Domain Registration Fees In The Past!

[domaindot]

A buyer? These days I had no idea how you could sell them although at some point I registered the name of a person in the news and received inquiries.

I'd simply set up a page and put some funny stuff on. Probably did that with a handful of domains. We're talking about 1998 or thereabouts.

Probably the market wasn't there. Though I remember that by the end of 1999, I was buying domains - and then, waiting for buyers to come and beg for them

Edit: just got the term for that @ DomainGang: "megalodomania"

 

[Gerry]

Mine was actually a rhetoric question, if you know what it means. You don't need to check anything because 15 years ago (i.e. 1994), domain registration was guess what ... FREE! And it HAD TO BE NetSol because they were the ONLY registry/registrar for CNO back then. Don't even waste your time.

daah, no, rhetorical...dooo...

I am thinking (don't want to hurt myself) that it was not netsol. All I can recall specifically was that they had a red logo or most of their site was in red, they were in Virginia (just like netsol), and they sold hosting. That is why we went with that particular company. And the $99 domain may have been a "promo" then. At the time (mid 90's) there was someone else in charge of all our computer systems and consultancy as this was a relatively new advertising frontier. As creative director, I dealt primarily with print and POP products.

I can give detailed accounting of all my major clients over the span of 25 years as I still maintain some good contacts and consultancy.

You pointing out that 15 years ago was 1994 is only good for another couple weeks. A generalization is a generalization and just as rhetorical as your rhetorical point...which is pointless.

 

[Anthony Ng]

Talking about buying domains for resale: when I registered my first domain in 1997, it's almost solely for personal use (and it's a .org). But I actually waited for months for my second (or third) domain, a .com, to become expired from its previous registration in 1998, because I KNEW it would be *hot*. It was, and sold for some 5 figures a few years later.

 

[radioz]

I registered my first domain in August 1995 or more correctly someone who worked for me registered it. It was free for a couple of months and then we were told that we had to pay NetSol $70 per year which it remained for about 3-4 years. Then it went to $35. I found that I could register it for less about 1999 but we were afraid to leave NetSol for another year or so.

I realized that domains would be worthwhile then but was told that I could only own only ONE name! That was correct in August 1995! The rules changed in September 1995. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that you could own more than one name till about 2000. When our business failed, I bought a Sedo appraisal and sold the name for the appraised amount of about $8,600 in 2003. I did not realize how worthless appraisals were yet. That came after I bought several appraisals from Domain Guru and got back a bunch of nicely printed appraisals from a free appraisal site! That excellent, popular, owned in every extension, one word, 5 letter, domain would likely be worth about $150K today. Alas, like everything else that I have done, I made little on it in the end.

 

[DTalk]

Ahh, how slowww can we be, sometimes...!!


Back in early 1996, I regged the name of my company (mainly for email purposes, I recall) - It just didn't occur to me that generic domains, per se, would be a tradeable commodity with a value, in themselves.

I seem to recall that there wasn't really an established buy/sell market for domains back then (tho that changed quickly - by 1997/8, or so?) - and, I just didn't pay attention, and missed the shift, as it boomed into the dotcom boom era in 1999...


I was there....and completely missed it....LOL

.

 

[katherine]

I was there....and completely missed it....LOL

I hear ya. But you're catching up

 

[5UP3R]

Oops for some reason I wasn't getting the updates. Nice to see everyone's experience!
So when did the pricing dropped below $35?

 

[mediawizard]

I remember moving some names to Directi in 2002 for $12 ea or something. Was a major relief from paying NetSol $35 per year.

I knew domains would be valuable in 1998, when I bought my first domain, what I didn't know was which ones would be valuable. Which kept me from any major domain investments back then, not to mention the fact that the dotcom bust pretty much wiped out any investment funds I did have back then.

I am making up for it now, domaining is still a baby in industrial terms and there are profits to be made, only the 'gold rush' period is over, takes knowledge and application to buy the correct mines at correct prices to get a decent ROI.

 

[Deleted member 5660]

Like it says above, domains were free until mid 90's. then $100 for the first 2 years and $50/year after that that included the $15/year Internet infratructure fee that was later determined to be an illegal tax. You had to send in an e-mail template (http://www.tamaramichel.com/etgs/templates/domain-template.txt) but people sent in many thousand of templates a day so it slowed the system down. The delay sometimes hours or even days delay so if you detected a domain dropped there was probably already a template in the system ahead of you. In 1997 NSI issued their monthly reports to the National Science Foundation that said at any given time 50-100K templates were queued up to be processed.

Network Solutions used to invoice the domains but you could use it for a couple months until they took it back. The domains used to drop when they were removed from the billing system effectively giving a real-time drop detection (the whois was a day delay so most people were confused). They used to have 2 drop periods per week I think.

NSI would not change the system because they convinced the NSF that they needed to charge $35 for something that cost them less than $1 to deter hoarding. NSI founders made many millions on this scheme.

Bulk register was the first to open up the competive market at $10/year in 1999. The drop time was changed to 6AM and you had real-time registration instead of the template system. I remeber setting my alarm every day and I also remember picking up 4LLL.com in about 5 minutes that had dropped for total cost of $40.

 

[5UP3R]

takes knowledge and application to buy the correct mines at correct prices to get a decent ROI.

Very true!

Like it says above, domains were free until mid 90's. then $100 for the first 2 years and $50/year after that that included the $15/year Internet infratructure fee that was later determined to be an illegal tax. You had to send in an e-mail template (http://www.tamaramichel.com/etgs/templates/domain-template.txt) but people sent in many thousand of templates a day so it slowed the system down. The delay sometimes hours or even days delay so if you detected a domain dropped there was probably already a template in the system ahead of you. In 1997 NSI issued their monthly reports to the National Science Foundation that said at any given time 50-100K templates were queued up to be processed.

Network Solutions used to invoice the domains but you could use it for a couple months until they took it back. The domains used to drop when they were removed from the billing system effectively giving a real-time drop detection (the whois was a day delay so most people were confused). They used to have 2 drop periods per week I think.

NSI would not change the system because they convinced the NSF that they needed to charge $35 for something that cost them less than $1 to deter hoarding. NSI founders made many millions on this scheme.

Bulk register was the first to open up the competive market at $10/year in 1999. The drop time was changed to 6AM and you had real-time registration instead of the template system. I remeber setting my alarm every day and I also remember picking up 4LLL.com in about 5 minutes that had dropped for total cost of $40.

Thanks for the detailed reply, the last part is interesting!