Lately I've become obsessed with looking for domain names for businesses that I may or may not ever start. The exact nature of these searches is confidential, but I can tell you that slacktionary.com is available.
This is what happens when you read an article about some 9-year-old kid who is making money on the Intertubes selling pencil tops, of all things. Pencil tops! Well if she can sell pencil tops, what kind of crazy shit can I sell? Let me see... hrmm... how did I get on this results page for slacktionary?
Finally, it occurred to me to search for uncomfortablemoments.com. I seem to remember this URL being taken when I first started this blog a few years ago, but now it is mine. All mine. So feel free to bookmark it as you see fit.
Fittingly, I experienced an uncomfortable moment in the process of procuring this domain name. I went through Register.com, which I can't recommend.
I was so excited at having successfully registered uncomfortablemoments.com and redirected it to my blog that I completely failed to notice the honking banner ad that Register.com unceremoniously plunked at the bottom of my site. It was gently pointed out to me in an IM from someone I shared the site with: "That's cool! That banner ad..." Huh?
What the hell. I called Register.com. A lot of tranferring to different reps occurred. Finally I was informed that if I wanted the ad to go away, I'd have to pony up for "premium web forwarding," to the tune of $50 a year for three years -- but I could get the third year free if I signed up. I said no.
The rep made another offer, pretending to do some searching for a better deal. He could give me three years for $50. "I don't feel like this is something I should have to pay for at all," I said. The rep did a whole song and dance about how he's really not allowed to give me premium forwarding for free, but he would see what he could do. Finally, he took the ad off.
Meanwhile, I tried to search for information on what I was entitled to and what I could get elsewhere, and was astonished by the lack of good results on Google. The domain name was mine. Register.com wasn't hosting it. Shouldn't I be able to administer it as I saw fit, without ads? I felt mildly appalled to be so at a loss in this realm.
Has anyone else had experience with this? Insights welcome.
Music: "You"
The issue isn't quite as simple as you wish, due to a number of technical reasons that would bore you to death.
ReplyDeleteregister.com have to buy resources to perform this kind of forwarding, but they should be able to recover the cost of this from the profit, with this extra cost they'd be ripping you off.