How to Snatch an Expiring Domain

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.

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.

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)

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

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.<p>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.

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.<p>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! <a href="http://www.sarahpin.com/2008/07/19/recent-researches-why-yahoo-private-domain-registration-is-not-private/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sarahpin.com/2008/07/19/recent-researches-why-yah...</a> 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

Are things better these days? The way pool.com operates seems extremely seedy.<p>The name is/was newsvine.com they got acquired by MSNBC a year later, so I guess the name was worth it.<p>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>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><p>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, <i>always</i> 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).<p>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.<p>That said, with ICAAN fast asleep, what choice do we have ...

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