discuss Who Was the First Domainer Who Pioneered Domaining?

[DomainNature]

Hello
Was browsing the forums and it just came in my head as per title.
Do you know who was the first person in the beginning, to think to buy cheap and sell domains for a profit?
It would be interesting to know who have put the basis for Domaining industry.
Thanks.
P.s. hope it's not Rick Schwartz.

 

[Michael Castello]

I found this thread because someone mentioned my brother and I in the very first post.

There were those registering domain names as far back as 1986. What changed everything is when Bill Clinton, in 1993, opened up the informational superhighway for commercial purposes. That got me thinking about the World Wide Web, and why wouldn’t addresses be important as they were in the real world.

I started looking into it around 1993 but didn’t really become good at it till 1994. At first, I didn’t understand what the DNS was and how it related to a server and a domain name. Also at the time, to register a domain name would take weeks. They were literally two guys that handled a database on a computer and a spreadsheet. I was actually having a hard time and making errors on the registration form and not securing the domain name. 1993 was more or less a learning experience of trial and error for me. I eventually did register powwow.com. I only needed one name, because that was the name of the business that I owned-Powwow Productions. My business centered around music production. I was creating digital files using a workstation to record music. I wanted a way to distribute it online.

I would perform a whois search, using telnet, to find out if a domain name was available, most were not. I passed on names like Hollywood.com, Toys.com and many more because most names were all available. Only six months later, when I look back at those names did I realize they were all being registered up. That’s when the lightning bolt hit me, and I started registering other names.

I would come to realize that there were around five people in the world that were securing great name portfolios for the future.

Let’s not forget Scott Day. He was also in early and got most of his registrations in the summer of 1997 during “the big drop.”

As a sidenote. I remember when I was developing domain names in 1996. I would put up a page with a logo with an email address like [email protected]. Back then there was no spam. Every response you got from around the world came from someone that was someone looking for a response. You could feel the movement of the domain name across the world and the responses they would generate from email. Those times will never be repeated, but it was interesting to experience them at the beginning.

I am thinking of writing an article on that period from1993 to 1999 for Traveler.com. We have a “time traveler” series that we’re doing on Waco next month. If I write the WWW article, I’ll be sure to post it here.

 

[jmcc]

In the early 1990s, quite a few people were registering domain names and then selling them. I don't think that anyone had even coined the phrase "domainers" back then. The domain names in .COM/NET/ORG were free until 1995 and ISPs were only just taking off along with the DotCOM bubble. In terms of competitive domaining and catching domain names on the drop, that would have started around 1997 when some of the first 1995 regs started to drop. The initial fee was $100 and it covered two years. It later dropped to $70. It was fun waiting for the drops with a mouse in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other. The legal situation on expired domain names was also unclear and ICANN was only established in 1998. And the UDRP was later still.

In terms of speculative registrations, Network Solutions (the only registrar for .COM/NET/ORG at the time) used to mail out paper invoices for registrations. This meant that there was a few weeks during which the domain name could be sold before having to pay for it. If it could not be sold, it was possible to just leave it drop without paying the invoice.

Eventually, NetSol got around to closing that loophoie and requiring payment on registration. That move stopped early cost-free domaining. It started getting a bit more complex after that. Because domain names were deleted on expiry (no grace periods), some people made a business of drop catching and selling these domain names back to the original owners. PPC advertising didn't exist in any meaningful form and most of the advertising was banner or image advertising.

Most of us weren't buying cheap and selling high. Domain names were free until 1995.

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

This explains allot, I did not know the domains were free until 1995 year, thank you.
It means those people after 1995 were the pioneers like Rick, Castello and others.

It is easier to sell something that costs money because its initial value is known. It took skill to sell something that was free. Those largely unknown and a few known domainers were the pioneers in that they were selling domain names and saw the potential when few did. 1995 changed everything.

Regards...jmcc

 

[HotKey]

One of the earliest investors, and maybe the first with a portfolio in the hundreds by the year 1994, was Christian Riley. Top-tier domains like games, casino, court, talk, sale, racing, Boca, Miami, reservation, holiday, mart, novel were hand-registered by him.

 

[Michael Castello]

Hello
Was browsing the forums and it just came in my head as per title.
Do you know who was the first person in the beginning, to think to buy cheap and sell domains for a profit?
It would be interesting to know who have put the basis for Domaining industry.
Thanks.
P.s. hope it's not Rick Schwartz.

I know I wasn't the first, but I did sell Powwow.com in early 1996 for $25,000 which was a lot for a domain name back then. I think the biggest sale at the time was GNN.com for $55,000.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

One of the earliest was Gary Kremen.
You can read all about him in the book The Players Ball written by David Kushner.

I mention him in the introduction to this NamePros Blog article: Catching Trains and Avoiding Train Wrecks.

There were others, but the Internet was very young when in just a couple of weeks he registered sex.com, jobs.com, autos.com, housing.com and a number of others including some related to dating/matching. He was one of the first to see that the Internet would replace classified ads.

The theft of sex.com turned out to be quite the caper extending over years.

-Bob

The Player's Ball is a superb book and fun read - highly recommended.

You can read more about Kremen and Match.com on Wikipedia (that particular name he did not register, but bought on aftermarket, probably one of the early aftermarket acquisitions. His first registrations date to at least as early as 1994. Rick started in December 1995 I believe, so not much later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kremen

PPS As mentioned above, the Castello brothers also very early. I think Michael's first domain was in 1994 but not sure which month.

PPPS I believe Mike Mann started in Feb 1998, his first acquisition intr.net. He also had his first big sale, menus.com, $50,000 in 1998.

 

[GoKaizen]

The Domain Game book by David Kesmodel is about all the early pioneers.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-domain-game_david-kesmodel/714175/#edition=5513655&idiq=10676054

Well written book since Kesmodel was a WSJ reporter.

@jmcc might have some thoughts.

 

[JB Lions]

I was kind of interested myself. When I get into an industry, I like to learn about the history. When I got into affiliate marketing back around 1999, much easier since the history was only a few years. With that, you can thank the porn industry with many of the innovations people use today. First affiliate program, first payment processing/credit cards, streaming video, etc. Where there is money to be made, there is innovation.

With domaining I think you have public but also private that most people don't know about. Public, you have great domainers, you'll know about their sales, many show up at domain events, many active on social media. Schilling, Schwartz, Mann, they will tell you they're the King, The Man and rightfully so in many cases. But I also think there is this group that probably make millions and just out there enjoying life. Some might have made their money before social media took off. They might have no interest in talking about domaining to death but enjoying the buying and selling. Then all the sales that don't get reported. The world of the unknown domains and unknown sales.

Will check the book out above

 

[nametrekker]

the stephenson family also registered some amazing domains in 1994/1995.... i spoke with the late mrs. stephenson in 2018 or thereabouts, and she said her family had been skeptical about she and her husband registering all these "cyber words"

those "cyber words" created a fortune, and the Stephensons donated millions to healthcare and other causes.

 

[pb]

IIRC there was a guy who hoarded hundreds of keyword .coms when they were still free but dropped all or most of them when they introduced renewal fees. I'd say he was the proto-domainer.

 

[Dane]

And when they *did* start charging for names the price was $100 per domain name for a 2 year term. And you could only buy them from Network Solutions. And you would get a bill in the mail upon renewal time. $50 for a 1 year renewal. I can remember opening the envelope thinking "man, is this really worth another $50?" Things sure were different back then.

 

[koolishman]

Adam?

( The domainer of course)

 

[Armageddon]

Castello Brothers among the first
Far as i know they start around 1993,1994

 

[tonyk2000]

Yun Ye?
https://www.namepros.com/threads/what-ever-happend-to-yun-ye.598511/

 

[AEProgram]

This post makes me wonder, what can be purchased today for cheap that will increase as much as premium names? Whatever it is, it has to be something people thing is not worth much or it would be expensive.

 

[HotKey]

I found this thread because someone mentioned my brother and I in the very first post.

There were those registering domain names as far back as 1986. What changed everything is when Bill Clinton, in 1993, opened up the informational superhighway for commercial purposes. That got me thinking about the World Wide Web, and why wouldn’t addresses be important as they were in the real world.

I started looking into it around 1993 but didn’t really become good at it till 1994. At first, I didn’t understand what the DNS was and how it related to a server and a domain name. Also at the time, to register a domain name would take weeks. They were literally two guys that handled a database on a computer and a spreadsheet. I was actually having a hard time and making errors on the registration form and not securing the domain name. 1993 was more or less a learning experience of trial and error for me. I eventually did register powwow.com. I only needed one name, because that was the name of the business that I owned-Powwow Productions. My business centered around music production. I was creating digital files using a workstation to record music. I wanted a way to distribute it online.

I would perform a whois search, using telnet, to find out if a domain name was available, most were not. I passed on names like Hollywood.com, Toys.com and many more because most names were all available. Only six months later, when I look back at those names did I realize they were all being registered up. That’s when the lightning bolt hit me, and I started registering other names.

I would come to realize that there were around five people in the world that were securing great name portfolios for the future.

Let’s not forget Scott Day. He was also in early and got most of his registrations in the summer of 1997 during “the big drop.”

As a sidenote. I remember when I was developing domain names in 1996. I would put up a page with a logo with an email address like [email protected]. Back then there was no spam. Every response you got from around the world came from someone that was someone looking for a response. You could feel the movement of the domain name across the world and the responses they would generate from email. Those times will never be repeated, but it was interesting to experience them at the beginning.

I am thinking of writing an article on that period from1993 to 1999 for Traveler.com. We have a “time traveler” series that we’re doing on Waco next month. If I write the WWW article, I’ll be sure to post it here.

That is fascinating, thanks for popping in

 

[Dane]

When I got into affiliate marketing back around 1999, much easier since the history was only a few years. With that, you can thank the porn industry with many of the innovations people use today. First affiliate program, first payment processing/credit cards, streaming video, etc. Where there is money to be made, there is innovation.

With domaining I think you have public but also private that most people don't know about. Public, you have great domainers, you'll know about their sales, many show up at domain events, many active on social media. Schilling, Schwartz, Mann, they will tell you they're the King, The Man and rightfully so in many cases.

Similar story for me too. I started and ran an affiliate program "directory" (remember directories? ) in the late '90s. That got me even deeper into affiliate marketing, which got me deeper into domain names. I got serious about domains in 1999. Ahhh, good times.

 

[JB Lions]

Small world. I joined ABestWeb on Wednesday, July 31, 2002. I still have the sign-up confirmation!

This is a long shot, but did you by any chance attend the "Affiliate Force 2000" conference in Miami? I was invited to be a speaker there so I attended, and it turned out to be a wealth of information about everything to do with affiliate programs, domain names and making money! Pretty wild (and lucrative) experience.

Never attended the affiliate events. Was invited many times to be on panels at Affiliate Summit. I joined ABW about same time Feb 2002, last month I had a boss/job. Then full time affiliate, until about 12 years ago to pretty much full time domainer now. Still have some sites up making some money but about 95% domaining now. Much easier and I enjoy it more

 

[koolishman]

Adam Dicker you mean? No way.

No. Not Dicker!

There has to be an early domainer named Adam!

 

[DomainNature]

Not sure
could be symbolics.com
that was the first name ever registered ever and maybe the person/company as well flipped over a few other names.
the website https://symbolics.com is pretty fun the browse through with a headline

The World’s First, and Oldest, Registered .com on the Internet.​

He have buy that domain in 2009 from that company, so it's not him who gave birth to domaining.

 

[JB Lions]

Similar story for me too. I started and ran an affiliate program "directory" (remember directories? ) in the late '90s. That got me even deeper into affiliate marketing, which got me deeper into domain names. I got serious about domains in 1999. Ahhh, good times.

If you ran an affiliate program directory back in the day, I might have checked it out. I used to go “indy hunting” because I liked to find good merchants nobody else was using. One of my first sites, my second site actually was a big coupon site. The type a lot of people try when first starting out. My old hangout was the affiliate marketing forum ABestWeb. Namepros back in the day used to get together with ABestWeb and do live domain auctions in the chat room NP used to have

 

[Dane]

If you ran an affiliate program directory back in the day, I might have checked it out. I used to go “indy hunting” because I liked to find good merchants nobody else was using. One of my first sites, my second site actually was a big coupon site. The type a lot of people try when first starting out. My old hangout was the affiliate marketing forum ABestWeb. Namepros back in the day used to get together with ABestWeb and do live domain auctions in the chat room NP used to have

Oh sure, I remember being a member of ABestWeb. I still have an old email message from [email protected]

 

[Dane]

I know him well, I used to be a moderator over there. When it shut down I literally have the most posts over there. I joined about 2002, didn’t know anybody else in affiliate marketing and this was way before social media. Got into fighting parasites etc. I used get threatened a lot by those guys haha. Too much fighting after he sold the forum

Small world. I joined ABestWeb on Wednesday, July 31, 2002. I still have the sign-up confirmation!

This is a long shot, but did you by any chance attend the "Affiliate Force 2000" conference in Miami? I was invited to be a speaker there so I attended, and it turned out to be a wealth of information about everything to do with affiliate programs, domain names and making money! Pretty wild (and lucrative) experience.

 

[Michael Castello]

the stephenson family also registered some amazing domains in 1994/1995.... i spoke with the late mrs. stephenson in 2018 or thereabouts, and she said her family had been skeptical about she and her husband registering all these "cyber words"

those "cyber words" created a fortune, and the Stephensons donated millions to healthcare and other causes.

Yes, I use to visit with Emmet and Toni every year in Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage. They were fascinating people. I still have their excel spreadsheet of all their domain names that they gave me. I really can't divulge them. Bookings.com (so that's where it came from)