Best strategy to snap up a good two word .com domain?

It's a long time since I've looked at dropcatching services, but an acquaintance is very interested in acquiring a particular .com domain that is relevant for his business and due to be deleted in two days. Obviously I can't share the name here, but it's a pretty good, brandable two-keyword .com with a significant history. My guess is that he doesn't have much chance and it will be snapped up and appear on hugedomains.com, but I've given him a list of drop-catching services and thought of suggesting that he try Dropcatch, Snapnames and Namejet... and that a manual attempt or even running software such as Desktopcatcher is likely to be futile. Thanks in advance for any better suggestions.

 

snapnames + dropcatch regular

 

Yes, using those three services will be your best bet. But if the name is a desirable one, your friend will need to be prepared to pay more money for it at auction after the name is caught. Good brandable two-word .com names can cost several hundred dollars or even more at drop auctions.

In the future, if there is a specific name your friend is after, it would be wise to watch the name as it approaches its expiry date. If the current owner doesn't renew, you can contact them directly and offer to buy before the name becomes irretrievable. There's normally a window of 3 or 4 weeks after expiry date before the name is actually deleted.

 

I believe the consensus is that DropCatch.com has the best success rate, but yes, your friend should also try the other two as well.

DropCatch owns about 1,200 registrars which gives them the best results. (Each registrar is only able to make so many requests per second to the registry or whatever.)

I remember it took me a few days to join DropCatch, submit proof of identity etc, so you friend should try to sign up immediately.

What @Joe Nichols says above is very true, if the domain is a commercial name with a history, you can expect a dozen or more other investors to also see it and an auction will proceed.

 

Clearly DropCatch.com. As many times as I lose some backorder & I check - it's cought by DropCatch.com. However, their price is a bit high... But, if you really want to get the name - I think it's worth a shot.

 

Thanks, I hadn't had any contact with this man for several years and found out only by chance that the domain was already in pending delete status. As expected it's now in auction at Dropcatch. We'll see...

 

You have 30 days to recover (renew) the domain while in Pending Delete. This is more expensive than standard renewal (depending on registrar it's $60 - $200), but may be cheaper than using DropCatch. And it's a fixed price, a sure thing, as opposed to a Dropcatch auction.

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear - When I first was aware of this domain it was past the redemption period and in the pending delete period, i.e. it was no longer recoverable via the registry and was due to be made publicly available in 2 days. At that point, the only recourse was to attempt to snap it up when it became available, either via one of the drop catching services or manually. The newly released domain was of course snapped up by Dropcatch and as there were multiple bidders, a three day auction is now in progress.

 

Pending delete only lasts 5 days and recovery is not possible.

There's a good explanation of domain life cycle here:

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-lifecycle-2012-02-25-en

 

Here is ExpiredDomain.NET’s explanation of Pending Delete Domain Status:

“After a domain expired, it will pass through a number of states, before it gets deleted. The last state before the deletion is the Pending Delete State. If the domain reaches this, the previous owner can not renew the domain and it will be deleted after exactly 5 days! …

“There is no priority system for Domains in Pending Delete. Not for the previous owner and not for the previous Registrar. Everyone can register it when it gets finally deleted and everyone has the same chances. It only depen[d]s on the system you use to automatically register those domains. Some Backorder companies have more Registrars and with that can do more Registration attempts per second/minute. These have the best chances to actually get the domain.

“Conclusion: The Domain will definitely become available and the previous owner can't do anything anymore to keep the Domain (except backorder of course).”

https://www.expireddomains.net/article/pending-delete-domain-status-15103.html

There is a great graphic explaining the deletion life cycle on ICANN’s site:

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-lifecycle-2012-02-25-en

 

Exactly, I was referring to ICANN's pending delete status (not the "pending delete" label which some registrars misleadingly attach to domains almost as soon as they expire). I simply happened to recognise the domain as belonging to my acquaintance in a search of pending delete domains. and contacted him to see what was going on - I would certainly have advised him to pay the redemption fee if I'd seen the domain a couple of days earlier. I asked the forum about which Dropcatch services are currently the fastest as I usually only attempt manual registrations of pending delete domains, but realised I would not have a chance on this one.

 

Apologies all around for the confusion, I misread and meant to say "Redemption Period", not "Pending Delete" (which actually lasts 7 days, that's to say the domain drops on the 7th day, counting the day its status changed to Pending Delete and the day it drops).

 

Well.... I was able to get the domain back in auction (low hundreds), but not without some last-minute drama.

As @BrandableDomain mentioned (and in fairness, the DropCatch site also stresses this), validation of accounts can take up to 72 hours. However, it requires registration at Namebright and more, and it's easy to mistakenly think you have completed the process when you have validated your credit card (which requires a call-back), when in fact there's an additional requirement of submitting your government issued documents (which must be in colour). Maybe some people are asked for additional materials.

Anyway, half an hour before the auction ended, I finally managed to find someone who was eligible and willing to bid for my acquaintance, but there was an agonising couple of hours when I thought he would lose the domain despite being more than willing to pay a realistic price for it.

I know many people (myself included) are cautious about sending copies of govt.-issued ID unnecessarily... But since Dropcatch is catching such a huge proportion of lapsed domains -if you are not registered with them, you might want to consider signing up and validating the account, so that if you or people you know happen to see one of your domains in an auction ending soon, you are not shut out of the bidding.