Pedro B

Expired Domain Names

I have been collecting domain names for about a year and a half now.  It’s still just a hobby for me as I don’t generally spend a lot of money on any particular domain names but I do enjoy it and I love when I pickup a good expired domain name.

There are a ton of different systems available for picking up expiring domain names.

Pool.com

One place I’ve used to pickup expired domains is Pool.com.  Pool is, by far, the most reliable system I have used to pickup an expiring domain.  Pool uses a system that is much more likely to acquire a domain of your choosing but it’s also one of the more expensive systems available.  Pool charges a minimum of $60 if it captures your domain.  The money is taken from your credit card once Pool has verified that it caught the domain for you but there is a catch.

Unlike other systems that pickup expiring domains, Pool allows multiple users to backorder the same domain name.  This means that just because Pool acquires a domain you backordered, that doesn’t necessarily mean you will own it.  If a domain that Pool acquires has been backordered by more than one of its users it automatically goes into auction.  These Pool auctions can get out of hand sometimes because if you don’t know how many other Pool users have backordered your domain name and, obviously, you don’t know what the current max bid is of other users.  An auction goes on for three days once a domain is secured by Pool.  Pool will email you every time you are outbid and to prevent a user outbidding in the final seconds, Pool will not allow an auction to end if there is a bid in the last five minutes.  The auction just keeps goind until there has not been a bid in the last five minutes.

Snapnames

Snapnames is similar to Pool in that it costs $60 to aqcuire an expired domain name through their system.  The difference is the auction process.  It is much easier to know what your competing against and guess what the ultimate auction price will be.  Snapnames is owned by Oversee.net.  Snapnames has had a deal with Network Solutions for years now and has some sort of affiliation with Moniker.

Snapnames is not as reliable as Pool is but if a domain you are looking to backorder is registered with Network Solutions then there is a good shot that Snapnames will have first crack at backordering it.

Enom

I have never used Enom to be honest so I can’t give a good account of their service, reliability or success rate.  I am very annoyed by Enom and only have a few domains registered with them.  Enom just seems so backward.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy uses a pretty basic backorder system that only allows one user at a time to backorder a domain name.  They are the cheapest system to use but the least successful.  Godaddy charges $18.95 per backorder and that must be paid upfront, however, if the GoDaddy system is unable to capture the domain name, you receive a credit towards a future backorder.

One service I will be discussing in further detail in an upcoming post is Recommission.  I peruse Recommission’s daily list of expiring dictionary domain names often and will show you how to get the most out of it.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

Microsoft has been extra busy the last few days with a patch for a vulnerability that affected almost any version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer out there.  The next security update by Microsoft was not to be released until the middle of January, so you know this was top priority.

It’s estimated that the number of computers that were affected by the security flaw could be in the millions.

To get the update, simply go to Start, then All Programs, then Microsoft Updates in your menu and click “Check for Updates” in the browser that opens.  Many computers are set to run these updates automatically, so yours may have already done so.

After you install the patch, check your malware/spyware/antivirus program to make sure there isn’t anything left over on your computer.  If you want to read on what it is Microsoft patched up, you can check out this Microsoft Knowledge Base Entry.