Peak Domains

Domains Names are like land, there isn't anymore being made... or is there?

Background

The year was 1998, I was just a young buck wondering through the web design forrest.  Domain names were only avaliable through Network Solutions (then Internic), and they'd run ya $75/year for a .com.  Abviously you didn't just buy domain names willy nilly, so what changed? 

Well, in that same year Network Solutions gave up thier monopoly of the registration process.  Crazy times quickly followed,  a company called Domain Zero (related to Net Zero?) pretty much gave you a domain name for free in return for getting spam from them, a fair trade in them days.   This deregulation drove down the prices of domains and domain squatting enmass was born.

How it affects us today

I can't tell you how many times (actually I could guess.. let's say 43 times) I have to tell my disapointed customer that thier comapny name is not avaliable for domain name registration.  Now true we could add a combination of dashes and State abbreviations to get one, but it's not ideal.  

It's time to get creative

Recently during an adult league hockey game (I'ma  goaltender so I have some spare time while on the ice ), I noticed a sign for a dentist's office with a domain name of iCleanTeeth.com.  The fact is nearly all of the desirable domain names are taken, you're going to ahve to start thinking of sentance fragments like our favorite dentist earlier did.  

However, recently there has been another movement that has been gaining popularity, domain hacks. They utilize different top level domain extensions from forgeign countries such as Liberia (.ly), Greenland (.gl) and others.

Some examples of domain hacks:

• goo.gl
  
• del.icio.us
• bit.ly

Here is a  service that will help you find domain hacks: Xona   Go ahead, type in your comapny name or a simple word or phrase, and it's like 1999 all over again.

I'm in no way affialited with them, I just think it's a cool project.

In Conclusion

The tl:dr of this post can work for many others as well "The days of being lazy and successful online are over, it's time to get creative and get working."  Also, if a domain name is open, grab it, they are about $10/m now (we have sweet hookups as well).  I missed out on himmelberger.com because I thought, "Ahh I'll register it later".

Also please be kind with my grammar and spelling misteps here and there, drop me an email and I'll fix it.