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How Early .US Adopter Steve Orosz Went from Welding to the World Wide Web

By Ron Jackson

One of the things I have most enjoyed since launching American Domain Names on July 4 has been hearing from some of the earliest .US domain investors.  Many of them recognized the potential value of good domain names before I had even arrived on the scene in late spring of 2002. That was shortly after .US had been opened to all American citizens after previously being reserved for government, law enforcement, schools and similar special uses. By the time I got here, the .US extension was already in general availability with most of the best domains having already been claimed in the "land rush" period that preceded the public release. My best .US domains weren't acquired until original registrations started expiring for the first time and a lot of great names became available again through the drops. 

Steve Orosz was one of those who was in the .US vanguard that preceded me, so I connected with him to get the details on what brought him into the domain business and the role .US played in that. Steve also shared some of the domains he has acquired along the way and the story behind his latest sale,  made a few days ago, to a commercial and residential plumbing company that operates in multiple U.S. states. It's all in the interview below.

ADN.US: Steve, as a relatively new field, almost everyone involved in the domain business came into it from some other line of work. What were you doing when you first got interested in domains and why did you decide to start buying them?

Steve Orosz: In 1999, I was working in Chicago as a pipefitter/welder. Back then, the newspaper was still the go-to source for daily info while at work. I read an article that told of the value and scarcity of good domain names and that all 3 letter .com combinations were registered.  I found that to be somewhat unbelievable and couldn't understand why. Then it hit me....scarcity was the driving factor. Kind of like prime real estate, only "online" real estate. 

Steve Orosz went  from welding to the 
World Wide Web. His portfolio includes: 
Welder.us, Fabricating.us, Steelworkers.us, and Ironworkers.us.

The company that I worked for had just recently installed a computer with internet access in our break room and was intended for locating and ordering parts and equipment.  I spent practically every available moment finding out about this new (to me) phenomenon that was domain names.  My first 5 or 6 registrations were through Register.com at $35 per reg. It didn't take long for me to get sucked in to registering more. I quickly discovered less expensive registrars. I also learned that pricing wasn't everything.  Remember Registerfly? (Editor's Note: Registerfly was a registrar that collapsed, leaving many customers in limbo for months before the chaos was sorted out). That was a real nightmare and luckily, I was able to transfer out all of my names held there to another registrar.

In the beginning of my domain journey, I spent numerous hours on Afternic. The current site bears little resemblance to what Afternic used to be. In it's infancy, Afternic had a discussion board that allowed you to post about domains. There were many opinions discussed and occasionally an inside trick or two was revealed.  It was very much about traffic and pay per click back then.  I wound up at DNForum after Afternic changed.  Some of my more valuable domains were purchased there for next to nothing. I wish that I still owned a few that I sold for a meager profit. Who knew!

ADN.US: What specifically attracted you to .US domains as an investment or TLD to build on?

ADN.US: Considering how popular the local ccTLDs is in other nations around the world, why do you think .US has been overlooked and under-utilized since it opened to all Americans in 2002?

Steve Orosz: The primary factor has been, simply put.....demand.  In the awakening of the internet in the United States, the .com namespace was what most people knew. And even if you considered an alternative it was usually .net.  By 2002 when .US was presented, .com was entrenched in everyone's mind and anything else was confusing.  

Neustar (the former administrator of the .US TLD) did little to promote .US like they should have. Kind of like the Chicago Cubs business plan for decades - spend little, reap the rewards, and don't worry about the seats because there are enough fans to keep it profitable.  I hope that GoDaddy (who bought Neustar this year) sees the potential for .US and brings it more to the forefront when registration queries offer alternative suggestions to .com. 

Orosz and his family live in northern Indiana now and his portfolio reflects his priorities today - OurFamily.us, iRun.us and X-C.us. The latter is the abbreviation for cross country sports. Steve's daughter is headed to Arizona State University where she will be on the cross country team.

A 1990 issue of Goldmine Magazine

I did know that the web offered some tremendous advantages over brick and mortar. A lot of my music business comprised of selling collectibles by mail order. In the 80s and 90s, there was a national  collector's magazine called Goldmine and I spent a lot of money taking full page ads in it. In 1997, when the web was really starting to gain traction, I put up my first website, building  MusicParadise.com for the business (the store, as you saw above, was actually called Rock Island.  I'll get to the reason for that disparity in a moment). With the website I found I could save an enormous amount of money by cutting my full page magazine ads to 1/16th of a page that directed people to the website. There I could list as many items as I wanted and show them in full color. In the magazine I was limited to black and white text listings and very short descriptions. There was no comparison.

One thing I remembered about getting my first domain name in 1997 was how annoying it was to find it was already taken! We were Rock Island but a financial firm of the same name already had the .com domain and that was when there were virtually no other options other than .net and .org. It was before the first "new" TLDs arrived (.info and .biz) and I couldn't even consider my own country code extension, .US, because it was reserved for 

government, schools and a few other special uses. I was fortunate to have one way out though. Our logo said "Rock Island - A Music Collector's Paradise". So, I checked MusicParadise.com and it was available - hooray! After we closed the brick and mortar store we also switched our business to Music Paradise to match the domain. 

So, there I was in the spring of 2002, knowing I needed to do something new on the Internet and that getting the exact .com domain I might want was getting harder every day. I didn't have much to go on when the latest issue of PC World magazine arrived in my mail box. I had grown to really love computers for how much easier they made everything in my life, from running a business to near instant communications through email and starting building my own. Still, the thing that really caught my eye when I opened the cover was a full page ad placed by Neustar who was then the  administrator of the .US TLD (GoDaddy wound up buying Neustar last year and a subsidiary of the company administers it now).

The ad was placed to alert Americans to a major change - .US had officially been opened up to all U.S. citizens as well as anyone who did business in America. Not only that, second-level registrations were available 

for the first time. In domain names, the extension is the first, or top, level (hence the term TLD for top level domain). The second level is the word(s) or characters before the dot. For example MusicParadise is the second level in my MusicParadise.com domain. Prior to April 2002 .US domain could only be registered at the 4th level - which add more dots and some VERY long domain names)! 

Given my own experience of having to settle for a business name other than my own in 1997, you can see why this huge change at the .US registry in 2002 caught my attention. .US domains were very affordable with stable renewal prices (just as they are today), since it was just opened to all, a lot of good names would be readily available and the TLD was the official domain extension of the United States of America. I still did not know what business i might go into but I decided I should go ahead an get some of these domains in areas where I had an interest. Then 

I would have a pool of suitable options to choose from when the time came to move. The idea of reselling any of those domains never once crossed my mind. I had no idea that the "domain business" was a thing. I couldn't envision how a domain could be worth anything more than the registration fee unless it already had something built on it. I soon learned how wrong I was though.

As a journalist with a good command of words and language, I thought I might have died and gone to heaven - could any business be more tailor made for me? If it had only been that easy. It took a couple of years with a lot of trial and error, throwing things against the wall to see what stuck (not much of what I bought did in the early days). Eventually I did acquire a grasp of the 

finer details - what kinds of category-defining names a business would seek, why are short acronyms so popular (brevity is important on the web - short names are more memorable and they prevent a lot of typos - it's why American Domain Names is built on ADN.US. I also have AmericanDomainNames.us but it redirects to ADN.US in case anyone does type in the whole thing. You also have to learn where you can get domains at the best prices, where you can sell them to end users and so much more that is beyond the scope of this article.

Now, don't get me wrong. I didn't get any of my domains for free and I have bought and sold thousands of .US domains over the past 20 years. I have often mused about how much money the .US registry made from me alone - just one person - from that one magazine ad (I never saw another). I have all of the records and the number is in six figures. When they say it pays to advertise, I am exhibit number one! So I guess you could say I don't owe .US anything. Those investments have provided a modest but profitable revenue stream that has become stronger than ever over the past year (my guess is the pandemic induced stampede to Zoom.us helped .US recognition and the rush by businesses to get online is also boosting business for many TLDs). I still think the entirety of how the domain industry has 

Image from Bigstock

changed my life leaves me owing .US something more. Of course, this site makes business sense for me too. If ADN, or anything else, helps boost .US recognition and utilization my holdings increase in value.