It's like an employee of a company earning $70k per year working on a project that will bring in $500k wondering why they're not getting paid more if the compan

It's like an employee of a company earning $70k per year working on a project that will bring in $500k wondering why they're not getting paid more if the company is making much more than their yearly salary in one go and the answer is: overheads. The domain aspect of a registrar is one very small part. You factor in insurance, employee salaries, utilities, leasing of office space, purchasing office equipment and computers, storage, maintenance (network and building). A registrar is like any other business, it has to factor in its overheads into the cost of their products. On-top of that, all businesses ensure they bring in a little more than they're spending (ideally) and reinvest that back into the business to improve service offerings and existing products. Having said all that ICANN aren't the only registrar out there, Verisign are probably the worse in my opinion. There are many men in the middle driving the cost up as well. It's very much a shark industry.