

Ask HN: Is my little tool doomed to obscurity? - bemmu

When people neglect to or decide not to renew their domain registrations, others will have a chance to get those domains. The list of expiring domains is of course very long, so I created a little script to help me find just the best ones. I used some dictionaries to match against, and for a while I also had some traffic data. I made a UI around this tool and posted it on the web. People seemed to like it and it got to the top pages of Digg, Reddit and del.icio.us. This was in December 2006. Just a few days after the initial burst of traffic, it was down to 100 visit per day, and is currently at 50 visits per day, making an incredible $5/month from AdSense.<p>I wanted to ask you smart devs whether there is anything you can think of that would make the tool more sticky, to turn the flatlined traffic into a growing trend? I find myself keeping the script somewhat operational, in hopes I would come up with something, but it's now been two years already and my mind is blank.<p>http://expired-domain.bemmu.com/
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sidsavara
Here comes 5,000 of us again ;)

I think it's a great idea, I haven't tried your tool yet myself (it appears to
be the ... Hacker News effect).

I agree with affiliate linking it to godaddy or something - I imagine you
would make a lot of money. Also, get it it's own domain and brand it? Or get a
web designer to do that for you if you are not into that. I don't really like
subdomains, but that's just me.

You could also affiliate link to hosting websites if you don't already.

Another idea - how about make pages of common names? "Viagra" "Spyware" etc?
Even hacker, java, whatever maybe a separate page for each of the top 500
searches

And then you could slap some Adsense ads on there. These pages would refresh
every 24 hours, and I am sure people would bookmark them and/or subscribe for
updates. This way if I was just browsing the site, I might click around
between some pages.

The problem I see with advertising is that you can't target it very well
("domain searchers" is broad), but you could if you did it this way.

Even a "startup" tag would work, and you could then affiliate link to amazon
to books with startups (or hand pick some for each tag)

These tags might eventually even rank in google, if you made enough of them
(make one for every keyword searched, not just the top ones?). Not for spam
purposes: for organization.

------
anotherjesse
Also, perhaps you could get a better domain name for your project with the
tool? ;p

~~~
woodsier
And change your web host to something like slice, it can't handle all our page
visits and takes over 25 seconds to load.

This makes clicking anywhere on the site abhorrently slow too.

~~~
Brushfire
I concur.

Part of this (lack of) speed is that it is hosted in Finland, and running over
Telia's network which is running abysmally slow.

New domain, host, and a little styling cleanup should do wonders.

------
ilamont
I like the tool -- definitely useful for people who are looking for good
domains.

I am not a dev, but I have a few ideas:

\- Have a tool that limits the results by the number of characters in the
domain

\- Quick links on the front page to results starting with each of the 26
letters of the alphabet

\- From a revenue standpoint, you could see if there is some sort of affiliate
program with registrars, or work something out on your own with a partner
firm.

\- Add some sort of custom news feed on the front page for domain-related
news, SEO, etc.

~~~
sc
> Have a tool that limits the results by the number of characters in the
> domain

Currently achievable by editing the Regexp search, though admittedly not user-
friendly:

    
    
      ^[^.]{4,8}[.](com)$
    

(Minimum 4, maximum 8 characters)

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NoBSWebDesign
I would like to second (or third or whatever) the notion to get it a better
domain name (perhaps one of those really good expiring ones). A hyphenated
subdomain does not strike me as a good choice for a service that helps you
find good domain names.

Also, I haven't had a chance to check it out because it's taking forever to
load in my other tab, so I might be missing exactly what it does... but, how
about some RSS feeds?

There we go it just loaded... I'm getting a MySQL error on line 105 of
index.php.

Any chance you could do some data parsing to give me just the relavent whois
info instead of dumping the whole entry into the page?

I do like the idea overall. Expect 51 visits per day now.

------
BigCanOfTuna
Cool idea, but...

1\. It's very slow (HN effect?), speed it up 2\. Domain Name isn't great 3\. I
can't jump to a letter via hyperlink 4\. I see something called Regex
search...what is that? 5\. I'd like to see 100 or 500 names per page since
there are 256,000+ pages

Honestly, you'll likely never make too much money off ads since the
demographic of your audience is technical enough that they probably have an ad
blocker installed or they have trained themselves not to click on ads.

Instead of clicking to the whois information, link to some registrar that has
an affiliate program.

------
anotherjesse
Perhaps allow people to subscribe to a daily/weekly email with results
matching their regexp?

That way people who find it and like it can be converted to return users? For
instance I would be interested in any 2/3 letter domains that become available
just for curiosity's sake.

------
eterno
I think distribution is the key. You built a good product and ppl like it,
that does not mean they will start using it. (Welcome to the real world, by
the way).

To make it very clear, there are only 4 things you can do to tackle
distribution.

1\. SEO - Will not work in your case because it typically works best were
large amounts of original content is getting generated. (think ugc)

2\. SEM - Will again not work in your case because lifetime value of visitor
is not much. Plus conversion rates are low with extremely low deal size. (Let
me know if any of this is not clear).

3\. Widgets - dont think how this will work for you.

4\. Go B-to-B - I think this is the best option available for you right now.
Essentially offer this as a service to hosting companies and domain
registrars. Charge them a usage fees or an ROI rate. But this will require
some real world busines development where the rules of the internet do not
apply. If your tool is good, it could also be a nice little acquisition
target.

~~~
eterno
Also anything else will NOT work. Bookmarking will definitely not. Noone uses
bookmarks.

------
danielh
Are you sure that you don't violate the Whois TOS?

 _The compilation, repackaging, dissemination or other use of this Data is
expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of VeriSign._

------
webwright
Short answer... yes.

You have no built-in marketing, and no high-profit-per-user monetization to
justify any expense to acquire visitors.

You could built a big SEO-net with themed lists of expiring domain names and
go with a snapnames sort of model ("pay is $10 to monitor this domain name and
we'll register it FOR FREE if it comes available")... That'd get you $10 and
you could resell for a cheap registrar and make a nice margin if the names
came available. You could even send them other names via email ("You're
watching technology.com - here are 20 other similar domain names you might
want to monitor/snatch up").

Still, commodity biz with little innovation ops, IMO.

------
streety
As other people have said you should be able to boost your income with
affiliate offers. Pool, enom and snapnames all have programs. Where domains
are registered with network solutions you may want to default to snapnames.
For all other domains try some A/B testing and go with whatever pays the most.

It has been suggested that you add in link counts. My understanding is that
the search engines, at least google, tries to discount links received prior to
a change in ownership so I'm not sure this would be useful from a SEO
standpoint. If you're interested in natural clickthroughs then it may also
make sense to add in alexa/compete traffic stats.

The regexp gives a lot of power but many people have problems constructing
them. I don't suppose there is a WYSIWYG editor for regexp is there? I would
certainly take that form out to a page of its own and add a cheatsheet. I
really don't think linking out to wikipedia is the right solution. Provide
your users exactly what they need and no more.

You need some way of encouraging users to return. Subscription to a regexp
search has been suggested. Weekly featured domain might also work. Email and
rss would be good. Might also be useful to have a tell a friend function
though the audience is probably wrong for this to work.

It would be good to be able to construct more complex sorts. Deleted and part
of speech for example.

------
motherwell
Your problem is simple: people who do this have their own tools, have auction
sites, have plans ion palce for years, all sorts of things.

Basically, your pitching a spoon to dig a hole, when the problem is solved
better by an Earth mover.

Now, that isn't all bad, because noobies are better ad clickers anyway, but I
doubt the tool would ever get much widespread usage (sorry!), and the effort
to make it so is not going to be worth the return.

------
sh1mmer
Maybe if everyone on HN that like it bookmarks it.

I think you've highlight the core issue yourself though. You approached us and
got some interest. Unless you engage with communities getting love back is
unlikely.

You should be actively looking for people with this problem and giving them
the solution. The more you do, the more it will spread until it's self-
sustaining.

------
sh1mmer
Maybe if everyone on HN that like it bookmarks it.

I think you've highlight the core issue yourself though. You approached us and
got some interest. Unless you engage with communities getting love back is
unlikely.

You should be actively looking for people with this problem and giving them
the solution. The more you do, the more it will spread until it's self-
sustaining.

------
RossM
I get lots of nasty mysql errors when I open the link. Make sure
error_reporting is set to 0 and that you log errors to a file, which can be
done via Apache (or your choice of httpd server).

Because of the mysql errors I cannot use your application either so I'll hold
judgement on actual functionality for now.

~~~
RossM
They've cleared up now but make sure you turn visible error_reporting off, no
excuses. You should also look into better error trapping and handling.

On another technical aspect I notice you're passing regexes via GET. Don't -
setup an array of regexes with named keys (e.g. default => ^[^.]+[.](com)$) -
I'm about to test to see how much damage I could theoretically do (without too
much effect if possible). I hope you're not using that in an SQL statement.

Edit: Ah didn't notice it was a feature as such - while it's a pwoerful
feature it's not very user-friendly. Perhaps create a search form that works
similarly?

Issues aside it looks like an interesting tool - an additional sort could be
to pick up domains that are single dictionary words, and then further sort
those by number of syllables.

------
arihelgason
How about making the search more user friendly by offering a simpler search
option in addition to the regexp search?

Many potential users may struggle to figure out regexps.

------
noelchurchill
Add a yahoo link count for each domain name so you know how many links are
already pointing to the domain name.

------
t0pj
available according to whois on namecheap:

goodlookingnames com

thenameforme com

namesnomsg com

------
utnick
sounds like a service that people would pay for

start charging for it, or at the very least make clicking on the domains take
you to a godaddy affiliate link or something

~~~
bemmu
Yes, I used to use an affiliate program until it was discontinued. I think it
was 10x more profitable then. The only registrars people can really use to
register expiring domains are registrars specialized in that, and currently
none of them have an affiliate program.

~~~
sgibat
Maybe contact them directly and see if they'd be willing to set something up.

------
jorgem
How about NEW domain names as opposed to expiring ones? See
<http://hotNameList.com>

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BigCanOfTuna
That's what he said!

------
brandnewlow
Can you mount it on the front pages of news sites that target people who'd use
something like this? I was struck by how important Google's placement in all
firefox browsers is. maybe you could get placement on tech news sites as a fun
utility?

------
sutro
Your little tool doesn't have to be doomed to obscurity:

<http://tinyurl.com/6aybvs>

