Anyone that remembers registering a domain in the ’90s from Network Solutions – I think they were basically the only game in town back then – will recall paying $100 for a standard .com domain. Now you can get the same thing for $10 or less from a variety of sources. When you paid $100 for a domain, unless you were a wealthy person, you’d only sit on a few domains that weren’t being used. Paying $100 a year for something you’re not using was a waste. Now that domains are $10, people sit on domains for years and years, never using them, and not feeling compelled to either because the domains are so cheap. If you’re someone looking to launch a new Web site, it’s extremely difficult to get a domain name for your new project because of domain squatters.
I say this myself as someone who has a few different un-used domains (MMA Thoughts.com, Photography Thoughts.com), but I’d be willing to pay $100 a year for those domains if it would force some of these squatters off their domains – I looked up one domain earlier today that was registered back in 2000 and still has nothing on it. If you can’t get your Web site launched in 11 years, guess what, it’s time to give up…
I have a few domains, and use them mostly for email addresses. There are a few who are like me; wanted to register a particularly cool – to me anyway – domain but it’s been taken since 1999. The site is just a placeholder. I guess they’re not selling it!
Not that I’d want to pay that much for a domain, but it would be nice to see domain squatters go away. I have no fondness for those who register misspellings of popular sites to put up a linkfarm.
Yeah, I don’t want to pay $100 a domain either, but the only way to make domains more scarce is to make them more expensive. Spam would vanish overnight if it cost money to run an SMTP server for instance.
Yeah, that’s what I usually do – but every time I’ve done that, the owner has wanted thousands of dollars for the domain. Typical stupid delusions about the true value of things. This post was inspired by that exact scenario – I’m looking for a new domain and both that I wanted were taken. So far neither owner has emailed me back.
That’s true, I hadn’t thought about people using them for email addresses. Although though in my case, the domains I wanted are probably not being used for email…they’re tech-bloggy.
I have the domain I do because the one I wanted has been squatted on since 1998. Nothing but a placeholder at some big name hoarding site based in China. When I contacted them about five years ago, they would sell the domain for $5,000. Um, no. I have an appointment in my calendar with a reminder a couple days before the expiration date of the registration, but every year they have always renewed it in time.
Yeah, it’s super frustrating to see people have a domain for years and years, and NEVER do anything with it.
I also secretly wonder if doing a whois query at some sites might somehow trigger an automatic buy of an available domain by some squatters since they know there’s interest in it. Or perhaps I just see conspiracies where none exist. 🙂