Poll: How many domains have you registered?
Thursday August 30, 2007
Vote Now
When I started in the Internet business domain names were free, you just had to have a place to host them. At the time it was hard to find the hosting space, so I only owned one and my husband had one too. And then they started charging and we dropped them. :-) But now they don't cost so much, and it is fun to find domains to buy - of course, I get in trouble if I register too many of them... Are you a domain junkie?
How many domains have you registered? Remember, you can only vote once, so please read all the choices before you click one.
Comments
Your comment, “and it is fun to find domains to buy” was strange to me. Domains serve purposes; business or pleasure but to (implied) purchase them for fun implies squatting and that is bothersome to me. Oh well, guess I am too left brained.
Yes, registering domains is addictive! My husband and I registered about 10 a couple of years ago when we were speculating about who would be running for office next year. Cha-ching!
Isn’t that illegal to register a domain name with someone else’s name for the purpose of marking the price up and then selling it to that person? I tried to google it, but couldn’t find anything… Nevertheless, I thought I heard that somewhere.
I actually don’t look for domains to buy with the purpose of extorting cash (and, yes, I’m fairly certain that is illegal in the United States). I do it because I find it entertaining to come up with a topic and then see if I can come up with a domain name that is available and fits the topic. Yes, I admit, I’m odd…
I used to have about 25 domains registered, but ever since I started working as a fulltime webdeveloper, I don’t have the time to work on private projects anymore… sad, I know. So I just own, I think, 3 domains right now, of which just one is active (my private website).
Well, maybe someday *g* …
Chris
I have owned up to 50 at one time. Mine always have to do with music, and I usually think I’m going to build a web site. Basically it is addictive. Some of the names have been good. After I let them go it is interesting watching other people or domain spammers snap them up and use them. I have only had time to develop a couple of my sites. I went to the trouble of developing a few others but found I had no time to run them. A couple that I used to own … thinking hard … ReverendRick.com, AllStarJams.com, BluesStreet.com, NakedTracks.com . I tried selling them, but I discovered that takes time and energy too, so I just let them expire
Until the year 2001, I had over 3000 domain names!
These were reduced to just around 1500 or so, after the year 2001 as my partners and I decided to place our venture on a hold for many reasons.
Now 3000 domains, or even 1500 domain names sounds like a lot and it is.
But let me tell you that not a single one of these domain names was purchased with the intention of selling it on.
In all cases we bought the domains in order to develop a site either for a client, or for our own account.
But why so many?
Allow me to tell you a short story about this and then I will ask you, if I was right in buying all these domains.
I started in the web biz back in 1996 along with two partners.
In the mid nineties, as you know, the web was young and expanding in all kind of interesting ways.
Each day brought a different and exciting new possibility.
Also, I always had this idea of “covering” a project as much as I could, if we were going to start on a project in the first place.
Let me give you an example.
In 1997 we created the very first vertical portal. (later these were known as vortals)
I walked in to the office of our chief techie, (a Dr Allen, who had moved to our Beverly Hills office, from a much more serious environment, where he was working on Neural Networks with NASA) and told him that we were going to have our own searchengine.
Dr Allen gave me his usual here-comes-more-trouble look and asked me if I had any idea as to how many servers would be needed for such a project (servers really cost a lot then!)and what the required infrastructure to back an operation like that would entail? “You are talking about a huge operation” he said.
I said “what if I want a searchengine which would (using our own bots) continually gather all of the data focused on a single subject, say books, and then produce a totally relavent response to a query related to the subject of books?”
Dr Allen looked up at me and was quiet for a few seconds. Then with a rare beaming smile he said, “We can run that on just one of the Sun servers that we are running now!”
And so the booksearchengine.com was born.
The domain search record says that the date of creation of the domain name for booksearchengine was 1998, but that is because that is the time, when I moved most of my domains away from the then monopolistic Network Solutions (they are not the same company now)to Bulk Register and other registrars.
The reason for this rather long and tedious background is really to try and explain as to why I would buy so many domains.
So here comes the said reason:
When I created the booksearchengine.com, it was the first of its kind and no one had thought of registering a name like that.
I found that I could buy all kind of searchengine names, such as medicalsearchengine.com, artsearchengine.com, fashionsearchengine.com, newyorksearchengine.com, londonsearchengine.com and many other such names.
I thought that if I am going to develop the software for one of these focused portals, then why not create some more similar sites since I would be able to use almost the same back end for them all.
So I “covered” the searchengine domains!
The same applies to one of the first price comparison sites on the web.
This was called bookpricer.com (well after all, I did have the booksearchengine!)
So the bookpricer was followed by the dvdpricer etc.
We did develop many of these sites, along with numerous pioneering showbiz sites, such as cybershowbiz.com, greatscripts.com, filmextra.com, celebritydoubles.com, belowtheline.com, voiceovernet.com (which has a totally different meaning now!) and a lot more.
As you can see, I tried to “cover” the showbiz names.
However, the dot com crash, the 911 and some personal events, resulted in my placing all of the sites in a dormant position at the end of 2001.
Over the years, I have let many of the domain names go, but still have a few hundred of them.
That is a good thing because I have started working on some of these web projects once again.
So when I started working on birdflubreakingnews.com I “covered” the birdflu sector, not as much as I would have done years ago, but at least in a limited way.
So now what do you think?
I know it was a tad ambitious to have all of those domains back then, but was it really wrong to do it?
By the way, as a “non techie developer” starting after a long break, I have been a fan of yours for a some time now:)
K C Singh
KC: Interesting story. I think my answer to your question of whether you were right or wrong to do it is answered in what you did with the domains that you “covered”.
For example, if you took every birdflu domain you bought and pointed them all to the same location - then that would end up looking like spam to engines like Google. Which, whether right or wrong, does defeat the purpose of having the many domains.
If you bought the domains and then just sat on them - so that when you go to the URL nothing happens - that would be not wrong, per se, but annoying for someone who might have an idea for that domain name and want to use it. That is happening to me right now - and I’m not going to pay an exorbitant fee for the domain - I don’t want it that badly, but it’s annoying that the domain does nothing, and I can’t buy it.
If you bought all those domains with plans to build them out (like your portal pages), then it’s just a little annoying that you might buy so many if you can’t build them out very quickly (see above - the domain I want has been held with no work on it for like 5 years). I’m sure a lot of domains languish like this - I’m guilty of that for 2 of my domains as well. 
can someone tell me what’s the cheapest way to keep 30-40 domain name? I am starting an online store and want to get different names to point to different products.
Silly me, I figure if someone thought of it before me, they needed it more.. On pricing the ones I’ve got, I think a couple are pretty snazzy, pretty unique.. If someone thinks them up down the road and ends up at my cyber doorstep, hm, they’re going to have to like them a whole lot more than I do.. And I like them pretty doggone good right now..
K C SINGH you’re a bastard. You have a million unused domains and no way for people to contact you about acquiring them!! Develop them, drop them, or offer them up for sale!