bdjuf said:I always wanted to own a 3 letter .com
I remember back in the day when I used to be interested in them they used to cost 1,000$ each but I couldn't afford any.
And once I had some money and knowledge, I came back and picked up 2-3
I think we all started from scratch one way or another. For myself, I bought a used 286 computer around 1998, plugged it in, and typed "hello" on the small green screen. It was kind of exciting to see the word hello...I was using a computer! ...well, sort of. So bought some books on DOS then windows 3.1 then thought I'd learn how to work on computers so I could get a job fixing them. About a year later put together a pentium 75 MHZ and somehow managed to get hooked up to the internet. Sometime later heard about the business.com sale and saw people selling domains on ebay so thought I might make a few dollars selling domains, and it was fun thinking up different domain ideas. I remember doing some yardwork outside and a domain idea would come to me and I'd stop what I was doing and race inside to see if it was taken. That was late 1999 or early 2000. I ended up spending all my money on domains including cashing in my unlocked retirement funds and selling my used car. Also around that time I found a site where you could register domains without paying upfront, and after 90 days, if you didn't want the domain, you could just not pay and after the 90 days it would expire. Well after spending all my money on domains I had the idea of registering goname.com domains, like goharry.com, gosally.com, etc. I thought I could sell them for a small profit on ebay within the 90 days so I registered a lot of them. Well they didn't sell like I thought they would and after the 90 days I had to let them expire as I was out of money. So with no money and no job, I was under a lot of stress as I was selling whatever domains I could, so to pay for renewal fees on my best domains. I had to sell domains very cheap so I could keep the sales coming in. Domains cost $70 for 2 years at first, then register.com was offering them at $35 for one year. I remember I'd get a cheque, walk to the bank, and put money on my visa to make room so I could renew more domains. It was sometimes difficult to figure out which ones I should let go. Then I started to get emails from a debt collection agency. Network solutions was after me for all the "90 day" domains I didn't pay for. I remember it was for around $20,000. I guess I registered about 300 domains I couldn't hang onto. At the time I registered the "90 day" domains, I wasn't trying to cheat anyone, I was just enthusiastic about registering domains and saw they were allowing a "90 day try it" period. It never said anything about having to pay for them. It just said that if you didn't pay, the domain would expire after 90 days. Anyway, several emails were sent back and forth to the collection agency, as I very carefully explained my position, and finally after a few months or so they left me alone. I knew I was right but still it was very stressful. Anyway, I sold about 400 domains for very cheap and built up some money, enough to keep what I thought were my best domains. Also i remember I spent one whole sunny weekend in the basement at my computer typing in all possible 3 letter combinations to see if I could find any available ones. It took me all weekend because sometimes I had to wait a bit before I got the results from register.com, and not knowing anything about programing stuff I did it all manually. However I found about 10 available 3 letter .coms and several .nets but only bothered with the .coms,...except I registered a couple .nets which I later sold for $10 each. I sold one .com on ebay for about $300 and the rest on afternic for an average price of about $400. I remember most of them had the letter q in it. Later I learned about dropping domains and had to get up at about 3 am pacific time, to wait for the drop. That was kind of exciting but very tiring going thru long long lists of domains to hopefully find a few good ones, and so now I can't see very well. I think it was the fall of 2002 I learned about the parking companies and so I don't sell domains anymore as it's nice to have some income without having to work for it. Well, that's the short version.ApeKing said:
