Premium, aha
Friday, 9 May 2025
Well well. Did you know that in the market for domain names there is a thing like "Premium Domains"?
Imagine my surprise when I found out that my precious "offset.guitars" domain here is considered as one of these. Interestingly the registry itself can decide if a domain is considered "premium" and can then also decide to up the fees needed to register or to renew such a domain. Well in my case here it means that I suddenly have to pay around 15/16 EUR a month (183,75€/yr) for this domain -- which is quite a increase from the 80,00€/yr I paid over the last years.
Since this website is non-commercial and my hobby and interest, this is a blow, budget-wise.
I could of course ask for help and donations, or I could try to add some sort of advertising, but
a) I want to stay independent and
b) hate (hate hate hate) everything around the ad-market on the web and will not trade user data for money.
So… currently I'm thinkink about moving this website back to a traditional domain and let my fancy offset.guitars redirect to that, and then in about a year or so let go of the domain. :-/ I am worried that, since the registrar itself can decide about the "premium" status and the fees associated with that, that the price may go up even further to a point where I cannot pay this anymore out of my own pocket.
