I manually browsed through a long list of expiring domains, made a note of the top I would register at first time registration rates. Months later I checked the names I had selected and 56 were available. The moral of the story is I could register all 56 domains for the prices of possibly catching 3, 4 or 5 of the other 46 domains buy way of backordering. The 56 available names in my opinion were of equal quality to the 44 that were backordered or bid upon.
I read your article with interest. I am unsure though, if I should be using this approach for a domain that I want. A company seems to have grabbed it, and just have a filler page with adverts, and the like. Do I just wait, and see, and hope, that it is not renewed? Do I approach the registrant, but alert them as to my interest?
Thanks for that whole story, it gives some real tools for grabbing dropped domains. I might use that soon for 2 or 3 domains, that i hope will be dropped. A name can be gold dust or dross depending on what it is. Top domains have been sold for hundreds of thousands and occasionally millions of dollars.
Some comments were really useful too. Thanks a million for this article. Without it I would not have been able to grab this cool domain name I was after. PS: The funny thing is that the registrar for my expired domain name was enom. And even though I also enlisted their services to try to snatch this domain name, it was actually SnapNames who was successful in acquiring the domain name.
Interesting article, and I guess my question is how does someone become a Ecom, or a professional domain catcher? However, hw does one go about developing a program such as Ultsearch, and the man behind it, not his real name from what I understand Yun Ye..
At the very least I would like to know what tools are out there to buy expired domains that I could turn into affiliate programs, and to drive traffic to my site. I understand the basic concept of buying expired domains, I am just wondering what it takes to become a professional domain collector, or a traffic aggrator..
Just like most things on the net its a very competative market being a domain collector. I know of some people that have written scripts that says which domains are expiring, when they are expiring, the google page rank on that domain and so on. Now from what I know when lets say you buy a domain that had a PR of 6 when it expires you loose all the PR but the next time the page gets spidered after someone has purchased it there is no reason the PR should not go back up to 6 if all the links are still there right?
If you realy seek for a domain with a standing high Google PageRank you should register and pay some pennies for an italian french or swiss domain name. These domains are a little more expensive to register but there are lots of deleted domains which belong to nobody.
Put some textlinks on and one to your own domain and wait up to days. It will take only two google updates. I searched for medium PR domain names this morning at Network Solutions and found a few — then went to SnapNames to backorder them. Very inspiring, you made it sound like a very nice story. I paid my domain renewal fee to my registrar on the day before it was due. They were to just re-register it when it came available.
Someone beat them to it. This information is great… wish I had seen it sooner. I am looking at a domain name to register. It is currently expired and registered through NetSol.
I can try the auction route though snapnames, but there is conflicting information in the whois record at least through whois. The current status is registrar-lock. I had written a series of articles for eWEEK.
The stories I wrote about had to do with people who actually owned their domains having them stolen. Nice article. I have been interested in domain names for quite some time, but it has still been very informative. On my domain weblog I have written the story of buying a semiattractive deleting domain without using a backorder service. Just wanna say dittos. Thanks for an incredible read.
You cleared-up allot. Yes there is. The name of my company is the name of this domain. It will be revealed when we are dangerously close to launch. Godaddy is worthless on expiring names. They missed one and I had to buy from pool. Everything they do renews automatically with a whack to the credit card.
Just wondering if you now of any of the expiring domain websites that also inform you what the page rank of the domains are, as well as daily traffic stats etc…. Laura, check the whois of the official registration authority for the TLD, and you will find out. The time of expiration takes 75 days for. Extremely interesting and informative — I appreciate this info. Worm factor applies to him for sure!
This thread keeps going, and going, and going! Talk about the Energizer Bunny! If you want to just buy a name outright is that possible? Or, do these services have exclusives with Domain Registars? How did they Snap, Pool, Enom get those contracts in the first place? Is there anyway to bypass the auction services?
Anyone, Anyone, Bueller, Bueller, Bueller? I actually stumbled upon this because I am in the middle of trying to find a good expired domain name. This article will help me a lot! Thanks for this article.
It was interesting watching the status of an expired domain name that I wanted change just as you said. But for some reason on the 22nd, I checked the availablilty and it said that the domain had been registered on October 21, a day before it should have been available. For unknown reasons, when I went there today to check on the auction, the browser could not find the site. I immediately went to GoDaddy and the name was avaialble oddly enough , though underlying Whois data listed the expiration date as October 21, I ended up with the.
Network Solutions holds domain I want. The 8-month mystery can now be revealed. I must admit it has TONS of potential. Once live, it should pay for itself in a month. Not a bad investment, by any measure. Good luck with it. Thanks for the article. I might have caught at the end of the 75 day cycle. Anyway, we were forced to go with Register.
It is my service, but was created for me to use daily. So to be fair, checkout StartName. That backordering a domain raises a flag letting people know which expiring domains might be valuable. Sadly, unless lawyers get involved, none of us will ever know.
Of course, I would totally understand if you wanted to keep that information to yourself :. Congrats on your new site and on having snatched the domain you wanted succesfully and for such a low price. Sorry for all of the rambling. Very, very informative. My favorite part, though was when you said that only dinosaurs use fax machines. My sentiments exactly. Those things need to be killed off in one fell swoop. Once again, thank you for the great article — it helped me to understand the entire domain backordering process.
By chance could you explain the process how you find a good dropping domain name? There is like 20, dropping every day so it is very hard to understand which on to pick up.
Please help me. Sorry if it was mentioned already- there were too many comments to read them all. Very nice article! Thank you very much for all the insights.
You can view a list of domains prior to giving Snapnames your credit card info. This is usefull if you are looking for generic keyword domains, but if you are looking for targetted traffic names, it is usually better to get the list of domains with stats from a list provider. A note on the honesty of registrars…Back when there was only 1 Network Solutions I started receiving calls from the president of a large corporation insisting I sell a domain. That, I thought, ended the discussion, until I discovered that my domain was locked by the registrar without notice to me, based on the false accusation by the would-be buyer of trademark violation.
I was small but I was right. I fought back. They lost. Network Solutions won my undying contempt. Belated thanks for a great article. VeriSign owns a company called greatdomains. You mentioned that snapnames is new to the game, giving them a newbie still allot to learn image. Why is everyone ignoring this fact? Snapnames is one of the oldest dropcatchers not a newbie. Pool arrived on the scene, enom club drop made a big change, snapnames switched to an auction model etc…. Snapnames has been around a long time.
An article on my blog actually explains the changes of the drop game in the last few years. Great article, it finally made it through my article queue ; Though I also knew Snapnames before, you gave a lot of insight in the process. A domain I am interested is set to expire. If the registrar participates in an exclusive partnership with one of these dropcatchers, the only way to aquire the domain is to backorder it with the partner service.
If not, then you should backorder it with each service, pool, snapnames, enom and namewinner are pay for performance, so it will only cost you if you are successful at the one service that aquires the name for you or for auction. If you are not sure if the current registrar is partnered with any of these services, then I suggest emailing them an inquiry. Do not mention the specific domain name, just ask if they are partnered with one of these dropcatching services, or if they conduct their own exclusive drop auctions.
Very informative story. I was looking for some domains for my clients and this helped me to understand this process better. Many thanks — Krish. I once snagged 7second. I would have done much better if I had found this article sooner. You write very well and it made the entire article worth reading. Much success with your ventures. I live in the UK and used a domain name watcher service at reg.
Okay they are not names that everyone is going to want, acourt. This is a very interesting read and I have bookmarked it for reference, well written and advertisement free!! I have been using several different domain name watchers as I would like to register some property services or maintenance names, simple ones for plastering, plumbing and bathroom installations.
I have been looking for panty sales and pantyhose related domain names, there are an unbeleivable amount of domain name squatters in the adult industry. I have used Sedo before in placing bids and I made a good sale on Godaddy.. This is very useful information so I may give it a go thank you.
Thanks, It is very good story but I am very interested to find out about the legal process regarding expiration of domain. I have some problems with my service provider regarding to renewal of my domain. My domain has expired day before yesterday but my service provider refuse to renew it without expiration charge So how could I get proper legal advise and information?
I hope to hear from you. Superb article — read almost like a Tom Clancy scenario! Reminds me of a time I got an offer for a domain name and got it appraised on request.
Too late for me reading this. The free INFO domains madness took me to register lots of names, among them one associated to my main dot. And the agony started; I knew about the period of grace but those domains should not go through that stage if the non relevant names marked for immediate deletion were deleted effectively… it started to smell a rat.
And I followed all those days mentioned here doing daily whois checkups with the hope to get back the domains but this time registering them elsewhere. Afilias, the INFO registry, is located in Ireland so my belief was the domain will be deleted at GMT starting that day and I was ready to grab it from my EST location… midnight in Ireland and the domain was up… midnight in the East Coast and the morning broken overseas and the domain up….
Now I can see why, 11 to 14 hours Pacific Time, just when I was not online. The afternoon of the deletion day came with sedo. Domaindiscount24 is associated with sedo. After moving to own server for development…. They wanted to charge more money. AND they have 2 listed as dropping still …. Oh, yea I almost forgot…. I came onto this link searching for like how to spell expiring right and I decided to read the whole thing. Pretty interesting. Mike D the editor — a well-thought and well-written article, made better by other players in the industry.
This took place on New Years Eve at 3pm est. I went to Fiducia via the net…not in person of course haha. So I notified Snap of the situation. Has anyone ever been successful getting any whois information on pool.
I paid for something someone else is parking. Interesting piece of article. I was going to snipe a domain as well, I will plan ahead now.
I just lost a site to Enom. The day after it expired afternic. I got no warnings of any kind that the site was going to expire. I was more than mildly aggravated. After some heated emails and some heat through my network engineer who I had bought the site through enom. Too bad that it is so challenging to grab expired domains. I would be interested in getting expired domains listed in DMOZ but I think they remove them before they are deleted.
We started up a new business and the domain name we wanted was registered by someone but not used. I found out that the company that had originally purchased this. I wrote to the person that originally registered the domain name to see if he held the name, or whether it was sold as part of the company and he told me that it was now owned by the company in New Zealand.
Thanks Bud- I wish I read this before I started the process. I did it with godaddy. What a waste of my time. Glad you got the domain, I hate to wait. Have bookmarked the big 3 for future reference. Good job on the SEO on this article. You should write something up on SEO too.
This is a stupid and misinformed article. Sounds like a Slate reject writer to me. Hello Mike: I read a great deal about search engine exposure and popularity links, but is there a service that shows the actual number of visitors an expiring site gets?
Is there any way to see what names are about to expire? By keyword? Without doing a who is on names. But they are listed alphabetically where as i would be curious to see them listed by experaition date. But if a site has just come available and no one else has caught it id be more incline to purchase it. And names of those other domains. PS Good question John Hicks Id love to know the same but i think thats ussally internal information if im correct.
But i could be wrong. I thought that enom had me bidding against myself, since the domain is in a niche market. I have another coming up in 5 days and I have accounts at snapnames, enom and pool.
I have used both Snapnames and Pool. Snapnames areat least transparent and their auction model is fair. Pool I strongly suspect are bidding on domains themselves. I queried them about a particular domain I lost out on and got fobbed off without a clear reply. I know this particular domain gets alot of traffic.
The domain still sits on the Pool holding page getting lots of juicy revenue from the Yahoo partner links. Their auction process is so murky, the people their are shady. Boy will I laugh when they eventually get seriously investigated or hit with a class action suit. Chris — Yup. I tend to agree about pool. This is what u get when u do a whois on pool. We are unable to process your request at this time. The whois information is unavailable for this domain for one of the following reasons:. They Did return my phone calls and Did follow up.
Thank you Snap! Nicely done. I have a SEO site and would like to publish your article there. Naturally, with you byline and hyperlink to your site. Please let me know if this would be ok. Thank you Mimic for your comment I used to think sedo. Clearly they have behaved in a less than above-board manner. Thanks for the revelation. There are a zillion sob stories out there that go unreported. The comments are definitely good to read too.
Good job! I will stay away. Thanks for sharing this story, it really cleared up all the confusion surrounding this area for novices. I found this article by google, when searching for information of this sort, because earlier today i found an expired domain with a pr of 7.
I found this domain, when i pressed a link, and it said that the domain was epired, so i just checked the backlinks, and Wooha! I gotta have that one.
I might have missed it.. But did you ever say what the site was? Its been a while.. Anyone have any feedback on this? That being said, I have in the past used backorders from Domainut. If you are looking for guaranteed results, backorder at all services, but if your praying for a hail mary, grab a backorder at Domainut.
Expired Domains, Thanks for your response. I see that domainut. Is DomainAlert Pro an exclusive backorderer for any registrars or do they just snatch domains after the drop? Are there truly no other exclusive backordering services affiliated with some of the smaller even really small registrars that are first-come first served?
Very interesting. Please help me out with a couple of questions to see if I understand things correctly. Second, even though a registrar may have a preferred drop catcher partner it may not end up in their hands and I should register my backorder request with all the leading players in the game? Third, if I use a backorder service I am required to register the domain name, if they catch it for me, with the registrar of THEIR choosing?
Thanx FaeLLe — what I really meant to understand was that I was forced to use, for example Network Solutions, as a the registrar if SnapNames catches it for me and not a discount registrar of my own choosing — for the first year of registration. A backorder purchased at Domainut.
If the domain was registered with a different registrar that does not have an exclusive drop setup with a dropcatcher, then the backorder at domainut. There were a few, but to my knowledge all have since partnered with the dropcatchers and rent their lines now, except GD ww and BR. Manual drop catching has been outdated for some time, the only shot that you may have to manually register a domain, would be if it was a domain in a niche, that nobody would think to chase expired domains, and flew under the radar of domainers.
Domains that are usually backoreder are snapped up within tenths of a second of being released. Exclusive drops do not follow the normal drop processes, for instance, snapnames has an exclusive deal with network solutions, if a domain expires that is registered with netsol, the domain is added to an exclusive droplist at snapnames. If any interest is shown at least one backorder is placed in the domain during the next 30 days I believe it is 30 days , the domain will definitely be auctioned at snapnames.
But if the losing registrar does not have an exclusive agreement with a dropcatcher, then your best bet is to backorder the domain with every possible choice. Each dropcatcher rents lines direct connections to the central registry from multiple registrars, which they use each day to continuously ping the registry at droptime. The drop process follows a prespecified order each day, and most dropcatchers can predict the second that each domain will drop each day.
At that time, each dropcatcher makes a query with each of the rented lines for each domain, most valuable domains are caught by beating out another dropcatcher by a tenth of a second. So there is no way to know which registrar will end up registering the domain, for the dropcatcher. Often times you can get stuck with a foreign registrar that does not even have an english website. There is a mandatory 60 day wait period after registering a domain, before you can transfer it to another registrar.
Your first year of registration is covered in your backorder or auction bid purchase at most backorder services, except enom and tdnam at which both tack on an additional registration cost to your winning bid. As mentioned above you should be able to transfer the domain after you have owned it for 60 days once you unlock it. Thanks for the great article. I was just wondering, the domain that I am interested in expires Mid-March of this year… should I contact those three companies now?
Or, should I wait until the redemption period? Wow, imagine how many people have google. A week later, I changed my mind, and found all of them had been registered! The domain is mentioned seven times now on this page. Engage brain before opening mouth please. COM names. OK, so a year later, the name drops, and then maybe pool.
My objective is not a great name, or a brand-name taken, but simply a very high traffic domain name for a particular search. So what I am doing is, I go to namewinner. Best thing to do is either cancel the name, or just ignore it and let it drop. No one will buy it from you.
The name that I would like the register has been re-registered by a registrar ukreg. I tried sending them my contact information twice, but have yet to hear back from them.
Quite a good write up. Well done. This will help explain to a lot new people out there and actually give clarification to those people that might actually already know, but have some doubts. Gave me some good insight, thanks.
The only way to buy it is either from the owner or the registrar. You could try back-ordering it from anyplace such as Afternic, namewinner… Almost all registrars now offer back-ordering. You have to decide its worth, in time and value. Maybe you are better off channelling your energy into other aspects of your work. But if you read this blog post and all of these posts, you are guided. I know from experience that backordering fails most of the time.
There are too many players out there using software to snatch up dropped names, some of which barely have any reseller value. I challenge anyone to post a comment here who has used a domain registrar e. GoDaddy backordering service and won your desired domain name.
I do have a follow up question. This domain is strictly used for bringing people to view the registrars website… which would seem like they are willing to sell it…. COM name. The registrar holding the name will probably only respond to your messages if a they believe your offer is serious and b you are offering a considerable premium for the name, i. Hey, thanks for this article. I have been playing around expired domains lately and your article really helped me understand alot of the procedures involved.
You can even fax via Bluetooth if your mobile phone supports it. While faxing is indeed for dinosaurs, it does come in useful every now and again when dealing with antiquated businesses. The domain name I want was backordered by 20 people — it has just gone into auction at snapnames. Is there any strategy I can use here that might help or should I just decide my own maximum and send in my proxy?
All this is very interesting. I was looking to buy up expired domain names in order to get their linkbacks and pr and redirect it. But after reading all this, it seems to me that whichever site that you are trying to get must have a hell of alot of inbound links for it to be worth it.
Also it should not be blacklisted in the PR section. Ref to post , yes this is correct. I recently came across a clear message for future sites about WordPress, and here goes the notice:.
I would much prefer a worldwide organization totally independent , jut similar to the United Nations. More domain extensions? Otherwise, too much means less value. Think about it. Thanks in advance for your answers. Here, again me just to let you know that one of my fear is finding food for itself, have a look here:.
Your domain is yours to keep and do with as you wish. All of this should move some kind of FBI or is it just my crazy idea that some players in the domain industry are commiting crimes? Your Article really helped me , as i was unaware of the back order….. Com you can see if you wish.
Thanks for taking the time to write this out, I found it enlightening and well written! No kudos link — so will just assign you I once had a domain stolen from me by a shady registrar. I bought the. He billed me wrong for rerenewing and when I requested a credit for 1 year, he cancelled the whole payment and the domain retroactively expired.
I am addicted to browsing the dictionary domains from this site, finder. One-word popular English domains are hard to find at a bargain these days. Here is really great. My little question is, I have been after a domain for more than 5 years. Before the end of 75 days I do not know how but another domain company updates the record for another year.
This keeps happening every year. This year I was expecting to receive it but I saw that 10 days ago, another company directnic updated the record for another year. Would it helped if I had back ordered? Do I have to bid to the domain company? What else I can do? Because these guys make me follow them each year and do not let go the domain I want.
Thanks for any comments and experiences. I had no idea that it was so convoluted to get an expired domain… at least a popular one. Thanks for the details! Hi there, Sunny — Sedo is not a registrar! They offer a domain marketplace, parking program, escrow service as well as domain appraisals, a brokerage service and the option to sell websites.
Great article, Mike! Are you aware that pool. It depends. But, if a domain name you want is in demand, you can expect any of the following scenarios: The domain registrar may offer the domain name to the next person who requested for it.
You may have to wait for your turn, or you may not get it if someone ahead in the queue gets it. The Registrar may opt to auction the domain name to the highest bidder.
Remember that registrars are businesses also, so it would be for their benefit to auction off domain names in demand. You can snatch an expired domain only when it has become available by the registrar. Drop Registrars will track when the domain name you want expires and its grace period lapses. How do Drop Registrars work? Once a Drop Registrar has secured you a domain you are after, it will notify you of its success. The grace period is divided into two 2 , with a total of 75 days: The first phase is 45 days long.
This will be reinstated as soon as the domain registrar processes your renewal application. This means you need to let the grace period of the previous owner lapse before you can buy it. It might be for auction. This means you cannot buy it yet, as the registrar may have put the name on auction, and you need to take part to buy it. There is still a long list of people who may want it. This means you have to join the waiting list before you are offered the domain name.
You may find information on who has rights over a domain via whois. Log on to the Open Site Explorer to check on the stats of a domain. You may still buy the domain name, and appeal to Google to lift the ban so you can use it. How to Snatch an Expiring Domain Was this article helpful? Click to share This can help you register a trademarked domain early or allow you to snatch up a great keyword domain before anyone else does.
Want promo codes, sale updates, and useful domain tips delivered to your inbox? Sign up for our weekly Name. Want to know as soon as a New Domain is released? Use this tool Allison Chowdhury.
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