Hello From DropWizard (1.Viewing)

Thanks to Dan for the invite. Truthfully, I'm retired these days, and it's been a long time since I've stopped by a domainers chat board. I still own around 800+ .cas from the early days and maybe 500 .coms.

22 years and counting now. Rick may be the Domain King, but I'm feeling more like the grandfather.

Many of you know me. I started in '98 when Afternic was a domainer's chat board. Rick Schwartz (Domain King) used to come over and tell us all we knew nothing about domaining, which really pissed me off. I went over to tell him off and show him my great domains like (I think) Sexxxy.com and others. I saw the wealth of info on his board and joined, never looking back. I honestly credit Rick for any success in the business. Of the 400 domains I'd purchased with what I learned at Afternic, only one survived. It's the only brandable I own, and I like it. The rest were crap.

Many of you may have read that "Goldrush at 6:45 am" article that precipitated a lot of the current domain industry. For me, it meant getting up at @ 3 am. Getting coffee and my records in order. Then at 3:45 opening as many windows as my computer would support and hammer the registry for hand registrations till 4:30. By 5, I'd be back in bed to try to get some sleep before going to work.

Heavily involved in the drops (circa 2000), I founded DropWizard and started offering the drop service commercially with registry partners AW Registry and Fabulous .com. We were also the first drop service in Canada to chase .ca for our clients with registry partner Sibername. Right up till Cira stepped in and royally F***ed things up in a giveaway to the registrars. After that, I shut the commercial service and focused on increasing our own acquisitions.

There are articles about us from the early days on DNJournal.com if you feel like reading.

Welcome! I remember you over many years and your coming here is a nice really great to see!

Great read. Thanks for sharing. I recall seeing you years ago on the other forum when Adam owned it.

Great to see you here.

Welcome to the forum, definitely remember you from the 'old days'!

I got into domains in 2000 after reading about the business.com sale and thinking I'd give domains a shot, they made sense. But ofcourse registered mostly crap names and kind of went on hold for a few years after the dotcom crash, before eventually getting back in. One of my regrets is not realizing the potential of generic domains early on, I wish I had found people like you and Schwartz, and the domain boards, back then to help me clue in. Back in the early 2000's there were still so many good .com's available to hand reg, or buy for cheap. For example, I remember Afternic had a site called the Bazaar, which was a kind of discount declining price domain auction site. You could buy tons of LLN.com on there for $10 to $30 each! In the 2000's, even the generic one word .com's you could buy then for 5k or 10k would be worth tons today, but at the time it felt like a gamble and big investment to me.

Welcome Gordon

Great to see you hear! I think it's super important to have Domain experts who have weathered the test of time, prevailed and are here to help us navigate the domain world. I am New, trying to get a couple good names under my belt and it's nice to sit back and read through the comments.

Look forward to the discussions..

Dan

( Weathered isn't a polite way of saying old... lol it's meant as Been There, Done That.. Got the T-shirt. )

Gordon, good to see you I remember the days on Rick's board. Another thing I have to thank [notify]namesca[/notify] for, bringing me on there.

domains said:

I remember Afternic had a site called the Bazaar, which was a kind of discount declining price domain auction

Click to expand...

wow blast from the past the Afternic Bazaar Oh my I have not thought of that place in awhile

Gordon, my old friend! How are you. It has been a long time. Welcome. It is nice to see you here.