Purchasing a domain name

[silentnick]

Hi guys,

Around a year ago I "bought" a website from 123-reg for 2 years, and am just starting to put content on it now...

Is it possible to buy a web domain FOREVER and how would I go about doing that? - I'd rather say pay £100 to have it forever rather than £6 every two years.

- How, for instance, do people buy www.pizza.com (http://www.pizza.com) and then later sell them for a few million?

Thanks a lot
Nick

[Weeble]

Tis impossible. And forbidden. You can buy domains for a maximum of (I think...) 10 years at a time - and those are the back-alley domains (like .info, .biz, etc) - .com's have a maximum term of 2 years, .co.uk up to 5 I think... you can auto-renew domain names, and you always have first dibs on re-registering it when your term ends, but you can't purchase it forever and then forget about it.

To buy a domain for a cheap price and then sell for a really high price, you basically purchase a domain and sit on it for a few years (renewing every time you need to), whilst waiting for enough interest in the domain. Once you think people are quite desperate for it, offer to sell it for a ridiculously high price.

[silentnick]

Ok thank you Weeble.... is there anything to stop the company you register through from putting up the prices once they notice its worth something? - eg Turning it from £3/yr to £500/yr or something silly? Or just preventing you from renewing?

[Tim]

The global domains (com/net/org) can actually be purchased anywhere between 1-10 years now.

And as you're the registrant of the domain name, you have ultimate control over it. The fee you pay 123-Reg is for two things; their hosting of your domain on their servers and the actual registration fee paid to the Top Level Domain (TLD) provider. IF they increase their own fees to a larger extent, you can simply transfer providers. 123-Reg is generally quite good - I've used them for about 7 years now and never had a single problem with them.

[Bobbin]

Aye, i have all my domains on a 5year auto renew i think..

I got a .com and a .org

Getting a couple more soon too though..

[silentnick]

Thanks a lot guys! Greatly appreciated... I think I may learn how to use the web editor I've just got and start building sites!