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.
How to Snatch an Expiring Domain
41–50 of 51 posts
Re: How to Snatch an Expiring Domain
#42Another 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…
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 fi…
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.
Re: How to Snatch an Expiring Domain
#43Do 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
Re: How to Snatch an Expiring Domain
#44When 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)
I've ran into losing domain names before when searching on GoDaddy, what are some small WHOIS providers that you trust?
You can always use the command line whois client, which is provider agnostic.
Re: How to Snatch an Expiring Domain
#45Re: How to Snatch an Expiring Domain
#46Do 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.
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)
Re: How to Snatch an Expiring Domain
#47This 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.
Re: How to Snatch an Expiring Domain
#48In 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.
Re: How to Snatch an Expiring Domain
#49When 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)
I've ran into losing domain names before when searching on GoDaddy, what are some small WHOIS providers that you trust?
I don't know how much to trust them but I use http://who.is because it's memorable.
Re: How to Snatch an Expiring Domain
#50Do 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 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!