
How to Snatch an Expiring Domain - bpick
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/03/how-to-snatch-an-expiring-domain
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mikeindustries
Amazing that people are still finding this, considering it was written five
years, on a couch, in about 20 minutes. And yes, it was the best $369 I've
ever spent.

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yumraj
what was the domain ? :)

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julio_the_squid
It's listed at the bottom of the article - newsvine.com.

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blhack
Do you run newsvine, then?

Love your site :)

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tortilla
Another method to snatch a good/great name is to actually contact the owner
(if possible). You might get lucky and reach a person who is not a domain pro
and is willing to do a fair deal. I'm currently buying a very brandable
adjective word domain from an individual. When I did a bit of research before
contacting, I found out the business was no longer a going concern. From a
superficial glance, most people wouldn't have bothered contacting. Hell, on
another day, I might have stopped as soon as I saw a live website.

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mmorris
This is absolutely true.

I was trying to pickup <http://goalbot.com> about a year ago when it was on
the verge of expiration. When I did some research the whole auction process
seemed unreliable and a bit overwhelming to me, so I contacted the owner and
got the domain for a very reasonable price. He obviously wasn't planning on
renewing, so it worked out perfectly for both of us.

I suppose if I had read this article first I might have put in the extra work,
but I'm happy with how everything worked out.

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Psyonic
Potential problems with your approach are that he may not respond (worth a
shot, though), and that it lets the owner know someone is interested. If he's
an asshole, he might renew it unless you pay a high price. Glad to hear it
worked out for you.

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josefresco
When shopping for domains it's best to start at a small WHOIS provider that
you trust to give you a yes/no answer. If you shop at NSI or GoDaddy you will
find that the domains you were searching might be registered a few days later.
Only hit up GD if you're ready to buy (avoid NSI at all costs)

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jwarzech
I've ran into losing domain names before when searching on GoDaddy, what are
some small WHOIS providers that you trust?

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ja27
GKG - <http://gkg.net/whois>

They've had great customer service in the past and have solved a number of
domain name issues for me.

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martey
This article is from 2005. Are its precepts still valid?

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qeorge
Yes and no. Here's how it works:

If you buy a domain and don't renew, theres a ~45 day "redemption period",
during which you can pay a fee to get it back (GoDaddy charges $80 for this).
If you don't, the domain is released back into the wild by Verisign, and all
registrars get an equal crack at it. The reason Pool has such a good chance is
that they own 80 registrars, so they have 80 horses in the race. That's what
the original article discusses.

However, in the last few years drop-catching has become largely irrelevant.
Here's why, using GoDaddy and TDNAM as an example:

During that 45 day redemption period, GoDaddy auctions off the right to buy
the domain via the TDNAM. If someone pays the fee, they'll renew it themselves
to sell it, it never hits the wild again, and the drop catchers never get a
shot.

This is how I got GeorgeWBushLibrary.com for $15 (paid TDNAM fee), which I
then sold for $35,000 less than a year later.

Network Solutions has NameJet, enom has one too (forget the name). Between
those 3, most domains are covered, making drop catching a dying art.

Edit: Its important to note that each aftermarket can only sell domains
currently registered at their registrar. So TDNAM only sells domains regged @
GoDaddy, NameJet only sells domains regged @ NetSol, etc.

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mcantor
So, to get involved in this "TDNAM," all you have to do is pay GoDaddy's $20
backorder fee and wait for the expiration date to hit?

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qeorge
No, GoDaddy backorders is a drop catching service. For it to work, the domain
has to hit the wild, so if someone bought the domain in TDNAM you wouldn't get
it.

Basically:

If the domain you want was regged with GoDaddy, Network Solutions, or eNom,
buy it out of their aftermarket (much cheaper, better chance).

Otherwise hire drop catchers. You can hire several, because you only pay the
winner. However, be careful what you're getting yourself into here - for that
the original article is still very relevant.

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thinkbohemian
As a sole developer and at this point making no money from my ventures, i
can't afford to throw down the big bucks for normal domain buying services.
This seems like a good alternative.

Are there any good services that will either list expiration dates en-mass or
send you some kind of a notification if a domain you are interested in is
going to expire?

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davidw
Ick... I think I'd rather just pick something no one would want (google.com,
or yahoo.com, say) and build the brand.

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jonknee
He seemed to have done alright with Newsvine...

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z8000
Top article there right now: "Country's first legal gigolo starts work in
Nevada"

Unless he's the gigolo...

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wensing
This may come in handy as I'm in a bit of a quandry. I have stormpulse.net and
stormpulse.org registered through Yahoo!, and they want $43.95 per year (!)
per domain. I'm afraid of letting them lapse, but I feel completely gouged.
I've tried transferring to GoDaddy but hit a dead-end last time I attempted.

EDIT: I just did more research and apparently this has to do with the private
registration for which we paid Y! an extra $9/yr. Apparently, GoDaddy was
sending emails to contact@myprivateregistration.com (the email addy Y! uses
for private reg), which is a black hole!
[http://www.sarahpin.com/2008/07/19/recent-researches-why-
yah...](http://www.sarahpin.com/2008/07/19/recent-researches-why-yahoo-
private-domain-registration-is-not-private/) Ugh.

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prawn
In Australia, the drop service I use is Drop.com.au. They recently redesigned
and reworked their auction process so it now sucks, but there are still decent
domains to be picked up cheap. I've grabbed recommendations.com.au,
hehe.com.au and onlineclassroom.com.au recently for low bids and wicked.com.au
went for all of $6 recently.

From Mon-Fri there's a new list of domains up for grabs and the auctions close
at around 10-10:30am.

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yardie
I'm so glad I don't have to be in this game anymore. I bought my domain 5
years ago; my name. It was free, clear, and a .com. I was surprised it even
happened at all because my name is a pretty common chinese name.
Unfortunately, when facebook was handing out aliases last year I was unable to
secure my name or any variation of my name that I liked.

I've been trying to secure the .com domain of a friend for the last few years.
They are currently using the .biz, .net TLDs. Just when it expires it is
snatched from my grasps and the owner hasn't responded to my emails. I believe
this is because they are in the same business in the same geographic area so
are competitors.

I actually had a scare where I was on vacation when the domain expired, blog,
and all emails were stopped. I finally got it back after 2 weeks of wrestling
with my registrar. After that I pay in 5 year blocks. Cheers, until 2013!

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huherto
Do you guys still think the name is very relevant? Every day I use more google
search to go places rather than typing the url directly.

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dschobel
I think you need to own your company name.

The dropbox guys claimed to have done just fine when all they owned was
getdropbox.com but I'd be curious to know if there's been any change in
traffic from people going straight to their new domain vs referrals from
google, et al.

"Dropbox" is becoming enough of a name-brand that I'd be surprised if they
didn't see a significant spike in traffic.

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paulgb
Anecdotally, I've told people about dropbox and had them not able to find it
because they were looking for dropbox.com (before dropbox finally got
dropbox.com)

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sireat
Are things better these days? The way pool.com operates seems extremely seedy.

The name is/was newsvine.com they got acquired by MSNBC a year later, so I
guess the name was worth it.

Still, I feel picking an uncontested two word name might be cheaper, less
nerve wracking than going through the process described in the article.

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huherto
I think he also had a pretty good concept overall. So it not just the name.

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sailormoon
_In other words, if someone all of a sudden bids $1000 on a domain, will a
domain company decide to snatch it up themselves or “shill bid” against you on
it?_

I have no doubt this "shill bidding" goes on all the time. When the .asia TLD
was opening up, you had to "register your interest" in acquiring any domain,
and there was always, _always_ another bidder. Some of the time they seemed
real but other times I was highly suspicious that anyone would be interested
in that domain. And sometimes the fake bids would seem to go against each
other, often for ridiculous, obviously valueless domains like
"americaneaglerjregionaljet.asia" etc (that is a real example).

That was pool.com too. I have no doubt whatsoever that the auctions were
(deliberately) compromised then and I have no reason to believe anything has
changed.

That said, with ICAAN fast asleep, what choice do we have ...

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shedd
Theres actually a fairly recent (Nov 2009)case where SnapNames was found to
have had an employee placing shill bids:

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/181731/domain_auction_site_fa...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/181731/domain_auction_site_faces_shill_bidding_lawsuit.html)

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mml
there's no control here. he probably just boned himself.

