Prior to 1995, .com domain names were free (hello!). Then through Network Solutions (NetSol), the only place you could register a domain name, they were sold for $100 for a 2-year registration. $30 of this fee went to the National Science Foundation to create an ‘Internet Intellectual Infrastructure Fund’. This fee only lasted about 2 years and in 1997 domains were reduced to $70 for a 2-year registration. You also had to fax in the order and wait for about 2 -3 weeks for processing.
I registered my first domain name in 1997. It was route102.com for a web development and hosting company a few university friends and I gave a go at…just around the same time Dreamweaver was launched. We had some success in this, our first venture, but eventually, we rolled it into another business and it systematically dried up. With no real use for the domain, we let it expire. Today, I see it is resurrected as a boast, camper, and storage business on Route102 in Illinois.
Fast forward to now and there are over 1000 top-level domain (TLD) extensions available from two-character country codes to niche verticals. And though some new top-level domain (nTLDs) extensions can be expensive, like .inc at $2500/yr, many are sub $10 or even near free.
Over the years I have built a small portfolio of domain names, not to be bought and sold, but domains that interest me either as a potential project like statistics.hockey, for a business, like my wife’s lawncards.ca, are personal, like my kids names, or domains I registered and manage for friends. Being in the industry, I used the opportunity to register domains at different resellers so I could evaluate them – their processes, flows, user interfaces, control panels, and support. As you might imagine there are varying degrees of how resellers, offer, manage and support domains.
As I get older I am striving to simply my life any way I can. This includes purging the things I really do not need, even some domains, and automating anything I can (Alexa and Google Home are great tools for that). But domains can be a pain sometimes and I have been finding it increasingly difficult to manage my portfolio across many resellers. Therefore, despite the onerous steps required to transfer a domain, I decided to consolidate my portfolio under a single reseller. I picked one that gives me the best value for what I need while checking the boxes on ease of use, good support, and cost-effectiveness. One domain reseller is not right for everybody but finding one that is will not only reduce the work of managing domains but save you money in the process. I will end up saving hundreds of dollars on renewals each year just by taking the time to consolidate!
Don Ruiz 