Domains back in the day

[snoopinc]

I am just wondering how much were domains selling for about 10 - 12 years ago?

I'm talking about registration fee's for .com's, .org's, .net's.

 

[plaggypig]

Well originally they were free. Then in '95 Network Solutions was allowed to sell them (.com, .net, .org) for $50 /year with a minimum 2 year registration period for new domains.

 

[namewaiter]

Well originally they were free. Then in '95 Network Solutions was allowed to sell them (.com, .net, .org) for $50 /year with a minimum 2 year registration period for new domains.

then dotster and others came along at about $30/year ... then they dropped down to about $15 ... then a year or two later godaddy came along and offered them for under $10!

 

[DotWeekly]

Now they are all on there way back up... I wonder if they will hit $50 again within 10 years... not likely, but never say never

 

[Pred]

pretty sure they were free until end of '92, not up to '95

 

[npcomplete]

I started in mid 1996 and the fees were $50/year with two years signup, if I remember correctly. I still have the receipts around somewhere... as my wife keeps reminding me: I throw away *nothing*.

 

[maxeaus]

Wow $50 would have been alot back then, imagine trying to reg 100 domains, $5000 a year renewals!

I have always wondered about the the person who regged the last LLL.com, probably ZYX.com or similar, they must have been cursing at the time that it was expensive to register a rubbish domain!

Any idea when all the LLL.com's were regged?, maybe they grudgingly regged it for free. :hehe:

 

[npcomplete]

Wow $50 would have been alot back then, imagine trying to reg 100 domains, $5000 a year renewals!

I have always wondered about the the person who regged the last LLL.com, probably ZYX.com or similar, they must have been cursing at the time that it was expensive to register a rubbish domain!

Any idea when all the LLL.com's were regged?, maybe they grudgingly regged it for free. :hehe:

The first year I registered somewhere between 400 and 500 domains. My wife is very understanding... I dropped about 400 a few years later. oh well. I seem to have two speeds on the throttle: flat out and stop.

I spent the earlier part of today watching my son drag race at the track. ahhh... the smell of burnt rubber is sweet...

 

[Seabass]

pretty sure they were free until end of '92, not up to '95

Domains were, as they said, "first come, first serve" and FREE up to August 1995. That is when I started. I got a bunch free and then in September they started charging $100 for two years reg. I regged $30,000 worth on a credit card in late 1995.

then dotster and others came along at about $30/year ... then they dropped down to about $15 ... then a year or two later godaddy came along and offered them for under $10!

Actually, a judge said Netsol had imposed an illegal tax on domain buyers and he lowered the fee to $35 a year ($70 total) for two years. That was in 1998. That made it MUCH, MUCH easier to hold onto my domains.

I'm not sure about dotster, but the first major drop I saw, from a registrar perspective, was BulkRegister's $12 a domain, I believe in 1999, and then, as you say, Godaddy came along.

 

[gazzip]

... I regged $30,000 worth on a credit card in late 1995.

.

You must have some VERY sweet domains ! What year did parking & PPC come in to play ?



.

 

[Kate]

Back in the day netsol would send bills by snail mail so it could take weeks before you received them and collecting payment was problematic on their end
Many people would just ignore the bills or try to sell the domains in the meanwhile

In the early days like 1995 there had been very few notable sales except a few such as tv.com & radio.com (15K each). You could not monetize (*) domains so you either had to develop them or sell them. Many people let valuable domains lapse just because they weren't bringing any money

(*) actually affiliate schemes appeared around 1996 but it was pretty embryonic business

 

[simonspurr]

Wow $50 would have been alot back then, imagine trying to reg 100 domains, $5000 a year renewals!

I have always wondered about the the person who regged the last LLL.com, probably ZYX.com or similar, they must have been cursing at the time that it was expensive to register a rubbish domain!

Any idea when all the LLL.com's were regged?, maybe they grudgingly regged it for free. :hehe:

I think the last ccc.com was regged around only 1-2 years ago (I think - don't take my word for it)

 

[Seabass]

You must have some VERY sweet domains ! What year did parking & PPC come in to play ?

There were some other folks that got into parking before me, but I believe there were some companies doing beta tests on traffic and PPC link conversions in 1998 or 1999, working with or GoTo (at least I think it was GoTo). DirectNIC, which runs Parked.com, was doing it I believe back then. However, someone correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Frank Schilling and the like got started in 2000. I did not get involved until 2002..... that was a big mistake I made. I should have been buying and parking instead of cold calling and putting traffic deals together.
.

 

[MicroGuy]

Does anyone remember all the paperwork. I believe you had to snail mail or fax registration changes and it seemed to take forever.

 

[Seabass]

Back in the day netsol would send bills by snail mail so it could take weeks before you received them and collecting payment was problematic on their end
Many people would just ignore the bills or try to sell the domains in the meanwhile

In the early days like 1995 there had been very few notable sales except a few such as tv.com & radio.com (15K each). You could not monetize (*) domains so you either had to develop them or sell them. Many people let valuable domains lapse just because they weren't bringing any money

(*) actually affiliate schemes appeared around 1996 but it was pretty embryonic business

And....sometimes if you passed your due date by even a few minutes your domain would be deleted, sometimes half a day. It happened to me about three times. I lost one really good one that way.

I monetized domains by picking up the phone and doing redirect deals at .05 to .25 a click usually, but that obviously included every single unique, bot, trash click, etc..... nobody was filtering crap back then. If conversions were poor, which they often were b/c of the aforementioned and also bad site design, slow 14.4 and 28.8 Internet dial-up, lack of trust of the Net, credit card fear, no customer support, lack of product choice, software problems, and a million other reasons...... then I just dropped the click price until both the advertiser and I found a happy medium. Then I would go find other similar domains and send the traffic to the domain that was redirecting to the advertiser, which would increase the bill and sales...... and that made everyone happy. I then could afford the ridiculous renewal fees to keep my portfolio until things improved.

Regarding affiliates, almost every one ripped you off..... just b/c they could. "Where else are you going to send your traffic", is what they were thinking. They kept all the sales profit. The only place you could make good affiliate money really was porn..... and it paid out the nose back then..... sometimes $80 per conversion ...... and conversions early on could sometimes be 1:30.......it was totally unbelievable. Porn was, for the first time in the history of the world, easily accessible and guys just plain opened up their wallets and the porn affiliates made gobs of money. It was beautiful fun to watch those stats back then. After awhile the novelty of porn wore off and conversions and payouts crashed to its current level.

Thank goodness we now have parking and other alternatives b/c I got tired of trying to tell dumb retailers about why my traffic might help them. Granted things have improved, but.... still look at how clueless most retailers still are about the Net, traffic, how they can improve their business. There is something like only 7% of small businesses that do any type of Internet advertising.

Does anyone remember all the paperwork. I believe you had to snail mail or fax registration changes and it seemed to take forever.

Netsol had a page that you had to fill out for each and every domain with your contact info. You also had to state what name servers you were going to use or they would not let you register the domain. You had to enter all this info over and over again for each and every domain. I did not have my own servers at the time, so the big fear was that when you contacted a ISP to get your DNS entries, which is how I did it, they would want to know in advance what domains your were going to be using their DNS for. I was terrified that the guy I dealt with was going to reg all my domains I mentioned to him, but it turned out he was just a techie and could care less. That then allowed me to register more domains at will.

Actually, all the paperwork that Netsol sent was simply b/c domain investors were bending the rules by registering tons of domains, meaning that you could only register one domain per company, so initially you had to either invent new companies for each domain or actually set up companies for each domain. After some time Netsol realized they could not enforce this and they dropped the rule.

Netsol also let you register a domain and then they will bill you later and give you a month to pay up. Crazy huh?

In terms of payment, I picked up the phone and used my credit card.

In terms of making a registrant change, yes.... it was done by fax. Simply, sign a form swearing you are who you are and a copy of your drivers license and that was it. (Does the Sex.com fiasco come to mind?)

 

[DomainTalker]

Seabass...


...And, add to all that, the fact there was no aftermarket, little security on the net, few websites (and often poor sites, if there were any), super-slow connections & d/l (+constant drop-outs) every time you tried to do anything etc etc etc...


...The more you tell us about how it really was in the early days, the more I shake my head, and respect the sheer tenacity of you early domain pioneers...


I've said it before....but, we, today, owe you guys a lot....You - and people like you - forged the path - and, created this industry that gives us later arrivals the opportunities we have today.


Tip my hat to you guys...



PS I know you don't publicise your portfolio holdings, Seabass - nor, sell domains....but, I confess to a great personal curiosity about the names you might hold....

.

 

[Pred]

i love seabass' posts :sold:
if only i knew then in 2000 when i was regging junk instead of dropcatching and parking and buying up cheap
tell me, did you take your username from this guy?
i always think of 'seabass' and lloyd christmas when i see your handle

seabass :tu:

 

[Seabass]

i love seabass' posts :sold:
if only i knew then in 2000 when i was regging junk instead of dropcatching and parking and buying up cheap
tell me, did you take your username from this guy?
i always think of 'seabass' and lloyd christmas when i see your handle

seabass :tu:

arnie, you nailed it. That is where I got the idea for the Seabass name.

Seabass..... I've said it before....but, we, today, owe you guys a lot....You - and people like you - forged the path - and, created this industry that gives us later arrivals the opportunities we have today.

Tip my hat to you guys...

PS I know you don't publicise your portfolio holdings, Seabass - nor, sell domains....but, I confess to a great personal curiosity about the names you might hold....

.

I really think that most of early domainers really did not forge much. We were simply investors. Parking took on a life of its own and just caught all of us by surprise.... it was dumped in our lap like a big, beautiful present. We all knew that domains had inherent value.... its just that most of us did not know how or when we were going to rewarded.

I have a domainer friend that in 1996 suggested PPC and for us to write the software. I did not think it was a good idea a the time b/c I was under the impression surfers would not accept tainted results. Boy.... was I wrong about that. :red:

In terms of the quality of domains, I bought only generics back then, but without a guide on what to buy, and no established markets really, the domains I purchased were a mixture of hit and miss since it was hard to determine what to buy.

My biggest regret was that one day I was looking to buy... Hiking.com, Swimming.com, Boxing.com, Running.com, Jogging.com, and a bunch of others like them and I was at the ordering stage and I did not follow through. I still got some real beauties though.... that lesson taught me well.

One thing I forgot to mention previously about reg. fees is that if you did not know about the Netsol form for regging, you had to pay someone at an ISP or someone in the know to do the registration for you. The going rate at the time, 1995 and 1996, was $50 per reg., so that meant $150 per domain if you did not know how to reg them yourself. That scared many people away... they were intimidated by the regging process.

 

[Kate]

Memories :lala:

Registration and Renewal Fees: Fact Sheet
Registration Forms

 

[Hurley4540]

$50/yr was a lot back then!