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It's crunch time in Registrar networking and drop catchers are doing whatever they can to attract the best and brightest registrars to their team.

The list of incentives goes on and on: signing bonuses, interest free loans, college tuition for children, and of course bids options. Some drop catchers are even guaranteeing the starting price of their WLS slot when it goes public to attract new registrars.

"The WLS sector has taken on a professional sports model," says ICANN Jr., managing partner with "Shadow" ICANN http://www.shadowicann.org, a law firm in Canada that handles ICANN related cases. "Now every ICANN registrars wants a signing bonus."

When asked about availability of registry connection for their drop service, most drop catchers claim that they don't have a problem. "Registries don't ask for bonuses or anything extra," says one exec at Dibs Registrar http://www.dibsregistrar.com. "It's amazing, you know," says Mr. Dibs. "I'm going to pound it no less"
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But the truth of the matter is that promising business and impressive drop catchers only go so far. With nearly 20,000 expired domains going unregistered in the registry database every day, according to Snapanag http://www.snapanag.org, a snap wanna be drop service, drop catchers are stepping up to the negotiating table armed with lots of cash, options, and other incentives.

One prime example is Pool Table http://www.pooltable.org, a drop catcher in Lala Land which plans to go out of bussiness in the near future .
In order to lure Direct India http://www.direcindia.com, a shadow ICANN registrar , Pool table came up with aggressive incentives.

Pool table offered Direct India a $200,000 interest free loan to buy or renovate their office, a $120,000 signing bonus, and a $60,000 server relocation package on top of their $300,000 annual business revenue, according to the S1 filed with "Shadow" ICANN. In addition, Pool Table agreed to pay up to $400,000 to help Direct India close out bids options agreements with Snapanag. And of course the most valuable part of the package was the 1.6 million shares in bids options in Pool Table.

While Direct India's package is on the high end of the spectrum, even lower level registrars have seen compensation packages double and triple in the last two months, according to Ronnie, general manager and president of the Domain Name Journal http://domainnamejournal.com, a registrar recruiting firm. Registrars are getting $50,000 bonuses, drop business revenue close to $100,000 and anywhere from 30,000 to 200,000 shares in bids, say Ronnie.

It seems like an awful lot of money to spend on registrars, but Ronnie says it's worth it. "If you are taking registrar
connection from a competitor like snapanag.org you're not only adding a resource to your pool but you're hurting the competition," she says. "And a lot of VCs and boards backing these drop catchers are willing to open up the coffers to do that."
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Ronnie says other incentives have included college tuition for children and guarantees that WLS slots prices will attain certain levels in the market.

The explosive demand for qualified registrars, especially in drop catching service, has rewarded recruiters, too. Ronnie claims her fees have increased as much as 50 percent in the past two months, receiving $20,000 to $35,000 for placing a registrar with a drop catcher. She says 40 registrars are each pulling in hundreds of thousands in revenue.

"It's a whole new vocabulary," says attorney Greenber, founder of "Shadow" ICANN. "I was in litigation court the other day and instead of talking about unfair ICANN registry agreement, the lawyers were discussing the allocation of WLS
slots. It's just different now."