When did you start domaining?

[sitemaster]

Back in 1999, Network Solutions was still handling all the registrations for com,net,org domains. Registration requests were handled by submitting an email template. I built scripts for my employer at the time to cycle through a dictionary as well as 2 and 3 letter combinations issuing whois requests. We came to recognize signs in the whois details at that time which indicated a domain was about to drop. When those signals were discovered by the script for a particular domain, I then started another script which would fire off a new email registration request for the domain each minute until the domain was registered. Alas, I was only an employee, but my employer acquired a nice portfolio of domains over a period of time until Netsol stopped using the email registration template system.

[KenW3]

Back in the 90s, I purchased a couple of domain names from Network Solutions, but eventually let them go. I did not foresee the increase in value of domain names. Those were not dictionary words, however, they were acronyms to a couple of businesses.

For domaining proper, I began exploring that in 2008 after reading an article on virtual property. The economy was headed into recession, people were defaulting on loans, and investments were going down in value. An article on domain names suggested that many were being dropped because the owners decided paying renewal fees was no longer worthwhile. Some people simply didn't have the money, and good names started to become available.

[DomainMagnate]

in 2006-2007, I saw the growing prices for short domains and started investing and flipping them. I used to find cheap deals for premium names and then sell them quickly, I also kept some.

[Kay]

I bought my first two domains in Feb 2000, but they were bought with the intention of building websites. I hadn't really thought much about the market for buying and selling domains at the time. One was an expat-related domain and the other was about food. The expat one is still going as a site, but I let the foodie one lapse. Tsk. Hindsight is a great thing. (Eight years later, I went back into the food niche.)

Years ago, there used to be loads of free offers. I remember getting 50 .infos absolutely free. Of course, they were hoping to upsell paid-for registration the following year. I didn't have any respect for the .info at the time so I gave them all away. Hmm.

It was couple of years later that I thought it might be interesting to buy and sell. Previously I had thought of domainers as being cybersquatting pond scum. Many of my domains have sites on them but there are quite a few that I've bought speculatively just because I think the domain itself might have some more value in the future.