After a few months of research – not to mention, arguments with my wife at that time – I registered my first domain in February of 1997.
Until then, researching domains for availability was a passtime; the kind of window shopping that was fun back then – and a realization of wasted opportunities later on.
They say that one does not regret the things they did, only what they did not do. And with that in mind, it’s good to remember that while you cannot rewrite history, you can definitely avoid repeating it.
If I could turn the clock back to that period in time that I had a clear advantage over others in the field, I’d borrow, beg and even steal the $100 per two year registration fees needed!
During 1994 and 1995 the number of generics available was 90% versus 0.90% now. Unfortunately, I could not spend the money I didn’t have and to this day I am left with the taste of remembering the “Domain is available” phrase on my 14″ monochrome green monitor.
Rolling forward a couple of years, when Network Solutions was not the only player in the domain game and domains became affordable.
With GoDaddy’s registrations costing $14 a pop I registered a few “random” domains; it wasn’t until 2001 that DomainsBot came out with its daily newsletter of expired domains that all hell broke loose.
I make a reference to “hell breaking loose” because my domainer impetus was once again slowed down by my beloved spouse, who did not share my vision of registering every damn keyword available through the droplists.
To avoid confrontation, I eventually stopped registering domains from those lists, painfully watching .com, .net and .org domains become available – until someone else would snatch them days or weeks later.
Yes, I did look them up consequently, out of pure masochism perhaps – or to prove my point that my own vision was just fine and it was actually shared by others around the world.
Regardless, as domain owners we end up having domains that were once meant to be projects, that were not intended to be collection cards in our deck of memorabilia. And once we realize that someone else might actually utilize these domains, we sell – as long as the money is right.
Having just sold one of my very first hand-registrations from that DomainsBot list, I can’t but remember the hundreds of additional domains that I could have registered back then; if only I had bigger “balls” and ignored the nagging I sustained daily over my purchases.
The bottom line is, those of us that were lucky to have had a clear head and the ability to go through that window of opportunity that opened are able to tell stories today. Whether we got that domain gem for a registration fee, or simply experienced its availability we can still say that “we were there”.
Turning the clock back to the early days of domaining is impossible; we simply have to learn a lesson and move forward, onto bigger and better things.
hello Arco, very nice blog to encourge the people who enterd Domaining very very late!
ANJUM – It’s never late, as long as you focus onto the present and the future 😀
I would love to hear some examples of domains that you chose to pass on.
Troy – I didn’t choose to pass on them, I was simply unaware of their value in 1994/1995. On top of that, during that time I was living in Greece. If you’re familiar with the exchange rate between the dollar and the drachma at that time, with $100 you could eat as a king for two weeks. Domains or food? That’s an easy decision.
I recall looking up fanatics.com, spacestation.com, acropolis.com and others, that eventually were registered – or grabbed, dropped and were re-registered. Eventually, I realized Network Solutions would also keep track of WHOIS searches and sell those lists to third parties.
I think a few points should be considered in this post, that are still just as relevant today as back then.
1. Never listen to your spouse!
2. Domains are a cheap investment (relatively speaking)compared to the capital it would take to start any other investment venture. Therefore we can afford to make (many) mistakes relatively inexpensively.
3. Follow your gut, no matter how stupid, crazy or ridiculous your head tells you it might be.
4.+1M*
*The universal law that the universe is infinite and there will always be +1 More opportunity, chance, domain, etc,. New technologies, software, things that we never dreamed of are being invented this very moment and if you can figure out what those might be and jump ahead of the curve just a wee bit, they will be the household name ie; category killers of tomorrow.
“A-R-C-O”
tell me, if you knew back then what you know now, would you go hungry for a week or two so you could buy a few domains?
🙂
Dean – I’d be the slimmest guy in Athens with the fattest domain portfolio 😀 Shame we cannot turn back time.
The only bright spot of my situation back then was I had $2000 (believe it or not the top names still cost good money back then) . It was every extra penny I had in 1996. I had my eye on two big names. I couldn’t decide between that and Apple stock. We had been an apple family since 1977 (still am) and loved the company. I bought the stock. Sold it stupidly in 2008 but at an incredible gain. Those names would be worth a ton but the stock did pretty well. Looking back, although my domain portfolio is not nearly as good as it could be, my stock portfolio did quite well.
Dean – If I didn’t listen to my wife at that time I’d be a dead man. But in true anecdotal manner, my domain career skyrocketed after my divorce 😀
I feel Ya,
who’s to say where the roads diverge and what if?
We just need to keep moving forward and seize the opportunities as they present themselves.
Shane,
it’s funny you say that, it reminded me of when I was a young (younger) lad. I spent one summer hitchhiking around California and I was so broke, I remember spending my last few dollars on a bag of apples and a bag of carrots and that was all I ate for a week. I even had to ration them as to have enough for the whole week.
When I look back on it, those days were golden.
It’s always ‘fun’ to look back once and a while at the missed opportunities in early domaining. My story is that I started domain regging in Jan 2000 after reading about some big domain sales. Didn’t know about type in traffic, didn’t know about high searched keywords or generics. Back then it was all about finding ‘brandable’ type names, like ‘RockXM’ or ‘NextRoundGolf’. Regged a bunch that I eventually dropped, kept a few that were decent, and kept learning. My regret is I didn’t know what to search for, I bet there were some great names still to be had in early 2000. Would be interesting if there was a site where you could go back to a month/year and do domain searches as to what was really available at that time.
You could “turn” back time. It’s Called IDN’s 😉
LMFAO.
DumbArse – IDNs are one notch above .tel on the domain food chain, therefore, no thanks.
Rob – See? There’s no point in hitting your head on the desk; 2000 was 10 years ago and although you can’t hand-register those names anymore you can definitely try to buy them up at a price 😀
Dean and Shane – Great stories!
lol blame the wife its all her fault! ;D
iD
irishDomainer – Not blaming her, just stating the facts 😀
GAME OVER!!! If you would like to play again keep liking coz it’s a one time game with only one chance. However, part 2 of the game is short non-dictionary words that are brandable in my opinion, although not as valuable as generic words but it’s the next thing I guess end users will be looking for in the near future.