Observations Category

At Least They Tried…

Some drop days, you’ll see a whole roster of names dropping of a similar pattern. Today, a lot of info-<cityname>.com names are dropping. Just a couple days ago, it was eco-<countryname>.com names.

Such big plays, I wish I could see what they looked like: were they parked or developed? I’m guessing parked, but since they’ve expired, the nameservers and hosting have been changed. Sometimes I feel like I’m getting myself into this with my lot of NNNNN.com and LLLL.net… time will tell!

Where Are They Now #1

Here’s the first installment of a look back in time to see where all those watched domains have gone. Are they still parked, still being run through the ringer (kiting) or are they — gasp! – developed… Let take a look, shall we?

MyIcons.net Parked at GoDaddy. One of the worst crimes when obtaining domain names is not forwarding them to a real parking service, at the very least you should do this.

BurmaTraveller.com has a website about domains, hosting and servers… go figure.

ConcreteProfessional.com Now that’s more like it. I gave a live link because there’s actually a site there without Adsense. Looks like it’s being hosted by blog service called Moguling. I’ll have to check that out…

CoffeeCollective.com A great name that perhaps is more appealing in the .org, just a blank page (sigh).

GeorgiaVacations.net Good travel GEO despite the .net. Looks like it’s a affiliate link to VacationRentals.com, maybe I’ll look into that too…

BlueWave.com This one was either backordered with Snapnames or purchased at their public action just after it dropped. BlueWave appears to be a nice media/design company. Thumbs Up!

VampireTalk.com Could be a great forum for goth, roleplaying or gaming enthusiasts, but alas, it shows an old school Apache directory listing

ArcadeDungeon.com Doesn’t resolve at all. Pity, I thought “arcade” names were highly sought after…

Eco-Index.com Contact page right up front. Plain and simple to contact the owners directly for sales leads.

Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our little trip through time. Now get out there and develop your names!

BuyDomains Taking More Of The Drop Pie

Everyday it seems, BuyDomains is getting their hands on more premium LLLL.net on the drop. A quick look on their site shows several of them listed at a buy-it-now price of $5000. Wow! If only I had a fancy website to showcase my domains. Oh, wait… I do. Getting to work in ernest on my StandoutNames.com website now and hopfully will see some end-user sales soon.

There are a lot of shortcomings to listing your names with Afternic and SEDO, so I think it’s important to have your own portfolio presence as well…

Snapnames Takes A Break

Snapnames didn’t catch any names that I was watching today, not sure what they caught for their auctions, but yesterday they caught most of the premium dropping LLLL.net.

When Snap sleeps the other backordering services get their chance. GoDaddy is one of these. If the nameservers switch to *.domaincontrol.com, then you know a GoDaddy user has backordered the name and GD successfully caught it for them.

Note, it costs $18 without coupons to backorder a name at GoDaddy.

Snapnames on the Ball

Snapnames is back in action, drop catching anything that moves. Now you’ll have to troll their auction listings to get anything good or wait until they drop the names that don’t get any bids… Ugh! Sleepless nights ahead…

Smaller Tasters #2

Just missed a taster’s drop of a super-premium LLLL.net because my whois scanner incorrectly tagged the name as SOLD. The name was being tasted by PSI-USA, which uses NameDrive for parking. Usually if the nameservers change to *.fastpark.net, it has been purchased by a non-taster, but not in this case…

Smaller Tasters #1

I monitor a lot of names 24/7 for nameserver, registrar and status changes. Sometime an update throws you a curve. Take StopBlog.com for example which has just become available. It was dropped by Melbourne IT and changed nameservers to *.trellian.com.

Not finding any domain parking or registry services on the Trellian site, doing a little more research learned that Trellian owns Above.com and it’s on *that* site where you can sign up for domain parking. You can see an example of their parking landing pages at babysittersguide.com.

At first I didn’t think the name was being tasted, because it was registered at Moniker (just like other Trellian-owned names), but they did drop the name after 4 days…