But last night (111409 @ 8:30PDT) I had about 20 minutes to kill so for fun I ran my collection of previously unavailable domain names through the GoDaddy Bulk Checker. Whenever I check for a name I add it to my list of unavailables and then about once a month check them. Occasionally something will become available. Usually by that time I can’t even remember why I was checking the name to begin with, but last night I hit pay dirt and for about 40 minutes I was domaining like it was 1999! Fascinating how you can rationalize… I knew it was an anomaly to be finding these sorts of names available but I found  myself thinking, “Well you’ve certainly let a lot of stuff drop lately, maybe these weren’t measuring up and got dropped.” Or even… “Maybe some major domainer died and his domains just dropped! And I just happened to be on GoDaddy the day they fell.” Funny! I mean, they weren’t THAT great, and of the 5000 I checked, only about a dozen were available.

Here’s what I bought, the numbers are the number of Google search results, in quotes is for exact match:
NEGATIVESCANNER.COM 105,000 for “negative scanner”
NEGATIVESCANNERS.COM    234,000 for “negative scanners”
SKIRTSFORMEN.COM  438,000 for “skirts for men”
SOLARCAMPINGLIGHTS.COM 1,190,000 for “solar camping lights”
SOLARCLOTHES.COM    12,100 for “solar clothes” -dryer 16,500 for “solar clothing”
COMPUTERRECOVERY.COM 82,100,000 for computer recovery. 66,300 for “computer recovery”
TINKERER.COM
TABLETTE.COM 2,900,000 for “tablette”
TABLETTES.COM 2,430,000 for “tablettes”
ATTITUDETSHIRTS.COM 88,700 for “attitude shirt”
SHOETOSS.COM
CATSCANNERS.COM 80,100 for “cat scanners”

Here’s what the receipt looks like.

Sure enough, about an hour after I received the order confirmation email I got the bad news (x12).

Dear John Humphrey,

The following domain name has failed to be registered:

TINKERER.COM

Error: TINKERER.COM:  cannot register – already registered

We will evaluate this error and retry the registration if appropriate.

If we are unable to successfully register the domain name, your account will be credited accordingly. Please allow one business day for the refund to be processed.

It was a real rush to register those names. Not for the feint of heart though. All in all I probably spent a couple of hours crunching names in the GoDaddy bulk checker. It wasn’t a complete waste of time because there were actually a few on my list that WERE available. FOLDABLEELECTRICSCOOTER.COM & FOLDABLEELECTRICSCOOTERS.COM and I’m happy about that.

It would be nice if GoDaddy would acknowledge their responsibility for the error with at least a token gesture – a free domain name or two for example, but I won’t keep my fingers crossed.

If you want to know what it was actually like to be domaining in 1999, check out my Eric Borgos interview.

.

If you’re an OCD domainer (OCDomainer.com available as of 10/17/08) the ‘Drop’ is very likely to become a ritual you feel compelled to perform daily. Ask me how I know. The Drop has all the ingredients necessary to inspire a full-blown obsession. It’s seductive. There’s the mystery–information is a little hard to come by. It’s full of possibility–”With my special knowledge around the topic of (DNA Gene Sequencing, Farley Torque Sprockets, Gaspers) I might discover the Dropping Gem that will catapult me into the sphere of Elite Domainers! (You picture yourself shaking Frank’s hand). Maybe you stumble upon a story of catching an expired name, like this one, (It’s a little dated, add NameJet.com to the list of back-ordering services, but still the best overview I’ve come across). Or maybe you stumble upon a site like DropDude.com or GoDrops.com – a lot of action going on here with The Drop. It could be a forum post, where you read someone nonchalantly boasting about catching ‘spareparts.com’ in The Drop for Reg. fee. “Maybe I should look into this!”.

So you start collecting details and one day you hit a goldmine of drop information like these posts from DotWeekly.com:
Domain Name Drop Times and Partner Domains, and Tips for using Redrops.com. Inspiration! Maybe this ‘insider seeming’ info will help open the gates to Domain Riches!

However you come to it, sooner or later you end up with a very long list of deleting domains on your screen. A VERY long list.

And one morning around 11am PDT you start loading your names into GoDaddy’s bulk checker 500 at a time. Harvesting the Availables you scan them for desirability. Whew! What a load of junk! Who would have registered this crap in the first place? No wonder they’re dropping. Wait, what’s that? NewportBeachPizzas.com? Hmm… would this be a good candidate for my ‘Geo Portfolio’? Let’s Reg it! Oops, gone already.

A couple of days (weeks, months) of this and you’re thinking, “There’s got to be a better way. Maybe I should look for the names I want first and only try to catch those!” So begins the search for a method to massage that list into something useful, hopefully valuable.

You get lucky and the first site you find is one of the best, LazyMate.com. Or you mess around with spreadsheets and bang your head against Excel’s raw ugliness. Maybe you have a favorite text editor that lets you search using Grep. Finally, poking around in tomorrow’s list you discover a couple of domains anybody would want. And a few dozen more that you’d have to think twice about.

Round 2. 11am PDT. GoDaddy bulk checker at the ready. And they’re off! Over the next hour you plug your list into the checker over and over waiting/hoping one of the names you covet will become available long enough for you to register it. But, unless you’re looking for some pretty obscure stuff, you don’t. Somebody else gets them. “Who’s getting these great names? It’s like Free Money falling from the sky.” Who indeed!

Inside a Drop Catcher’s War Room Command Post! War Room! Quite a bit of competition for these dropping names (and that was written in 2004). I guess I’m a little behind the curve. The Big Boys have Armies of Servers at their disposal. So what are they leaving on the table?

This takes you to the next tier of The Drop– Back-Ordering companies, who for a fee, will use their army of servers to try and grab the domain you want as it drops. They’re in competition against each other, so if you want that name you’ll register it at all of them, or at least the big three: SnapNames, NameJet, and Pool. If you’re the only bidder and your back order gets won, congratulations, you become the new owner of the domain. But if more than one person had the domain on back-order then the domain enters into auction and you may well find yourself bidding against some very deep pockets. I got lucky a few times–grabbed a domain that wasn’t on anyone else’s radar for $60. Spent more money than I wanted to a couple of times– $400 I couldn’t afford for a development domain I still have parked a year later. And got blown out of the bidding immediately a few times where a domain I thought might be under the radar had been spotted by a dozen deep-pocket domainers who bid it way out of my league.

But with so many domains dropping daily there MUST be great names falling between the cracks, so what else are the ‘little guys’ doing with The Drop?

Aha! There are scripts and an API! And DomainResearchTool (alas, PC only)– Scan large lists looking for expired domains with traffic! You can run your own version of the War Room! No more manual GoDaddy submissions. DropDude offers the Dynadot Drop Catcher. (Also check out Jason’s article on his business model, The Flip). See how it’s done live with other domainers at GoDrop’s Live Chat and Drop. I also signed up for the daily list of best-of-available-drops emailed 3 times a week from DailyDomainDrop.com.

So what are these guys catching? Good stuff? Well… I guess it depends on how you measure the results, right? If you measure it by ROI, then Jason at DropDude, using his self-hosted script method, scoring mostly Premium LLLL.nets, is probably doing pretty good. He seems to be making about 200% on an $8 name, i.e. flipping it for $20-30 without too much trouble. The other guys I mention seem to be more about building inventory than flipping. Domain inventory might turn out to have some value. Or it might not.

Here’s a short list of the kind of domains people are catching off The Drop themselves with their various methods.

DropDude
“The 4 I grabbed were, elnt.net, lghg.net, rgfc.net and thcb.net.”
“I got lucky today, picked up 8 quad premium llll.net domain names. I am already looking to unload them at my standard $9 price tag. These small sales are what helps me fund other projects like the one I started yesterday.”
“I grabbed dumpsterdivers.net yesterday and have already started it on it’s way to a money making mini-site.”

GoDrops (See also: GoDrops Grabs)
babyheadstart.com, fasthandyman.com, excellentringtones.com, 17452.com, d-w-a.net, publicsurf.com
17164.com, 30997.com, tintwindow.com, 5051.net, geobabes.com, beerscore.com, f-d-a.net, humboo.com

DailyDomainDrops (List published as available drops).
DialogueBlog.com, GeoPatrol.com, HiTechAnalyst.com, LiveSeeker.com, MemberCam.com
SatelliteEye.com, ScottsdaleEstatePlanning.com, SoCalNights.com, IsraelAccommodations.com
BritainAccommodations.com, GreatBritainAccommodations.com, GreenerClothes.com
GreenRecreation.com, YourAnchorage.com, YourProvidence.com, YourSaltLakeCity.com

And on and on.
Now, I didn’t call my blog DomainNoob for nothing. Frankly I’m not making ANY money domaining (apart from a tiny bit of Parked PPC) so what do I know? But personally, I’m sort of baffled by a lot of the attention paid to these long-tail double keyword domains, and also the whole LLLL phenomenon. I don’t really get this part of the market. I look at the auction lists and understand why those names are going for big bucks. I subscribe to Rick Latona‘s Daily Domains Newsletter, and the prices for those domains make sense. It’s just this short end of the marketplace that I’m not making any sense of.
And if these are the kinds of domains I’m going to find left over between the cracks after combing through deleting domain lists until my eyes bleed I have to ask myself–Is it really worth the trouble?
What do you think?