I remeber my first days of drop catching used to be really FUN! What happened to those days? They seem lost in the chaos going on around us non-stop! As an insight to domainers, I declare we start the first ever public domain name casino! Not for fast cash, but winner takes a prize.

You may think – wait, did this guy just say: casino? NO, sorry I’m thinking more along the lines of PRIZES & It can become a ritual daily, weekly or monthly prize giveaway for domainers who participate in scheduled games for Prizes. The winner takes the prize. Perfect examples are: the winner of a hold ‘em tournament wins a LLL.com, 2nd place chip leader gets a poor LLL.com or a lesser grade domain, 3rd place basically gets a pat on the back for helping out eliminate the other hold ‘em players etc.. You get the picture.

In the past, I developed flash apps for lotto users & feel that instant gratification domainers need a pat on the back from our normal working habits. I miss the days when scouring the domain forums for the best deals was really FUN! I miss how I could pull the wool over a seller or buyer’s eyes. Well not really trick, but I mean consolidate nice deals in a friendly atmosphere.

I would tend to say that the auctions, drops & blogs are getting a bit overwhelming & it would be nice to simply mingle in a domain casino type lounge with your domaining buddies while playing a legit game of whatever.

In an effort, I have designed these mocks as illustration of what I had in mind:

Here’s a working lotto numbers generator that would work to dish out expiring domain name lists:

http://www.expron.com/lotto/

This can easily aggregate drop lists based on delimiters you can set within the game. If you’re into lotto numbers – give it a try & see what happens. The engine is ready and will help your odds.

Here’s a visual representation of what a domain name casino could look like:

I admit that the visual can be a bit aggressive, but I believe the instant gratification users may feel will make this or something similar the next domaining “idea”.

Have fun chasing drops!

First off, the meaning of drop catching, drop catcher is a term to label the art of catching an expired domain down to the millisecond. It really is milliseconds for the valuable drops. I’ll assume that you already know how to calculate when a domain will drop & become available for purchase at any registrar. If you need a source for lists, I recommend estibot or dnmeter.com.

This guide covers my methods & how I perceive the entire system works. It’s how I understand it & what it does for me. I may stand corrected on some topics, but overall this guide should get the point across.

This guide will not work for the best drops. When a domain like a LLL.COM drops, there will generally be hundreds of watchers / bidders via backorder auctions. Snapnames, Pool & Namejet are notorious for promoting good drops to gather more backorders. This guide will work for domains of medium to lesser quality. For example, many two word domains & other variants go under the radar as dropped & get picked up by drop catchers that have good scanning tools. I have flipped many of these for good money. I have also caught hundreds of LLLL.com & the like. Sometimes you just get lucky too. Math & stats play a role & after you do something and follow a routine for a while, you will get some percent of success.

Let’s get started – So you’ve found a good domain in the drop lists. Great! Now what?

You’ll probably be at stage 1. At this stage, you’re learning the drop times, learning how to weed out the good drops & etc. You may have a domain registrar that you enjoy purchasing domains from. Well here’s my notes on the registrars I consider my favorite:

GoDaddy doesn’t allow drop catching to my knowledge. Their bulk checkout has a captcha that makes it slow to checkout. Their intentions are for you to backorder a domain through their service.
Moniker – Has an API system & the manual checkout pages seem to catch some drops.
Dynadot - Has an API system & the manual checkout pages seem to catch some drops.
Onlinenic – Has an API system & the manual checkout pages DO NOT catch some drops for drop catchers. It’s too slow. The API is faster
Directi – As per their TOS, drop catching is not allowed
Name.com - Is working on an API & the checkout pages catch some drops.
ENOM – Is selfish & has recently blocked API access for drop catching .com & net during drop time.

That’s just to name a small handful registrars. I tend to use ALL of the above and more at the same time. You don’t have to. I have excessive funds at some registrars that haven’t caught anything for a while. It depends how serious you are & the resources you choose to utilize.

Stage 2

You’ll find some success trying to hand reg domains – but will get beaten because others are a wee bit faster than you. You’ll also find yourself spending a good amount of time researching & trying to drop catch, but maybe at the wrong time.

Stage 3

After burning myself out manually refreshing checkout pages at various registry’s using laptops & desktop computers, I decided to macro my drop catching. A macro is a script. Every computer has macros pre built into the operating system & products like microsoft office have help tutorials. You can see my tutorial on making drop catching software here.

You’ll find that automation will soon become your best friend. While you’re doing other things, you can have robot scripts doing the drop catching work for you.

Stage 4

You’ll notice that the way domains drop – they drop in a certain order. This is where you start to target your drop catching since you have an upper advantage. You learn that a single domain stands a better chance than 50 in a bulk checkout.

Stage 5

Since there’s a scanning solution in place, a drop order & catching automation – you’re basically at the furthest point you can get without becoming your own Registrar which costs over $20,000 USD per year & requires you to have serious cash $xxx,xxx+ in a “trust bank fund” in case something happens since you’re liable & a registrar.

To rephrase Phase 2 requires a lot of checkout page refreshes & whois checks – It will be common to have 2 browser windows or computers side by side because one will be trying to purchase domains while the other checks the whois status of your drops.

In a nutshell, that’s the stages I went through. I’d like to also address things I’ve found to be true out of personal experience.

1.) Domains that have the most backorders require backorder services to put more emphasis on that domain. That’s why LLL.com’s that drop always get picked up by the backorder services. They will literally exhaust all their server connections on one domain. If a good name drops & there’s 0 backorders, it will remain available for minutes. I have seen this.

2.) There is a registrar drop pool. From my understanding, this pool works in batches & it gives registrars a chance to make special calls to verisign. No API can touch this pool & usually the backorder services will compete for the premium drops. This pool supposedly runs seconds – 1 minute ahead of the drop list. I don’t really believe this is in place. During a comparison of a LLL.NET drop, I examined it to drop just like any other domain drop in order – as per dnmeter.com.

3.) Partner registrars will attempt to catch domains for the backorder systems. To my understanding, when the domain drops, it’s available to anyone – including you! Don’t let this term scare you. They usually bump heads & if you are after a domain, you can occasionally beat out the partner registrars.

4.) Dog eat dog – I have seen trickery going on. From whois changes to the registrar renew a valuable drop while in pending delete. You may notice a drop quickly change hands often. Pretty much anything goes.

5.) Yes, it is possible to beat godaddy, snapnames, pool & namejet at drop catching. The problem is that not enough of us do it to actually put them out of business.

A myth that is floating around:

Myth – You can never compete with snapnames, pool or namejet. They use thousands of connections. While this is true, the central registry can only accept x connections per registry & everyone still holds a chance. I believe they serialize the connections which then determines who got the domain.

Last time I checked, Snapnames employed between 400 – 600 registrars that they owned. That number is said to have grown to about 900

Advice – If you plan to drop catch, it would not be wise to backorder the domains you target. Unless if very valuable & you have the cash to spend, If you backorder domains, it will draw attention to your picks & you will add on more competition.

Advice – Stealth mode & common sense play a huge role in this game.

Advice – Instead of trying to catch 25 or 50 domains at once daily, learn the pending delete drop order. Go after only one domain at a time. After it drops, switch flow to the next drop.

Here’s a real customer reply I recieved from one of my drop catching titles:

Hi Dan,

I’m happy with the results. I beat oversee domain management today.

Peter

Common sense helps a lot too. I’ve seen drop catchers catch dirt & flip domains while others silently grab the pot of gold. It will take a good understanding of which domains are valuable. Then attempt to compare who grabbed the domains you wanted & learn on how they grabbed the names to make your system better.

Here’s a break down of drop times collection I have:

.com 1pm cst 1-2 hours drop window
.net 1pm cst 1-2 hours drop window
.us 1pm cst 10 – 20 mins drop window
.org 9am cst 30 mins drop window
.info 3am cst – haven’t verified in over 1 year
.in 2pm cst 1-2 min drop window
.co.in 2pm cst 1-2 min drop window
.ws 9:30am cst – haven’t verified in over 1 year
.mobi 9:30pm cst – drop lasts 2 mins

Good luck drop catching!

mixeurs.com
minuscula.com
vittoni.com
transferred.us

Nothing special & I’m not particular about: transferred.us as the US extension has been stinking in my opinion lately. Also Mixeurs.com, the chance of making it big would require a lot of non-usa traffic & the small traffic from the US, probably won’t help someone with a “mixer” of some sort.

Just sharing my list, I won’t get mad if you manage to hand reg some, but at least give me some credit. I always go into drop catching thinking I ain’t gonna get Jack. A lot of the time, I do catch stuff, store it & then a buyer comes along.

It’s a beautiful feeling to connect with the right end user & supply what their online business thrives – which is usually the right domain. For what they’re trying to do & you helped them out.

vfpy.com
uqzj.com
pjze.com
uodq.com
dzje.com

Have fun & if there’s an interest for these lists, I will post more.

As I’ve mentioned before, the LLLL.com buyout is starting to look a little shaky. However, I can’t imagine the above domains will remain available for more than a few hours or so. They usually get picked up pretty quickly.

Let’s try to cram over a hundred users into a single domain auction event & see who wins or chats the loudest.

Since then, the platform has evolved. It has found a new home at Epik.com. You can visit the link here: http://auctions.epik.com While Epik is a newer commodity to the domain industry, I feel my auction technology landed in a good hands to not only auction your domains DNKO style, but also help you park & develop your domains. Epik is really shooting to be every domainer’s “best friend”.

Since my development of DNKO, Epik decided to twist things up & instead of a “knockout theme” they are proactively collaborating with me and approaching auctions with a more subtle movement. Instead of forcing you to liquidate all the domains in your portfolio, why not take it easy? If you have a good domain for sale, the buyers will come. If there are bidders, the 60 second technology timer reset is ready to draw it out until it’s over.

I am compelled to find another service that offers the same – cross compatible across any browser without any downloads or slow meltdowns. Thus far, it is free to submit your domains & rest assured that your domains submissions will get noticed & traffic! Who knows, you may even sell a bunch of your domains for more than you thought they’re worth.

This blog post was mainly to update my followers about DNKO & the Epik acquisition. I am still pro-actively developing the Epik domain auction and feel the team is great at – Epik. If you have any suggestions or gripes with the auction technology, let myself or Rob Monster from epik know. We can’t make this possible without your domaining help & feedback.

Who says everyone MUST type into their browser & visit a domain in ASCII that looks like: GoodyTwoShoes.com?

If English is not your native language – then why would you be inclined to type things like “myDomain.com” only it your browser? Fact is that the world is enormous with all kinds of web surfers from all parts of the world. Yeah, I may be leaking info out – but there are great, awesome & profitable IDN’s that monetize well. People actually type or get translated & directed to an IDN domain which lights up their browser. Either way, they will sooner or later reach an IDN domain – that translates to their language.

For those of you who are new to the term, an IDN domain stands for Internationalized domain. It is not understandable in ASCII – english letters. IDN’s are in PUNY CODE translations to ASCII.

Puny code domains resemble english text like this (from tomorrow’s drop list):

XN–MGB5CK75C.COM
XN–HQ1B35E1TKTVH95A.COM
XN–OO0BR9BN5CRYJRUILZK.COM
XN–HQ1BR4KG3A4C850A.COM
XN–HQ1BR4KG3A4C850A.NET
XN–DCKF2A6A0O2BS7EC7FC5732KBJ2F.COM
XN–CCK7AW6MXB.NET
XN–CCK7AW6MXB.COM
XN–O39A94X9TK72A.NET
XN–BJ1BP4K1XHEPP.COM
XN–910B38BB3F.COM
XN–MF0BP4IW7AG03A92V.COM

IDN’s always start with “XN–” each domain can actually mean creative things in various languages. I just plucked out the first 10 or so to drop in that order tomorrow. It gives you an understanding of what an IDN is.

I took a visit by Verisign since they have a very useful IDN Conversion Tool. However it lacks the dictionary translation lists.

I am not claiming to be an expert on this topic by any means. Just reporting the success various users are achieving with IDN domain drop catching & my software. It must mean something good.

Various ways you can find buyers for your IDN’s include:

1.) Forums (reseller market)
2.) End User Contact (putting the domain to use)
3.) It’s just that good & seeked for (lucky you for finding the gem)
4.) Others in the game may contact you who were also chasing that IDN.

Please do your research. I have not gotten involved with IDN’s much myself. I wish I had the time to translate each drop into various language codes. Maybe I will soon, you never know. I will report what I catch & flip if I join the fun.

PS – I may have gotten the terms messed up & etc.. If so, sorry – again I am not an expert IDN drop catcher.

The main reason is I need to use that dedicated server for some of my other projects. Tt was a free service that many used & while I hate to take down a tool you may have used, no one really cared for the service anymore.

Unless there is a huge overflow to this post, the service will remain down until further notice. If you need expiring domain lists, I recommend you check with Pool, Snap & Namejet.

Namejet.com offers clean pending delete lists free of charge.

If you are interested in purchasing or leasing the TasteDrop.com script, please contact me. You can leave me a message here & I will reply asap. The script is in PHP & MySQL. It’s a custom script that fetches the lists into the database & then offers unique sort abilities.

This domain is nice if you’re into 4 Letter .com’s. Back in 2006 & 2007, the whois stated that the asking price was $100,000.

Times are changing however & I am seeing many LLLL.com’s sitting available. I think Reece (the owner of LLLL.com) is doing the right thing by trying to sell his domain now. As more & more LLLL.com’s are re-dropping & NOT getting picked up, the value of LLLL.com is diminishing.

Back in 2002, all the LLLL.com’s were bought out. Then in 2003 – 2004 a good percent were available again. As history repeats it self – again in late 2007 the LLLL.com buyout occurred again. Now in 2009 we’re seeing more & more LLLL.com’s available for hand reg again.

Definitely an cool domain & with the trends, a lot of visitors to come. A lot of domainers visit the site / blog frequently. Although the blog doesn’t specialize in LLLL.com topics – it is a central hub domainers frequent regulary.

If you’re interested, you should offer a bid at NP – or contact Reece himself.

I got news today that Dynadot is an official registrar for the popular domain extension: .IN & .CO.IN.

The prices are incredible as well! Only $3.99 for bulk pricing & $4.99 for regular pricing.

This is a good move for Dynadot & Kudos to the success the domain registrations will bring not to mention long term custy’s (customers).

I have been drop catching .in’s for a number of years & understand that the drop window only lasts a few minutes. It will be intriguing how popular registries like: Whiz.in, name.com & Enom.com take the plunge to the impact.

I am really pleased to announce that drop catching software sales have been sky rocketing. I really owe it to word of mouth & in part to this blog.

From my point of view, it’s really cool that I can develop tools that you find useful & make you money. While snapnames may be an army of their own, us private drop catchers are the Delta Force in pending delete drop catching.

It’s cool to interact with drop catchers from all around the world through the software I developed & keep making it better for a proactive party of drop catchers.