How to Snatch an Expiring Domain | Hacker News Reader

How to Snatch an Expiring Domain

mikeindustries.com

150 pointsbpick49 comments

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.

what was the domain ? :)

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

Do you run newsvine, then?

Love your site :)

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.

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.

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.

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)

Just never use GoDaddy. NameCheap is way better.

GoDaddy is the AOL of registrars.

I use both pretty regularly but I would agree that NameCheap is probably the way to go. GoDaddy, with each passing day, has more of a sleazy and cheap feel to it.

Having said that, no matter how dirty GoDaddy makes you feel it won't be nearly as bad as any interaction you'll have with Network Solutions. Stay away from that at all costs.

It's been a few years since I got into a backorder struggle but at the time it was incredibly difficult and ended up dragging out for months and months.

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

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.

Namecheap has whois lookup: http://namecheap.getwhois.net/

You can always use the command line whois client, which is provider agnostic.

I don't know how much to trust them but I use http://who.is because it's memorable.

Eurodns

Interesting, I've long suspected some companies might engage in such practices... I guess one plan is if a domain you want is free right then, buy it immediately. Also, I hate GoDaddy so that takes of that issue...

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

I'm not sure. The only time I did this was in 2007 or 2008. I saw that the expiring domain was hosted with Godaddy, so I concluded without any research that I should use Godaddy's domain backorder service. It cost $17.95 + registration and it worked.

I did the exact same thing with my startup's name in 2007 and it was amazing, but in 2008 they went to an auction system (their "domain name aftermarket"). It was a super-hot deal at the time.

Hopefully somebody more knowledgeable can fill in the details, but my understanding is that for godaddy domains they are auctioned on tdnam.com before they are dropped. Therefore, even before placing a backorder you probably want to try to snatch it there.

I'm not sure, but I recently snatched the domain adfeeling.com via Godaddy's domain backorder system. I probably was pretty ignorant on the whole thing now I read this story, but in the end, it all went pretty smooth and the costs were predictable.

I got back a friend's domain through GoDaddy's backorder system. He'd let it expire and someone else held it for a year. I tried to buy it from them for $100 but they wanted more. In the end, I got it for a $20 backorder fee.

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.

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?

Just go to Godaddy.com and click on Domain Auctions. Their dropcatching of deleting names isn't that good, however, it's the place to go to get a name that was registered at Godaddy/WildWest.

For expired names that were registered at Godaddy/Wildest, the name goes into a 10 day auction around 25 days after expiration. At the end of the 10 days, it goes to the highest bidder. Then the winning bidder has to wait another 7 days before the domain is in their possession.

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.

Any idea what happens with domains registered by MarkMonitor? Is there a place they go before they "drop", or are the services in this article the only chance of getting these?

I've spent some time studying domain names as I found the topic interesting and I have seen the value in a good domain name. Several of my software programs and websites target the agriculture industry. The whole web 2.0/misspelling/non-.com extension/drop-the-vowels doesn't work well there as it just confuses people.

As far as the players, SnapNames, Godaddy, and Pool still are still around. Enom's Club Drop is now NameJet. As mentioned in the article, Network Solutions had an exclusive agreement with Snap (now they are using NameJet). In the past few years, many more registrars have adopted this strategy where they partner with an auction service and make money when the domains are sold.

Most names with these partner agreements become available around 35 days after expiration. These names do keep their original creation date so it's as if the original owner transferred it to you rather than it actually deleting and being re-registered.

If the name is with a registrar who does not have a partner agreement or a name that is not backordered during the auctions, it eventually deletes around 75 days later where the actual dropcatching referenced in the article picks up.

i used info in this article to buy digitalnomad.com in april. it ended up going to an auction on pool.com with one other bidder, which i won for $170. i had emailed the original owner about a year before and he wanted a couple grand for it.

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?

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

He seemed to have done alright with Newsvine...

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

Unless he's the gigolo...

Perhaps years ago names like these were "something no one would want", but now every possible five or six letter combination is in demand. Particularly anything pronounceable.

Something no one would want now would have to be much longer - and while it may not be as important as it once was to have a short domain name, it's still one more barrier to getting users on your site.

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... Ugh.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Dropbox guys only need you to visit the site once though

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)

I chose a pretty easy to remember domain name for my game site - two words that describe what it does and are easy to spell. Yet most of the visitors I get (80% who are frequent repeat visitors) actually come from google by typing the domain name into the search.

So no, I think domain names are pretty much worthless. Google is the URL bar. Scary.

Scary? I think it just shows how good the internet is at routing around inefficiencies. The idea of a domain name "shortage" was artificial and hardly benefited anyone but the registrars.

To pick an arbitrary example: "gcc.com" belongs to a cement company and "gcc.org" to a church, yet apart from typing them in directly a minute ago I've never seen those sites, since Google/Yahoo/Bing all direct you somewhere useful like http://gcc.gnu.org/ instead. Thank goodness!

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.

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

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 ...

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...

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

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