How a dog inspired the $475,000 sale of Wisdom.com

Here is a really cool story about a premium domain name, a dog and a good-natured domain registrant who scored big and helped others with the proceeds.

Credit to finding this story goes to @JV999

On Reddit a member talked about fostering a dog back in the 90’s that they named “Wisdom” The dog went on to leave a lasting impression with the owner and they hand registered Wisdom.com (for free).

Here is part of the their Reddit post:

In the 90s I fostered a dog for some friends who were leaving town and left the dog with me. This dog immediately made an impression upon me, and even though I really didn’t want a pet at the time, he was such an amazing dog, he convinced me otherwise. He was super smart, half black lab, half pit bull. I called him “wisdom” because he was so smart.

Fast forward a few years I used him as a mascot for a recording studio I set up. I registered the domain name wisdom.com. My dog passed away several years later and I was heartbroken and depressed for many years. I maintained the domain name even though I didn’t really have any projects associated with it. Over the years people made offers on the domain name but I always passed. The domain was a homage to my long lost best friend.

Then in 2000 with the dot-com boom, there was renewed interest in domains and IPOs. I had a few groups bugging me for the domain name and kept increasing their offers. Eventually the numbers got into the “life changing” areas of money, and I couldn’t ignore them.

I originally secured the wisdom.com domain name for nothing. In the early days of the Internet, it didn’t cost any money to register a domain name. You just had to fill out the right forms. I actually would never have to pay any domain renewal fees if it wasn’t for a sysadmin that made changes to the domain and accepted new terms of service that forced me to have to pay renewal fees. Otherwise, the $475,000 I was ultimately offered in cash would have been pure profit. But instead my cost was a few hundred dollars over the year. Still a significant windfall that gave me the opportunity to take that money and create another cool community of wonderful people.

You can read the whole story on Reddit and all the comments. It really is a great story and nice to see that someone who wasn’t sure they wanted a dog, fostered it, honored it with a domain name and then sold the name for big money and helped others with the money.