. I've written a few essays on my experience being laid off, if you're bored and wanna read: https://www.deepsouthventures.com/how-on-earth/ ; https://www.deepsouthventures.com/on-being-laid-off-unplanne...
oop, didn't see your 2nd question... yes, I still monitor expiring domain names... it's a very sticky habit, and ruthlessly fun... it's sortof like my morning paper.
> Some folks can eat them like an apple. Most of my customers do.
My grandfather and my cousin, who he pretty much raised were eating regular red or yellow onions like apples like that. I had never seen anyone else do that. They would make an onion "salad" which was just cut up onion with olive oil and salt.
I love this post. I read it a few years ago and tried the same thing. I bought and then built riverreports.com (https://www.riverreports.com/).
Sometimes you start a business. Sometimes a business starts you. Awesome that the author saw this as an opportunity and not a down side to owning a name he never really wanted to begin with.
Sometimes the right business just finds you and you’re at the right place at the right time to see it.
I love this guy's marketing honest and compelling
That's very interesting. My domain purchased in 2015, finally seems to make some meaning due to recent tech advacnes. Time to do something with it.
What's the domain name if I may ask?
Great advertising for vidalias. I simply have to try one now.
They're really good. The apple thing is no joke. Vidalia and Walla-Walla onions are top tier alliums.
author here.. our Vidalia season usually starts in late April - FYI. If you visit our website, submit your email there and I'll drop you a note when our order lines are open.
Good luck finding them anywhere right now
(2019)
I love how I came into this thread going “it would be fun if this was actually about onions, but it is probably something about Tor” but was wrong!
233 points and 89 comments back in 2022 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32053044
It got over 3000 back in 2019!! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132
Thanks to both of you! Macroexpanded:
I Sell Onions on the Internet (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32053044 - July 2022 (89 comments)
I Sell Onions on the Internet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132 - April 2019 (435 comments)
I feel as if 3000 definitely is one of the most highest rates
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefix=false&qu...
I checked and its the 47th most upvoted post in all of hackernews. (Btw each algolia page gives 30 articles so it could've been simpler for me if I didn't manually read till 30 :) but yea, hope it gives some context)
47th most upvoted story is wild but so true. I feel like although we might upvote AI and what not posts in HN which can casually reach 1000+ at times. Deep down what really sells us more isn't AI but rather a fever dream of sorts that one sells onions and maybe the freedom we attach to it
correction: https://x.com/searchbound/status/1007015211486900229?ref_src...
It's kind of funny this guy doesn't understand his own business.
It's not onions. It's lead generation.