Did you notice? All expired domains which were not grabbed by major catchers are getting registered by someone: Name Server: NS1.DR-PARKINGSERVICES.COM ICANN Registrar: IHOLDINGS.COM, INC. D/B/A DOTREGISTRAR.COM Even those numbers/hyphens/crap domains, which were never used and never had websites are pulled. Pages parked with Google Adsense for Domains. Amazing.. Smells like another dotcom boom... :|
How so? A registrar spends what? 3-5$? per registration... if a company is of any decent size they would easily have a few hundred thousand to register .coms not grab'd up. 1 good .com out of all of those would make back their entire investment.
Expired domain trafic is valuable, each domain only needs to make a about 33cents per month to pay for itself, that could be one or two clicks on adsense for domains. Matthew
Yea, that's true... but, this "someone" grabs every expired domain, even those which were never active, thus have no value of expired traffic. It seems someone just got too much money to spend... without bothering to do any filtering. Interesting to see for how long they will last with such practice.
vizzy I dont know how true this is. There definately is an active expired domain market but of the thousands of domains which get dropped daily only a small percentage get snapped up. What would be the point in snapping up a non-marketable and non-valuable domain? You wont get back the reg fee you spent on it.
I doubt this guys will get their money back... most expired domains (95% I would say) were never active. btw, it's amazing how much crap it's been registered as a domain these days. I signed up at www.whois.sc's mark alert to see what domains are people registering with the word "microsoft" in it: about 50 every day, pure crap.
I noticed this myself during last several days Find a list of expiring domains for the date, pick up any crap name. For instance, today: "11584commctrdr71.com" This name never had active website and has no references in search enginees. Yet, I bet, few days after you'll see that it is grabbed by the abovementioned "someone" Also, if you check statistics at the end of day: http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/ You'll see that the number of registered domains is higher than deleted.
Yes, but isnt that referring to newly registered domains, not just expired domains getting snapped up?
What really annoys me is the ones who buy up expired domains and then forward them to porn sites. My wife's one domain expired about two years ago and still forewards to a triple X site. Especially as she's decided she wants it back...
It would not be difficult to build a model of how many domains you would need to sell/develop each year to make money. Compared to the amounts of money that get poured into real estate developments or a new business, domains are cheap. If you look into buying a reasonably successful franchise you are probably looking at $50,000 up front and at least $150,000 of liquid assets to fund the startup. That will register a lot of domains and it's a lot easier (and more fun) to buy/sell domains or develop sites than it is to run a restaurant If you were to operate such a buying program through a self directed IRA you would be buying with pre-tax money and gains would not be taxed until you retire. For those in the 35% bracket the marginal cost of domains would be under $4.00/year. If you were running a profitable business and wanted to reduce your taxes, and/or had a retained earnings problem, I would guess buying a bunch of domains could help solve both problems. As I understand corporate taxes (very little) I think your marginal cost in that situation would be about $3.00 per domain. Finally, its not always easy to tell a garbage domain from one that has value in some niche. Aside from the fact that it is short, gb98.com doesn't make much sense. Unless you know the general contractors license in NM is called a GB98. That presents opportunity if you want to market to general contractors or the people who use them. I think the current domain scene is much like the western USA after passage of the homestead act (1860's?). The government (ICAAN) gives (very cheap) anyone who wants it the right to homestead 160 acres (a domain). Homesteaders had five years to "prove up" their claim (develop a site). For many it didn't work out and they abandoned their claims. These in turn were often bought up by others. In the western USA the first Homesteaders claimed the land with water (short, catchy names) and latecomers took what was left. If the rains were good, people lasted a few years doing dryland farming (profitable niche websites). When the rains failed and times got tough (competation from well funded, SEO driven players) many went broke and had to find something else to do.
Yes those damn iholdings people! I was trying to get a domain that was expiring and they seemed to get it before it was even available. I was checking the site's status on godaddy just about everyday, and one day it says it was pending delete, next day it says it was newly registered 3 days prior (huh?) by iholdings. I wasn't very happy. And of course they just put some useless ad crap on there. Humm, disappointing.
Ah jbw! You saved me! I just checked now, and it seems you are right, they already dropped the domain! whoohoo! I didn't even bother to check it again after I saw it had been registered. This is great
Still wasting $$ on them.. Didn't know that it's possible for a registrar to drop domain anytime so it becomes available again?
This is what I have noticed too. So many domains that are not ever used being bought up by certain companies. I just want my old competitors addresses to bring in past customers and the few good links they have. I just completed a backorder with godaddy on one, I hope I get, but for some reason I am betting they will let it go to one of these guys who buys all of them.
Let us know if you get it. I am debating about trying to back order a domain now. IiIt won't expire until next June if then. Shannon
I will try to remember to post whether or not it worked. I think godaddy is a bit shady in their business practices, and I think this may confirm that.