Basically because its more popular and widely accepted. Everything is reffered to in terms of .com Take the internet company boom...It was called the .com boom Take when a sketch show is making an internet related joke....Insertjokehere.com Its such a part of mainstream and if you register randomexample.us, and marketed it, you can bet a lot of people will make the mistake of going to randomexample.com
I second what you have to say. My grandparents, mother, and older sister doesn't know much about the internet. I try to explain the differance of a .net/.org/.com/.us to them they don't listen. I tried to give them free email @theurl.us, but they kept writting theurl.com cause they jsut don't know better. So, they just gave up and got a yahoo.com email address.
I hate it when I see parked domains. When I was looking for a web design name, I kinda had to choose the domain first because this is what visitors expect nowadays. If they hear about a company, they'll probably just guess at the domain, www. company .com so the domain is a major factor in marketing your site. I registered mine the other day and it was the only decent design one I could find with a .com . It took me at least half an hour of visiting frustrating parked domains but I eventually got www.designcreek.com which I am currently developing. I agree that there should be a limit on the amount of time a domain can be parked for! Craig
its because domains are just too cheap these days, ICANN should raise the price/or set a minimal price tag of around $40, and give the ability to register it for 6 months at $20.
i made a thread about this on another forum a while back and got slated for what i said, but i totally agree, not witht he fact that domains go up in registration price as i think that makes it unfair on the people that have nothing to start off with, like myself when i was 1st into web design, or possibly have 2 or 3 price ranges - budget for all the rubbish tld's @ about $5-10 a year then something a little more expensive for better tld's about $20 a year then for .com, .net etc put them at about $50 then when people are goig through search engines they can go off the tld to see if its a budget site or not, it an idea but will never take off
I think much of the problem is from PPC companies. If you have a domain making $10 a year at a PPC you can keep it regged and profitable for years. There are possibly millions of domains in this position. The owner of the domain has no incentive to develop the name and purchasing it might cost you $xxx at least. I usually just send the owner an email and see if we can negoitiate. I think OP is a bit too bitter over this. There are lots of extensions and sorry but others beside .com are doing quite well. You can reg a lot of extension nowadays and their value increases well.
yeah we should increase domains to $100 a year, hosting to $100 a month minimun, and get rid of open source software, becasue it makes it so cheap to get websites online. We'll fix the internet right up.
yfs1 you need to think this one through... dotcoms really are more expensive than you initially stated. Reason being that after someone bought your chosen domain name (for next to nothing - I'll admit) then it is a free market and if you want this particular domain (parked with adsense on it) chances are that you can purchase it after negotiating a fair (market wise) price. But I'll give you this much: It would be great if no names were taken, so I too could get a few great short easy-to-remember names for next to nothing
i see it differently, if a domain is available i think i should buy it before someone jumps in and take it forever. better to have the domains now that to expect until you are ready to start. cmon once is bought, it is very expensive to buy it back.
[rant]Someone gave me a red rep for posting this. Leaving the message, "This is the dumbest post I've ever read" with no name. If you are that immature to not leave your name, or post such a lame excuse for the reason why then you need to get a life.[/rant] Anyways, glad to see all the different opinions on here. The whole idea of more expensive domain names would help, but I wouldn't want it to happen. If you needed to secure a good lot of the domains for name sake, then it would get expensive.... Steven
perhaps if people were realistic with how much they ask for their domains. I mean you have people selling "www.somelongugly-assname.com" for $500. lol, god forbid its a semi decent domain, then they think its worth $100,000+ obviously one worded domains like car.com, basebalee.com, pets.com, store.com, etc etc are worth big bucks. ok my rant is over, sorry
The thing is, a fair marked price is not what you or I or yfs1 thinks is reasonable. A fair price is based upon what it can be sold for (in popular terms) which changes the game, but doesn't make it unfair, just more dificult. Instead of just buying a domain, you now have to consider budgets and businessplans and potentials before investing.
The most enoy thing i know when u see some of the big companies snatch a good domain and they do not want to do anything with it just make money or leave it there. People that letting go of domain what they can up with and rather sell it then just let it go.
I think if you look at it, your idea of 'undeveloped' domains are in fact developed. They've been bought, and used as advertising property. The fact that the advertising is ugly, cookie-cutter, and I fail to see how anyone would actually click on the ad doesn't invalidate these domains as perfectly valid websites and business models. Not a whole lot different than selling advertising on park benches and the like IMO. I recently had an opportunity to chat with someone who made a living off of this kind of thing. An $8 domain only needs to make 66 cents a month to break even. Say that's like a click a week or something. So you make a buck a month on the domain. Multiply that times 5000 domains, and all of a sudden you're making a living. And the occassional consumer is finding the site they wanted, and the occassional advertiser is making a sale. Ugly yes. A reason to get all jumpy on how someone else makes a living from their domains, no.
Good to see someone still has the urge to joke and have fun No, seriously. Why should we allow all the poor bastards of this world access to the information highway Next thing you know everybody will want to have democracy too and civil rights and shit. Right
in some countries $10 is a weeks wages, many people could not afford $50 domains, the idea of purposely raising domain prices to try to elimiate some type of advertisments that some people don't like seems pretty crazy to me. Totally against free market, just essentially having the goverment price out competitors. Maybe we should make domains $10,000 a year, really make sure people develop them, properly.
I hate it when I get the "YES! Exactly!" thing going, but YES! You would have though that more (Americans in particular) would battle on for the idea of free market forces, but obviously whenever people have riches to some extend their next goals are to get more riches and to eliminate competition seeking effectively monopoly conditions. [edit]I didn't quite get the $10,000 thing though... *shaking-his-head*[/edit]
many domains simple have become inactive because people have lost interest in them. Many times someone will register a domain name for two years and their site will go flop after 2 months. They abandon the site and leave the domain as inactive and often even if it does have PR value they wouldn't know because they stopped caring about it long ago.
All I can say is: blame NamePros. The majority of people there are 12-15 year olds regging all sorts of domains, trying to make a buck or two. Increasing the minimum registration fee to something like $10 or $15 might solve the problem.