question ARE DROPPED DOMAIN NAMES WORTHY?

[mycontrepipol]

Hello,
i wonder if there is any value buying any dropped domain names, if yes/no tell me why please. thanks.

 

[alien51]

Yes, dropped domains are worthy, since NameBright seems to be scooping every domain that i have dropped for some time, and then plastering an asking price of $3,250 on each one of them.

 

[matrigaldo]

Back in time (2007 / 2008 / 2009) i also hand-registered dropped domain names and had successfully $xxx / $x,xxx sales, mostly because in 2007 / 2008 / 2009 domaining was a smaller and "nicher" business, then it was quite easy to find valuable domains there.
Right now when i say 99% of the dropped domains (excluding the backordered one) is crap, i'm optimistic. I still spend few hours, once in a while, looking at dropping lists. When i look at .com drops, excluding hyphens and numbers, i see no sense domains, typos, grammar errors, non sense 2-3-4 words combinations. However, it's not impossible to find domains with some hidden value. Traffic is, most of the time, very hard to find out but, again, not impossible.
Months ago i hand-registered a dropped .com with two generic portoguese words used by a brazilian company advertising campaign. I'm receiving traffic (50-70 uv / day) and already received few offers on it, still too low.
I registered this domain because i was fast and clever enough to understand this expression would be quite famous in Brazil (huge and growing economy), but it happened mostly because i have been practicing domaining (not constantly among the years although) for almost 10 years now, and i'm quite fast to recognize if a domain has potential or not. Then i do summary researches and if i find some corrispondences, i proceed with the registration.

I repeat, i'm excluding backordered domains because every day we have hundreds of clear $xxx - $x,xxx (sometimes even more) valuable domain names dropping and being catched by usual services (namejet, pool, etc), ending up to $xxx - $x,xxx private auctions. We also see LLL.coms dropping some days.
But the OP question was related to hand-registering dropped domains, so i think we should focus on them more than on all the great domains being auctioned privately by all the backorder services.

 

[Chirag]

Personal Experience, bought a dropped domain name(.in) and sold it for 250 USD within 1 week.

 

[alien51]

Many of these human noobs are not really doing any kind of cash-flow reality check on their balance sheets. They don't even have a balance sheet to begin with.

What really kills these human noobs in the long run, is actually the same handreg sales they make. When they make a sale for a couple of handregs, it "encourages" them to buy more and more handregs, thinking they struck a gold mine. That's the fatal part.

Handreg sales are like marijuana or cannabis (or hashish, for some of you folks out there) . It encourages addiction and psychedelic delusions of grandeur. So you end up spending more and more money to pay for this addiction.

In the end, most of these human noobs end up in Domainer rehab looking wasted. It's a sad scene.

 

[matrigaldo]

Rarely you can find a valuable name between the dropped ones, but you have to be fast and experienced, because there are hundreds of people watching dropped lists everyday.

 

[Mads]

My 2 cents...
Just check for trademark before Reg the dropped names..
Cheers!!

 

[Mr.Natwarlal]

Personal Experience, bought a dropped domain name(.in) and sold it for 250 USD within 1 week.

Same here.. but price & extension is different..

Win-Btc.com @ $100 (0.21 BTC actually)

 

[Name Trader]

It's a very big call for a noob to pick up anything worthwhile by hand-registering after it drops and isn't re-registered by a drop-catcher.

 

[Name Trader]

99% of dropped domains are crap. The 1% are fought over by all the top drop-catchers. Do you expect a noob to stand much of a chance in catching a valuable dropped domain, unless they have highly educated themselves in the drop-catching process? Of course there will be exceptions for the educated noob. But I don't think an uneducated noob is going to make much money doing this. They are much more likely to pick up one of the 99%. The odds are stacked against them making any money at this. But it is not impossible.

 

[Hypersot]

That is your opinion matrigaldo and I respect it as you should respect my opinion that said fact is wrong.

What annoys me though, is when people try to 'force' an opinion on others.

You need to understand that, when experienced users express their opinions to new people in domaining or domaineering, they have to be very careful on what they say in case they lead the new users to a completely wrong path.

An experienced user's 'opinion' is not just an 'opinion' for the new user, it's a straight fact. So, saying 99% of domains -after backorder- are crap is a very strong thing to say and you can't possibly know the value of all those thousands of domains that drop every day that could be used in flipping, developing, parking, reselling, investing, etc.

 

[NameOmnia]

My experience is that you can still find good names among the dropped ones, register them with a coupon and resell them for profit.
If you register 100 dropped names with a 3$ coupon your total investment is 300$..it doesn't take much to make a profit out of that portfolio.

 

[Name Trader]

OK. Let me clarify something. When I say 99% of the dropping domains are crap, I'm not including all those domains which are picked up by the drop-catchers, I'm talking about the domains which are not picked up at all (say within 24 hours of dropping).

Also I'm not calling everybody a noob in this thread. But this thread was started to discuss whether or not noobs could be successful at trolling all those dropped domains (after excluding all the domains caught by drop-catchers). Personally, I think this is difficult even for an experienced domainer, and probably not the most profitable way (if you include the amount of time and effort involved) for any domainer to spend their time. I know I don't do this at all. I would rather spend my time trolling the drop-catching websites.

Also. I'm not saying it is impossible to be successful trolling all the domains which drop and not caught by the drop-catchers. But I am saying it is highly unlikely to be a profitable way for a noob to get into this business. There will always be exceptions.

NameBright/DropCatch have made this an extremely successful business over the years, but they are not noobs. And a noob cannot compete with them. No mere mortals can.

 

[NameOmnia]

P.S. Calling people " noobs " is not nice especially when it comes from someone who has been on this forum for over 8 years. The so called " noob " can't feel anything else but inferior and never good enough.

 

[Kate]

Picking good expired domains used to be easier. 10 years ago I was picking some fairly good domains, in fact many eventually sold. Not the very next day, but 5 years years later or more.
But now there is so much competition that anything that is half-decent will be picked up by somebody at some stage. Sometimes I see some auctions where money is being wasted, it is sad to see domainers fighting for the crumbs.

I hardly handreg anymore.
Of course, there are exceptions. I am not saying you won't find a gem in the rough on the occasion, but I can't see how to build a successful business model on domains that nobody else wanted.
Now my focus has shifted to ccTLDs.

 

[NameOmnia]

We are reducing this post to a mere rethorical exercise.
No one here, I think, is saying that you will find THE domain among the dropped ones but what some of us are saying is that if you register dropped names ( not the random trskkkktrsnfro,com/net/org/info clearly ) for 3$ you will resell it for at least double price even here on NP.

Scale the business model and you have a VERY sustainable business here which gives you from 30% to 100% ( and much more ) on a DAILY base so please let's not go around BSing and saying it's not doable.
The point is, in fact, whether or not someone considers it a far too time consuming activity.

I am not saying I am doing it or that is my main focus or business but it doesn't take Einstein to understand that is a very sustainable and scalable business.

 

[FusionSpy]

It all depends on the demand for picked dropped domain - some get more than one backorder ( the best ones ) so virtually there is zero to none chance of you (hand) registering it before they are caught by one of the major backorder players - but if there are no backorders for given name you have a chance and there are plenty of nice .com domains dropping each day ( without any backorder placed ) you just need to act quickly once they become available. Good luck .

 

[Rob84]

Petsitters dot com was dropped and caught for $24,500 ...

 

[DnEbook]

It's not because it is dropping, think about the quality and future of the name, names drop for various reasons

 

[.tv]

China.info was dropped recently, and caught by someone. Does this name not worth at all?

Not every dropped name is a gem, or a trash either. All depends upon what they are.

 

[Name Trader]

You will find good deal of valuable names dropping in 2 words, but you also need to be sure that whether such names have value or not, end users or not and if they are worth developing or not.

So all in all, it really depends. I just ended up buying over $10k worth domains names in the drop catching in last 1 to 2 months, however, I knew I was after good names because some of them already have offers coming in at the high xxx to low xxxx range!

Good luck.

Yeah! But do you think a noob could have the same success as you? Were these all hand-regged after they dropped?

 

[Hypersot]

I think the original subject matter for this thread was assuming the noob would be hand-regging dropped domains after they drop. I think your success is mostly because you backordered the domains you wanted to catch. There is a whole world of differences between those two scenarios. At least as big a difference as between a noob and an experienced domainer, like yourself. That is a double whammy against them being successful.

As I have said, 99% of the domains which drop are crap. And the question was whether picking up any of these domains could be a successful strategy for a noob. Well I think the answer to that question is somewhere between highly unlikely to almost impossible. If a noob wants to be successful at drop-catching, they need to employ the same kinds of strategies that you do. Participate on the drop-catching websites.

no offence stub but you really need to stop calling people noobs

and 99% of domains that drop are crap? you are 100% wrong there

 

[Soofi]

Backordered names are considered dropped names only in my opinion because they were let go by the previous owner.. So all in all the percentage is definitely more than 1%.

If someone says 99% are crap means they were never able to find gems out of the dropping lot or they gave up too early while scouring through those dropped lists.

If a domain name was once registered, there definitely was value associated with it, and thats whysomeone took pain by investing time and money to register it. There's different reason all-together that 25-30% of it could be domainer or squatting registrations.

Cheers

P.S. Not trying to argue with anyone but i feel differently about the statement made by one of the members earlier.

 

[NameOmnia]

Personally I find " hunting among dropped domains " a very easy way for an inexperienced domainer to make some money.
But I am not going to explain why....or I will have to kill you all!!!!
BTW I recently sold 2 names in the XXXX ( each ) : one was hand regd & the other was a dropping name that I bought @ GD auctions ( without competition ) for some dollars....Just saying

 

[Name Trader]

It's not just noobs who will have a hard time making money from hand-registering dropping domains. Experienced domainers will also have a problem making money from them. But experienced domainers hopefully have the knowledge to know when to pull the trigger or not. Noob is not a derogatory term. It exactly describes a beginning domainer. And is much shorter. We were all noobs, once.

Presumably these beginning domainers (ahem) are only going after the dropped domains which haven't been captured by drop-catchers because they are inexperienced and don't have the funds to be bidding on these domains in the drop-catch auctions. I can understand that, but they should understand that they are going after domains which all the experts have rejected. This is not to say they cannot find a gem, but they are very few and far between. There are examples in this thread of people making money from registering dropped domains. But this is not going to be the outcome for most beginning domainers. There will always be exceptions. But exceptions don't make a reality.

As I've said, I personally don't looked for dropped domains to hand-register because this is not a profitable use of my time. I do participate in the drop-catch auctions however, on occasions. There are cheaper ways to do this than the $69 you pay at NameJet/SnapNames, but they are mostly less reliable at capturing the domains than these two. Of course there is going to be the odd exception.

Apologies if I've offended any of the noobs out there, and even the ones I wouldn't consider noobs anymore

 

[Soofi]

Stub, appreciate your long explanatory post, however calling someone or a category of people "noob(s)" is still considered offensive by most.

And, I will agree with few others who have pointed that out in their posts earlier.