LLLL.com COUNTDOWN!

[VURG]

COUNTDOWN COMPLETE!

NO MORE 4 LETTER DOMAIN AVAILABLE TO REGISTER! ​

_______________________________________________________________

Since early 2005, I have been investing/trading with 4 letter domain names. I started this thread due to the large variation in opinions on how many four letter domains there are available. When I started, I heard a range on viewpoints ranging from 200,000 down to nothing. What I learned that most people did not know how many were available.

Sources of Error for the estimates in number of available 4 letter domains include:

Traffic Testers: These are people who buy thousands of domains at a time to see if the domains are being visited and only keep the small percentage of domains that have regular visitors and cancel their orders for the domains that don't have a regular flow of visitors.

Inefficient ways of making estimates: There are over 450 thousand possible 4-Letter domains. There are short cuts that people can take in estimating the number that been registered that don't include all domains. One short cut that is often taken is for somebody to search through a list of previously available 4 letter names that they purchased (or got for free) and assume that all the names that are not on that list are registered.

People quoting old information:The variation in the number available changes all the time. Estimates that are months old are very different than up to date estimates.

People manipulating information for a sale:It definately is true that incorrect information on the available number of 4-letter domains can intensionally be manipulated to sell 4-letter domains at a higher price. Typically the lack of supply tends to motivate people to pay higher prices.

As a 4-letter domain trader, I believe that the information of how many 4-letter domains there are is extremely valuable for two main reasons. Firstly, my pricing of my names is subject to the amount of work it requires for customer to find for similar name. Secondly, if I want to increase my stock of 4-letter names than the information of how many there are at reg fee prices is essential.

I decided to update this thread when the number of available 4-letter domains dropped to the following levels:
22% Remaining - 25th January 2006
19% Remaining - 31st March 2006
16% Remaining - 29th June 2006
13% Remaining - 1st August 2006
10% Remaining - 15th February 2007 (crossed without traffic testing early April)
9% Remaining - 26th February 2007 (crossed without traffic testing early May)
8% Remaining - 2nd March 2007 (crossed without traffic testing in June)
7% Remaining - 21st March 2007 (crossed without traffic testing early July)
6% Remaining - 3rd July 2007(crossed without traffic testing some time in July)
5% Remaining - 1st August 2007(crossed without traffic testing August 11)
4% Remaining - 14th August 2007(crossed late August)
3% Remaining - 15th September 2007(crossed In September)
2% Remaining - 14th October 2007
1% Remaining - 31st October 2007
0% Remaining - 2nd November - COUNTDOWN COMPLETE!

Although, the number of available domains does sometime rise straight after it drops due to traffic testing and people dropping their domains, I don't consider it worth mentioning unless the rise is as significant as a 3% rise in the number of available domains.

Types of Four Letter Domains that have run out include:
- ALL OF THEM!

Since I started this thread important event about four letter domains that are worth mentioning happenned:

1: Late March/Early April 2006 there was a significant shift in the market for brandable (fake words) 4-letter domains and they started selling at significantly higher prices and the market for the names has been a lot more active ever since.

2: In July 2006, a namepros member 3par launched DYYO.com as a site committed to educating people about 4 letter domains. This is an excellent resource for those who are interested in 4 letter domain names.

3: In early February 2007. All the 4 letter domains starting with the letter A ran out.

4: wasistdas won QQNQ.COM, PCZV.COM & IQKE.COM for the competition for predicting when the 4 Letter domains would run out
_______________________________________________________________
Initial Post
Less than 23% of the 4 letter domain names are unregistered. I thought I'd try to keep this thread updated every time I discover another 1% reduction. I am now routinely checking the percentage of unregisted 4 letter domains.

 

[floatingworld]

if it is thought that the point has been reached that any 4L.com achieves at least reg fee, then it is a 1-way bet and the rest will be progressively hoovered up, particularly if the current godaddy loophole is used.

 

[edwinfelix]

Every day more LLLL.com are being registered. Right now garbage LLLL domains are $5, a relatively decent one's ~$10, and the price is steadily rising.

 

[Malaysia]

yeah i did not take into account those that have drop.. about 50 are dropped daily as i can see.. but the list of 60k was scanned in one night ... so its the unregged remaind of taht day itself..

 

[VURG]

19% Remaining!!

19% REMAINING

I checked today and 19% of the 4 letter domains are remaining. That's a drop of 5% in three months. (~23000) I have also noticed that my domains are selling faster now. I think that there has been a big shift in opinions of 4 letter domains in the past month.

I checked back on previous comments and I think there was around 33% remaining 10 months ago.

NEXT UPDATE AT 16% REMAINING!

 

[Malaysia]

where did u check?
i check there is only 13% remaining

 

[floatingworld]

Every day more LLLL.com are being registered. Right now garbage LLLL domains are $5, a relatively decent one's ~$10, and the price is steadily rising.

the garbage needs to clear $10 per name before there is a total mop up or there is a 3 month consistent rise in the minimum price reached to spark off a final feeding frenzy which might even be suddenly executed overnight.

 

[VURG]

I generated a random list of 2595 domains and I used a bulk search tool to find how many were available. Attached is the random list of domains that I checked for availability and the list of domains that were available.

There were 494 which came up available. If there was 13% remaining the number available would be around 340.

Malaysia, why don't you check if there are any in the list of the 494 that are not on your list and also check their availability. If I'm right there should be more than 100.

 

[MCDomains]

Did You Know?

I have 18.7% remaining LLLL.com's from my large random pool scans.

Over the last few weeks I have them disappearing @ a rate of 0.06% a day.

 

[fonzie_007]

I assume then that more are being regged than dropping?

 

[MCDomains]

I assume then that more are being regged than dropping?

Exactly.

The percentage rate of disappearing LLLL.com's takes into account the drops.

 

[edwinfelix]

I scanned the all premium letter LLLL.com's yesterday, none is left.

Good news for LLLL.com holders.

 

[fonzie_007]

FYI: I am trying to post some better LLLL that are dropping/available. See my thread here: http://www.namepros.com/available-domain-names/183416-expiring-available-domains-llll-more-coms.html

 

[primacomputer]

Doing a completely un-random scan of the all 456,976 possibilities in the com zone file I find 358,658 active LLLL names. This means there are about 98,318 that are either unregistered, pending delete, etc. No doubt there are also a handful of names that are active but simply don't have name servers.

I did the same tally about a year ago and there were about 140,000 that were not active. I would love to jump up and down and celebrate how this is proof that my crap 4Ls are sky-rocketing in value. Unfortunately I realise that the one reason there are less available is because so many registrars are drop squatting for so much longer. At any rate, even if we do remove 40,000 names from the pool every year we are still two years away from seeing them all gone.

But don't let that get you down. 4Ls are not this years random 3Cs. We don't need to wait for domainers to snap them all up to obtain value through some perverted definition of scarcity. 4Ls have real world end user potential. 4Ls are selling for $500+ every day. 4Ls composed entirely of “bad” letters are selling as well.

My advice is to stop worrying so much about when you'll be able to flog a name for $50 to another domainer and concentrate selling them to end users for ten time that right now.

 

[XDuncan]

Starting in ascending order, first 5K LLLL.com's are taken.

 

[cache]

the fewer llll left the more likely some people would want to reg them so that they don't miss the gold, this will accelerate the countdown.

 

[floatingworld]

http://www.avuw.com/llll_com.asp

Have fun

now not so easy to find a name without u,k,x.y,z,j,w, in it

 

[VURG]

16% Remaining

I checked today and found less than 16% remaining. Todays estimate was approximately 68000. This is a big drop since last week as last weeks estimate of 80000. In the last 6 months that I have been monitoring the number of unregistered domain, there has been an approximate drop of 40000.

View 6 months monitoring

I'll update this thread when I see a drop below the 13% remaining barrier.

I've attached a graph showing the monitoring.

 

[3par]

Current standing should be around 78k. What you see are the temperory dip caused by big 4 testing traffic:

today's outstanding:
belgium domain: 3684
capitoldomains: 2263
domaindoorman: 1817
nameking: 488

During 0623 and 0627, almost all 4 letter started with a/b/c/d are all gone!
number starting
198 a
344 b
280 c
333 d

 

[VURG]

I think I'm getting used to these fluctuations due to traffic testing. Personally, I think it's a waste of time with the remaining LLLL.com domains. Thanks for the info!

 

[accent]

There certainly is a change of tone in this thread from the posts six months ago. Perhaps the nay sayers have had their say and moved on, perhaps there has been a general change of opinion. Comments?

I do want to answer the post from back then that recommended investors buy one $3,000 .com instead of regging 100 LLLL.com for 3 -4 years. The answer, for me, is that I simply do not have the knowledge to choose a true quality .com in that range and know that I have bought it at a good price. And that is with over a year of serious study of this market. Perhaps I could, with some effort, get a three letter .com in that price range, but then I would basically be in the same market.

This reflects one of the strongest advantages to the LLLL.com, CCC.com and net and LLL.gtld domains - they are shallow water for those new to the field. They will continue to be so and if there is a large influx of new investors, something that just might happen, then the short domain field is likely to be very popular for this reason.

I have seen several posts on forums from people wondering if it is time to buy out the LLLL.coms. The assumption is that they had the money. It would be a half million dollar investment per year, a small move for a lot of people, and one with fairly good odds of paying off. Those who post their plans in forums are likely not going to do it, but one morning soon we just might find them all gone.

 

[VURG]

13% Remaining

My estimate for today was 12.9% remaining and this is the first time that the 13% barrier has been crossed since I started checking. I checked against DYYO.com which had 13.6% and so my estimates are relatively close to 3par. While there has been a lot of traffic testing in recent weeks, the numbers have been consistently below 16% for quite a while now.

Thanks 3par for a brilliant resource for 4 letter domain statistics with dyyo.com.

 

[GreenGambler]

Well one thing is for sure, more are being registered than dropped.

I jumped in and reg'd 20 or so, most all pronouncable. I think it's a good investment and a safe bet with expectations of holding the names for a year or three.

 

[sin]

So, everyone has different (%)s of whats remaining, what do you think they will be worth when 1% exists?

 

[floatingworld]

I do want to answer the post from back then that recommended investors buy one $3,000 .com instead of regging 100 LLLL.com for 3 -4 years.

dabbling with the 100 4Ls will give you more fun.......

 

[fleshas]

me love LLLL.com .. But i much more love LLL.com ))