kahpeng.com

Do you notice anything special inside the picture below ? Look carefully… hehehe, yeah you’re right! The email address is lim@hongki.at. Finally Hong Kiat from Hongkiat.com bought his personalized domain name ending with .at which is the Austrian registry.

Few days ago, when I post that I won Flashloaded 3DWall from Hongkiat.com May FREE giveaways, I didn’t notice the email address where Hong Kiat sent a copy of the mail to himself for hongki.at domain.

Later on, I did a whois check for his domain and can confirm that he bought the domain already. You can take a look at the whois as below:-

So, why is it so big deal about hongki.at domain ? This goes back few months ago, I chat with Hong Kiat about Matt’s domain name, the founder of Wordpress, during the official public launch of .MY 2LD domain name by Mynic where Matt is using a personalized domain name that match his own identify which is http://ma.tt/.

I told Hong Kiat that it will be cool if I can a personalized domain that match my own name. That time, Hong Kiat haven’t bought his personalized domain, hongki.at yet. Don’t believe ? See the screenshot below, hehe because that time I did some searching for him.

But the question is how many of you can really afford a personalized domain ? Some country extension is really expensive. For example, hongki.at domain name, you need to pay 72 euros for the first year which is expensive if you’re living in Malaysia because of the currency exchange. But, of course Hong Kiat from Hongkiat.com can afford it :P

Let’s see another example which I did a searching based on my friend’s name, Desmond Lee. I tried to “pretend” to register just l.ee but they don’t allow 1 character, therefore I tried his name, desmondl.ee and voila, see the screenshot below:-

This domain is cheaper compared to .at country domain but is still EXPENSIVE if compared to the traditional .com/.net/.org domains where you need to pay like more than 100x the normal domain names prices.

Lastly, do you know how much Matt have to spend for his ma.tt domain name every year ? I don’t know if he able to get cheaper price from other place or he gets discount for his domain name or whatever, anyway the screenshot below is search from a domain registration site that handles .tt domain names as well which represent Trinidad & Tobago country. The price is $1250 per 2 years!

$1250 per 2 years! OMG…