[ryan29]

I think first year premium pricing makes a lot of sense. I'm not sure what the average time to sell is for a domain investor, but say it's 10 years for an easy example.

If you go from a standard registration price of $12 / year to a first year premium of $132, you double the 10 year carrying cost of a domain. That, naively, means domain investors can only speculate on half as many domains.

By having a first year premium price and then dropping domains back into the 'standard' tier, you also leave registrants with a semblance of price protections via section 2.10c of the registry agreement. As-is, premium domains have zero guarantees when it comes to premium renewal pricing.

There's a lot of room between squeezing domain investors and asking registrants to pay $100-1000+ per year for premium domains.

[t-writescode]

If memory serves me, first year premium pricing is definitely a thing for some domains on some tlds with some registrars.

Though I can also definitely understand why, for example, "lawyer.lawyer" would cost $$$$ every year, too, at least myself.