Domains Cost More, Blogs Disappear

I have been noticing a couple of disturbing trends this year outside of the AI/LLM bubble. Has anyone else noticed them?

First, domain registrars seem to be raising domain name prices like never before. Every couple of months, I get an email from Porkbun or Cloudflare saying that the registry controlling a domain's TLD is raising prices on such-and-such a date. I can't remember the last time I saw domain name prices decrease. They only seem to go up.

That is why I try to renew domains for more than one or two years whenever I can. If my budget allows, I will pay for all 10 years upfront rather than wait for the next price increase.

The other trend may be worse. Personal blogs and websites from people who have been on the web for a long time are going silent or disappearing altogether. A few people give notice that they are taking a break or leaving, but most just disappear without anything but a 404.

I am not sure what is causing that. Burnout, social media replacing personal sites, hosting complexity (including rising costs), aging communities, lack of feedback, and people simply losing interest could all be part of it. I suspect some of these things feed into each other.

Let's face it, the personal blogging and independent website community seems to me to skew older these days. Many of the people still maintaining their own sites have been doing it for 10, 20, or even 25 years. I would not be surprised if a large portion of the traditional personal blogging community is now over 40 (I am not including traditional social media such as TikTok, Snapchat, or Instagram in that statement. This is simply my observation). An aging community mixed with social media burnout probably does not help.

With domain prices, I wonder if some registry operators are simply taking advantage of rising costs and higher prices throughout the tech industry. Many of the companies controlling these TLDs are large corporations.

Everyone keeps saying the AI bubble around RAM, storage, and other hardware will burst any day. Things seem to be getting worse instead. Maybe things have to get worse before they get better.

I don't know. Sometimes it feels like the industry is moving toward giving the masses just enough hardware to get online, but not enough to do much locally. Companies would do the heavy lifting for us through subscriptions and cloud services.

I don't want or need another monthly subscription. Soon, our paychecks will be divvied up among all the subscription services and sent directly to them, with no need to even pass through our bank accounts.

Maybe I am missing another cause, but these are trends I have been noticing more and more.

Will the ultimate result be that people are eventually priced out of owning their own domain names and hardware for homelabs and selfhosting?

Those one-year introductory deals are great for domain names, but the renewals are what get you. I think Porkbun and Cloudflare are great companies, and they try to keep costs as low as possible (in my opinion). Ultimately, it is not their fault if the registries behind the TLDs keep raising prices. They cannot operate at a loss either and I understand that.

I just wonder where all of this ends.