The Domain Afterlife - Expiring Domains & Drop Catching » General Information

My “how to guide” on drop catching expired domains

admin — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:31:40 +0000

I have been catching dropping domains for a few years now. It’s often times I see others going through the same struggles I did & this topic takes years to understand. There’s a lot of myths floating around the forums.

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!

Apple Computer Announces iPad Tablet Today

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:14:48 +0000

Apple’s Steve Jobs today unveiled the iPad. iPad is Apple’s latest revolutionary take on what a Tablet PC should be like. Jobs states that the new tablet is best for reading books, watching video & playing games.

One of the things that caught my eye was how the tablet doesn’t have a keyboard. You simply use the screen as a touchpad. Very much similar to how the iphone works via a touchpad screen.

While competitiors are rushing to keep up, Apple’s ipad is truly innovative. Job’s panned the idea of merging the newton with a tablet PC. The iphone, ipod touch and the new ipad are all combinations of both ideas.

The Apple iPad tablet price will start around $499 USD. It depends if you purchase the ipad bundled with a wireless carrier. There’s also talk about offering premium TV channel / movie broadcasts for about $30 USD per month extra.

Similar products such as the kindle, smart phones, netbooks and other technologies on the horizon will need to act & think fast to keep up these news. Apple being an innovator has set a new pace for the tablet community.

Experts doubt that Apple will fail with this new ipad. Even if Apple does fail, it will open the road to introduce more products that will trailblaze what the ipad started.

I am going after these drops tomorrow

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 04:07:59 +0000

These two domains are dropping tomorrow & I am going to try & chase.

jacket.com
stubby.us

Stubby.us doesn’t concern me, but Jacket.com is nice. I am sure many have backordered this domain, but since the drop is public & anyone can grab it, I’m going to try. I’m sure I won’t grab it. But if I do, it would be awesome.

This is one of those “weird” domains that every drop catcher complains about. The whois is fuzzy & so is the origin of the domain. The current registrar is Tucows which will be releasing the name real soon. The major forums would tell you to backorder at NameJet, Snap & Pool.

However, note this.. Here is a copy of the whois:

Domain Name: JACKET.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
Referral URL: http://domainhelp.opensrs.net
Name Server: DNS1.IN2NET.COM
Name Server: DNS2.IN2NET.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 13-oct-2009
Creation Date: 31-jul-1997
Expiration Date: 30-jul-2011

Ok, so according to dnmeter.com, Jacket.com will drop around 1:51PM CST.

Tucows has a status of: clientTransferProhibited which should be pending delete.

I’ll make sure to keep an eye on it, but the domain will probably drop. It has to since Verisign has it on it’s drop list for tomorrow.

A Win/Win Alternative To Sell Your Domain Names

admin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:40:17 +0000

As many of my blog readers know, I launched a realtime domain auction platform that rocked everyone’s socks off. The platform started off as: DNKO. DNKO.COM meant it’s time to fight for a domain & the last one standing that didn’t get knocked out – got the domain. This was spread over 60 seconds.

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.

TasteDrop.com Reaches End Of Life

admin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:57:03 +0000

Today, I decided to pull the plug on the website: TasteDrop.com.

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.

Understanding The Dynadot Beta API System

admin — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:28:48 +0000

Dynadot.com has a powerful API system in place. It is currently in Beta mode – but to me, it’s in production mode. I have been using their API for over three years now. It’s the most forgiving API in my opinion – meaning you can run it 24×7 & they don’t care.

To those of you that are new drop catching, A registrar API system is made so you can send domain reistration attempts via a script or program you write. I write a few different versions of API software for Dynadot. Basically this software serves to let me carry on about my day without having to sit in front of the computer.

If you spend over $500 a year at Dynadot, you get a free API key. If you spend more than $500 across multiple accounts, then each has an API key. Dynadot allows you to create multiple accounts without any penalty whatsoever.

The Dynadot API is very simple. It uses HTTP POST or GET methods & can even run from your browser to catch drops. If you have white listed your IP – copy & paste the following to your web browser, you’ll see what I mean:

https://api.dynadot.com/api.html?version=1.0&key=##API KEY##&command=register&domain=mydomain.com&duration=1

Whitelist your IP address & Replace ##API KEY## with your API key.

Hit enter & the Dynadot API will attempt to instantly grab the domain: “mydomain.com” & register it for 1 year. Feel free to change the variables around.

Dynadot’s API is basically a gateway to Verisign’s internal commands. Verisign is the official handler of all .com & .net domains (other extensions too). Drop catchers like Snapnames, Namejet, Pool & ALL partner & preferred registars use the same type of “Live” connection to Verisign.com.

So can you beat snapnames & pool with Dynadot’s API? Not likely. However, there have been a couple times that I have succeeded with a grab.

In this post at the forum NamePros Dynadot’s API & my software secured the domain: bamn.net. It was later revealed that a backorder for the same name was put in at GoDaddy & Snapnames.

More recent examples include: Wealthier.us & Suffixes.net. Which both had backorders put in at various registrars & Dynadot’s API caught the name with my software.

Had To Disable Some Of My Domaining Websites

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:21:20 +0000

Sorry folks,

As some of you may have noticed, I had to disable some of my domaining websites. The favorites to go down were:

DNMeter.com & AntiqueDrops.com

The time & effort to develop these tools became exhaustive. The last somewhat “nice remark” I received about DNMeter was: that it was 30 minutes “off” – I do believe I added a disclaimer & others reinforced it by admitting that sometimes Verisign takes a break or delays even speeds up the drop order pointer for pending deletes becoming available for hand reg.

Perhaps there will be a better service in the works that combines the above.

Coming Out Of The Wood Work.. Back To Drop Catching

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:09:27 +0000

Wow, I am just amazed at how this blog of mine keeps reminding me.. Hey Dan, you have to update me.. lol.

Hey, but you can’t say I didn’t warn ya Things have been busy at my fulltime job. They require a domainer to step back from domaining & give them undivided attention. The payback is great. You get the job done, things work & everyone is happy.

I would never domain at work & have to wake up hours before my real job & setup my drop catching scripts.

Then during my lunch, I have to resist looking up what I did or didn’t catch. It’s always a good ride home from work nonetheless.. Even if I didn’t catch squat.

Now that things have leveled off at work, I will be back to my regular drop catching. I am about to take a dive into 57,271 drops dropping in 12 hrs approx. Good thing I can filter the gems.

Good luck in your drop catching!