How my .info became a premium domain

2 years ago, I had a .info domain that I bought for 89 cents and built a free website tonight page for it. I then pointed about 200 domains to it (mainly .co.cc's, but also .infos, .nets, and even .coms). Then, using those domains I would pull traffic to the site from a source that I will just call agent 007 lol. Please understand why I can't just speak of it in public, and please nobody blurt it out either. Anyways, over time I noticed throught analytics that the site was gaining more and more search engine traffic, and after about 8 to 10 months it was getting over 50% organic google traffic. Now keep in mind also, I didn't mention this earlier, but it had little to no onsight seo, because I am not really an seo expert. Then I even realized that many highly competitive keywords ranked #1 (I guess because of the couple of paragraphs I actually wrote) The niche was also a very competitive niche, so given the fact that I was ranking #1 somehow, I was making a killing from the website.

I then decided to take the money that I had earned and pursue a couple of completely offline business ventures (bad mistake). I left the website alone, and did not even pay to keep the domain or anything. (HUGE MISTAKE!).

Then after being away from the internet for a whole year, I came back and decided to try to pick back up where I left off. I went to purchase the domain back, and it was available, but the damn thing was listed as a premium domain and priced at almost $9,000! A .info = premium = $9,000? WOW!

Needless to say, I still started over, but with the $8.99 .com of the same name lol. Im getting the traffic again, and starting to get a little organic google, so lets just see if it works again lol. If it does, I know not to make that mistake again!

Why the hell would only the info domain be a premium and not the other more popular extensions? sounds fishy to me

Some times gdaddy will swoop up domains if they think they are profitable and then relist them for a ridiculous price. OP mind sharing your traffic secret with me? (i will keep it on the down low)

I seen this happen you look at a domain for 3.99.come back to it in one months time and suddenly its like 4K.lollllllllllllllll luck of the draw i guess.

anything is worth only when there is someone willing to pay that price. I can value any domain(or thing) at $5 mil say, but if there is no buyer, it doesn't mean anything.

What is a "premium" domain?

I really want to hear about this 007 source

That is not a premium domain. That is simply someone trying to get someone else to pay an inflated price for a domain.

Look at it this way. Think about the shittiest house in your neighborhood. How much do you think it is worth? If the owner listed it for sale at ten times that value, does it become a premium property with the stroke of a pen? Hardly.

I remember a situation where I picked up the .net of a domain. Quite a few extensions were available, but the .com was gone. I decided to contact the .com owner who picked up the .com about 3 months earlier and offer a low 3 figure price for (reasonable price as I wanted it, but also a reasonable price as it was only 3 months old). That owner wanted $3000 for the domain as it was a 'premium' domain. His domain is still parked. My .net made 4 figures routinely before getting penguined. Him saying it was a premium domain did not justify the asking price. Like so many things in life, saying something is true does not make it true.

A premium domain is something that you will know that you will make more money with if you have it vs buying a less memorable domain. It is memorable by users, is close to what they routinely search for (or easy to set up as a brand if it is not) and preferably a .com (for the trust factor ... or a country specific url where appropriate such as .co.uk).