Feedback on an App im developing (Domain Aquisitions)
 

Hey everyone,

So here's the scoop. Right now, I've been contracted to produce an application that basically camps registered domains, waiting for them to drop, then immediately registers the domain once it drops. It's entirely autonomous. You basically type the domain name in and it's yours (after it drops, of course.) This usually occurs within seconds. (0.93 seconds minimum, ~10seconds maximum depending on your connection).

Snapnames offers a similar service to this, but they take their cut. Also, when snapnames registers a domain it first goes to a public auction where you're stuck bidding against other opportunistic domain hunters. This can be a drag and can be the difference between 9 dollars and 90 dollars for a typo domain, for instance.

All the billing is automatic. You pay beforehand. And literally, you can sleep while the thing is running and wakeup to find the domains you've acquired.

So here's my question: In addition to the guys I'm developing this for, does anyone else have an interest in this kind of software? Do you think it'd be marketable above and beyond the contract im fulfilling now?

email me if you want to talk about it: domains (at) subsane.net
ICQ: 6437680

tried to add you to icq, but the # above wasn't found. hit me up icq: 52741957


first thoughts at what you are trying to do:


- there are tasting sites like http://www.domainpal.com that allows you to taste a domain for lke $0.20 per domain for 4 days

- what you are trying to do is offered by every registrar that hammers away on the day the domain name clears all holds. the problem you have is having enough registrar sockets to connect to, to get your orders out. Alot of people did this thing where snapnames would lease out their NS socket connections(s). NS seems to also have cut back on the # of socket connections per registrar. To play this game, you need to have alot of registrars rolled up under you so you can get the most number of socket connections. I know of one guy that has 20 of them for sale.

- major domain tasters like snapnames have super fast connections that will beat most people out for the "good" expired domains


I have a tool that i am building that i go back 5 days, after the domain tasters have thrown back domains because they didn't see major traffic. lookup the expire domains in my database of linking relationships to see who was linking to the domain, respider those domains to find who is current, thenlookup the Google Pagerank for the live referring domains and create a report to suggest which domains might be good to acquire that if you put similar content on the site as the linking sites (and re-create the linking structure - through my data i can say what the landing page URL should be), then you have a chance of getting domains that can get natural SE rankings.



Fight the salt and pepper!

Keep in mind the partnerships. Names with specific registrars automatically go to Namejet, or Snapnames, or Pool, etc.. they don't go through the normal drop process. You won't have any access to that large pool of the best names really.

what he said

the good names never actually drop anymore

Do any domains "drop" any more? don't ALL domains get instantly snapped up?

not from my observations.. i'm currently downloading the .com zone file each day and keeping track of what domains are dropping. i started this on may 1st.. so by augst 1st, that will be 90 days for the redemption period and then like 4-5 days for the delete/hold period where i will be able to know one day in advance what should be dropping. (there are many sources that you can subscribe to that offer this.. i am working off my own database).

Once my data loading gets to the point where i know what will really drop the next day, i can do the some statistical analysis to see how many actually get take on that day.


Fight the patience!

What's dropping each day?
http://www.expire.biz/

Most domains do get snapped up immediately by snapnames or enom for example, who will hold onto it for a few days while tasting or offering it to others at auction, etc.. before letting it go.

Check for yourself. Take a name like 0190-700300.com for example. Registered for tasting by Snapnames. Same with 123paixnidia.com. Try any of them!

most domains go through the auction process first and if they make it through that they are often offered for sale as a last ditch effort to squeeze any value out of them before they would ever actually drop

don't the original registrars have first dibs on tasting before the other ones would even have a chance to snap?

if a domain actually drops completely, you can be pretty sure that it is essentially worthless

not true.. just means it didn't have alot of existing traffic when tasted.

there are alots of expired domains that may not have traffic, but they have good linking domains

back on may 11th drops, i found a domain that used to be an indian software development company. they had a link from gnu.org (PR9) for indian software development companies.

if that domain was acquired, put up content for an indian software development company, it would probably rank high in google once it was live.

this is the area that i am playing in.

:2 cents:


Fight the one man's trash is another man's treasure!

was that a total drop? like you were able to go into any registrar and register the name fresh? it surprises me that a domain with a pr9 link (which means it itself would have had a pretty decent pr I would expect) would have passed through all the tasting and pending delete etc with nobody noticing it, seems really unlikely to me these days, but I guess it is possible (although becoming less and less so I think)

It's already been done.

there are gems out there ofc.
But with a simple script you won't have any chance if somebody else whats that domain.

welcome to 1998. it's nice to have you here.

Thanks for all the constructive feedback, guys. I appreciate it. And you're probably right. This is definitely a recycled concept but I just thought i'd ask to see if anyone was interested.

I really appreciate the insight from FightThisPatent in regards to how you're managing your domain-hunting. I wish you luck and hope you gets some good ones :)

i stopped running the processing temporarily, (and yes, total drop), there are lots of expired gems for each day that the tasters miss.

the reason being, is when a site goes down and then expires, its been down for 90+ days. this means that google will probably have dropped them from the index, so all those sites that try to find "link popularity" will not see it.

If the referring website was getting traffic and people were clicking through to the expired domain, then yes, the tasters would have kept them.

I am looking for situations where there is little to no traffic, but the referring site has high GPR, such that you re-create the site with the right content, get it indexed, and start collecting the SE traffic

I will get back to finishing it up soon, and until i prove out the business model for such a service, i'll let some GFYers play with it :)

My service would work well with deef-thp, because once you find the gem, you need to register it.


Fight the synergy!