Thursday, October 15, 2009

Grabbing an expiring web domain -- about as easy and transparent a process as you'd imagine...

So I'm entertaining the idea of starting up a commercial blog -- you know, the kind with ads and such. The domain name for it was something that came to me in a flash of inspiration, and a quick search for it revealed that it was available! That is, almost...

It's actually in the "pending delete" phase of a typical URL's life-cycle, as defined here:

The particular domain I'm after is registered with GoDaddy.com, and for less than $20 CAD I'm able to backorder it -- which actually means next to nothing, because:

  1. GoDaddy puts all their expired domains up for auction, whether they've been backordered or not;
  2. There's a very good chance that GoDaddy won't even catch the domain when it's released.

As with domain-squatting there's big business in gobbling up domain names as they expire. So just for the privilege of bidding on the URL I want I'm backordering it with three other domain-catching services:

  1. NameJet
  2. Pool.com
  3. SnapNames

And once the name gets grabbed by whomever, the bidding begins.

At least I know in advance what I'm in for, thanks to this helpful forum thread... And if you're in the same boat now you will too!

Posted via web from Andrew Currie on Posterous