I’m kind of unhappy with my current domain registration reseller so while I’m also looking around for a new web hosting company, I’m also looking into registrars as well. There are quite a few different companies out there that are both higher and lower in price than the one I’m currently working with. While I have come across valuable companies like paylessdomains.com.au, I have to say that there are ones that are a bit cheaper in pricing as well. At the same time, anything under $12.00 seems to be on the low-end considering the jack-up in pricing on domains lately as well. I guess the economy is really beginning to take it’s toll on the virtual world as well. Cost of living has gone up and you can no longer offer domains for lower prices because you couldn’t possibly live like that. And it’s easier to maintain $12.00 a year instead of having to spend over $300 to get a domain back if it happens to expire. I don’t think pricing like that is fair either, obviously some pockets are being lined.
It’s no better than the domain-hoarders though. They’ll register every single domain name they can think of and then attempt to sell you the domain for an extravagant price. For example, when I first looked into a new personal domain I knew that I wanted to have krissy as the main text. So I searched through krissy.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and every other extension available. The only one left was krissy.nu and that costs me about $60 every two years. So yes, $30 a year is no different then going through network solutions directly, but at the same time it’s a bit expensive for a domain name that includes nothing but a .nu extension.
However, when I went to inquire the current owner of krissy.net about how much it would cost for the domain, he told me I could have it for $1500. Meanwhile he registered it for, at most, $9 per year. No matter where you go these days, online and off, you’re going to get ripped off and I think that’s a shame. If it were possible to trademark the term “Krissy” and demand that those domains were released to me then I’d probably do it just to prove a point, but who has the time to trademark a nick-name? I’m not even sure if that’s legal.