Today is the 10 year anniversary of 3Character.com, the first project I ever started in the domain industry. I had been interested in LLL.com since about 2000 but kept getting distracted by work to ever focus on them, I think the first LLL.com I bought was XEF.com for $800 in the old Afternic forum.
So sitting in the Namepros chatroom I messaged ZestyDomains who owned a lot of great LLL.com domains, including HHH.com. I asked him what he thought about a site dedicated to everything 3 character ? This was a time before the blogs when forums ruled along with the Godfather of Domain publishing Ron Jackson and his DN Journal. Andrew/ZestyDomains said he would help, and I said well I want you to be apart of the site not just a contributor every once in a while.
I remember just going through Afternic and Sedo and looking for all the past sales and writing them down by hand. Andrew from Zesty gets the credit for the price guide, I did not come up with that, that was his baby.
I remember thinking 50 to 100 people will read this on Namepros, but instread the traffic was bigger than that, friends would point out to me how many eBay sellers referenced 3Character and the guide in their listings. The craziest thing was the time someone from Forbes called me asking for a quote. This was before I really focused on writing, this was 2006 and I was surprised that a writer from Forbes would even know what 3Character.com was.
The guide has always been the most celebrated part of the site and sometimes for interesting debate. What I never like seeing people do is to take something as fact. It was an intellectual exercise that gave an educated opinion from someone who held an excellent 3L.com portfolio and made many sales. I had made far more 3character.com sales with just a few LLL.com that I sold way too early.
A few years down the road I would receive offers for the site, since Andrew was apart of the website I gave him first rights to buy my half and he did. I was spending so much time on the Dot TV sub forum at the time, I no longer owned any 3L or 3C.com so it felt like the right time to sell.
Andrew completed an overhaul of the site recently and rolled out a 3Character.com newsletter. I wish him nothing but the best and hope there is a 20th anniversary for 3Character.com
For all those who read and supported the site, especially at the beginning, Thank you very much.
The more educational tools and resources that we can all contribute to an industry that has given us so much, benefits us all in one way or another.
The ridiculous amount of informative articles you have written over the years on so many different sites is quite the gift and I hope that those able to utilize the resources that you and many others in the industry provide, understand the time, energy and money that goes into them. 🙂
Congrats on 10 years!
Thank you Ian.
Weird as this now seems, historians will eventually write the chronicles of this weird little domain industry. And 3Character.com will probably be one of the primary sources they reference.
XEF.com for $800 … That just shows that domain industry is already old enough that it looks (with nostalgia and disbelief) at its own baby photos. The pace of change in this industry has been fast. And perhaps fastest where LLL .com’s are concerned.