[ELI5] How the heck do domain sellers work? Who actually owns the bulk of these addresses? How much power does the central registry have vs the big players like GoDaddy or Hover? More questions in thread.

Question

**Why are they all able to sell the same name at different prices? The pricing models seem very well worked out. Who’s making the money here? The Domain Agents who negotiate the sales of premium addresses… what’s their cut? Are they really representing themselves a lot of the time?**

I would love to hear from an industry insider to give us a little glimpse into this mysterious world.

In: Technology

Answer 1

If you register a domain not owned by anybody else, it’ll be a basic cost depending on what services you buy with them (if any). These companies can register the domain for you with the big top level domains like `.com` and `.net` and all that. Other domains like those specific to a country (`.us` for USA, `.ca` for Canada, etc) may require a different registrar.

The domains “for sale” might have belonged to someone else at some time, and when they lapsed the registrar basically transferred ownership to themselves rather than let them die. Or someone decided to just spend some money to buy them. They think these names are valuable enough to be worth trying to sell at a higher price, and are worth the increased costs of keeping them up.