The domain ‘typo’ that changed it all

In April 1999 I registered my third domain, for a graphic design project. Domains weren’t cheap with Network Solutions these days; if I recall correctly, the fee was still $100, prepaid for two years. Thirty per cent of that was some obscure taxation fee.

I set up a web site, uploading content once a week. It was meant to be a personal review site for computer hardware, and after some light promotion it acquired a small followship.

After a few months, I started getting job inquiry emails. Not for me to be hired, but to hire others instead!

I responded to a few, seeking some answers, and was given a link to a newsgroup post from Singapore.

Apparently, in September of that year, a company had registered a domain that differed from mine in a single letter. Theirs was a creative word, mine was a two-word compound. People typed mine instead of the ‘crafted’ one.

I ended up getting dozens of emails, and started to forward them to the company’s corporate email in Singapore. After a while, I set up an autoresponder, but traffic from Singapore continued non-stop.

Several months later, I decided to locate the company CEO. He thanked me for my work forwarding these emails, that included internal memos and other materials, and joked about making a new ad that’d state “visit not [my domain]”. At that point, I thought that perhaps it’d be easier if I sold him the domain and be done with the headaches.

And so I did, netting low $x,xxx for my first domain sale ever. The transfer required paperwork to be faxed to Network Solutions, and I believe that in the process the registration date was reset to the date of sale.

That small typo started it all for me; there were no forums, mentors or much information about how and where to sell domain names at that time. A simple hand-registration of a .com was turned into a nice nest-egg.

Thirteen years later, I am glad seeing the company that bought my domain still flourishing in Singapore, as a major player in video equipment and software. And they still forward my domain to their corporate .com.