I did not know what a domain was when I first needed one. I opened a dictionary and found: “a kingdom.” I wanted a kingdom of my own on the internet. I had $10 and no way to send money across borders.
This is the story of how I kept acquiring anyway — one rejection, one negotiation, one domain at a time.
The .com I could not have
The original Wapka ran on wapka.com. When it ended, the domain stayed with the previous owner. I was young, early in the rebuild, and had almost nothing.
I found it on Sedo. I offered $10. The seller canceled the negotiation. The gap was too wide. They were right.
Later I tried again with $100 — everything I could save from small freelance work. Still nothing. The seller’s range was $15,000–$20,000.
Then 2020 came. I worked full time, every day, for years. By 2021 I could offer $1,000. Three offers over three years: $10 → $100 → $1,000. Each one higher because I was building something bigger. The seller’s price had not moved, but I had.
The negotiation never closed. But somewhere along the way, I stopped needing that specific domain.
What I built instead
Without the .com, I found different paths. Community members who believed in the platform sold me domains for $100–$300 — fair prices from people who were part of the story.
| Domain | How I got it |
|---|---|
| wapka.website | Community member |
| wapka.site | Community member |
| wapka.co | Community member |
| wapka.org | Public availability |
In April 2020, wapka.org became available. I registered it immediately. It carries a different weight — purpose, permanence, alignment with what the platform is. It became the home.
The .com never left the previous owner. At this point, it does not need to. The brand is built. The community is on wapka.org. The code is open source.
The personal names
Years later, I went after domains for myself.
zuna.id — my personal namespace, built around my nickname Zunaid.
banglad.sh — my country’s name as a domain hack. This one took weeks of negotiation.
The seller sent me comparable sales: Bangladesh.org at $99,999, Bangladesh.co at $44,999, Bangladesh.org at $9,999, Bangladesh.jp at $6,900. Banglade.sh was in that family. They made their case with data, comps, and patience.
I made a counteroffer. Too low, they said. Then showed me the market again. I did not walk away. I stayed. Made my case. Explained my position. Back and forth over weeks.
Eventually, we reached an agreement.
The same person who once offered $10 on Sedo with no way to pay — who had to look up “domain” in a dictionary — had learned to negotiate in a different league. Not by becoming someone else. By growing into someone who belonged in that conversation.
What stays
The arc was never about any single domain. It was about the growth.
I lost some of those domains later — wapka.co, wapka.xyz, wapka.io — taken down due to content uploaded by users who broke the rules. A media company’s legal action during a major sporting event. I fought. I lost. It happened during one of the hardest personal periods of my life.
But the platform survived. The lesson held: domains come and go. What you build on them is what lasts.
What I learned
You do not need a perfect domain to start. You do not need PayPal access. You do not need a credit card that works across borders. You need clarity on what you are building, the persistence to keep showing up, and the creativity to find another path when the obvious one is blocked.
That is how I learned to acquire what seemed impossible — $10, then $100, then $1,000, then a country. One offer, one negotiation, one iteration at a time.
Continue reading: From zero coding knowledge to shipping a platform → Why I introduced paid plans after years of free →