WordPress’ .Blog TLD costs $10,000 USD a Year for a “premium” domain

Unless you hold a trade-mark for “Adam”, you have to either apply for a .blog domain today or wait for public registration to open in November. By applying today, you have to pay a $220 registration fee but you may get your domain before anyone else. If others want it, a bidding war is kicked off and if a trademark holder appears, all of you are kicked out and forced to buy another domain.

That’s how WordPress is handling things. I can buy Apple.blog for $30 a year + $220 Registration fee. Appl.blog is still $30 a year and so is Steve, Rick or James.

Try to apply for Adam.blog and you get a different price:

$10,000 registration + $220 application fee

I feel this is a little unfair. I fired off an email to the .blog support team. Their response:

The complexity of buying and rolling out a new domain extension like .blog goes pretty deep. The short answer is that adam.blog has the same $220 application fee as every other domain. The $10,000 cost is its registration fee – which recurs each year to maintain ownership!

Short, common word domains are super high demand, as you probably know. They are part of the reason that so many new extensions (like .food, .tv, etc) have been rolling out over the last few years – everyone wants a simple and memorable domain.

I replied that I’d be blogging this indicating that I’m small potatoes but I’ve been blogging as Adam Jackson / Chandler since 1999 on LiveJournal, PMachine and now WordPress. I’ve attended 5 different Word Camp meet ups and have chatted with Matt, the founder many times. We even shared a taxi at Blog World in 2009. The fact that I’m not good enough for Adam.blog is something I can cope with. What I don’t see is an explanation of why Adam.blog is $10,000 and Rick.Blog is $30.

This is a list of the most popular male baby names in USA. Adam is 69th in the list The top 5 are $30 a year. Why is Adam 10 grand? When you search Adam, it shows up with a “Premium” button next to it which isn’t clickable. I’d like a list of premium domains WordPress has listed because Adam isn’t a popular name. As usual, I’m taking this personally.