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.

 

[X_GuardiaN_X]

So basically in about a year there will be a giant 4 letter .com frenzy? :P

 

[VURG]

1% changes at this point may seem trivial to many people and so I will increase the updates to 3% changes. I’ll update the thread at 19%, 16% and 13% and the last 10%, I’ll update 1% at a time.

 

[floatingworld]

I think it's hard to imagine a costant growth of this kind of domain registration, due to the obvious large amount of them who drops every day, and also for the fact that some really bad letters combination are not interesting at all (i.e. something like jhxk.com or yqhk.com), unless somebody will think to register them all in bulk..
At the moment the only valuable names are those pronunciable and brandable I guess, and obviously the meaningful ones.

yqhk = young queens of Hong Kong, so you never know there might be a buyer there!...there are still some hidden gems around worth checking out...(maybe not that one....)

 

[VURG]

Here is what I have observed on my estimates of 4 letter domains

Late December ~ 110K
Early Jan (around 13th) ~ 107K
Mid Jan ~ 104K
26th Jan ~ 97K
2nd Feb ~ 110K
9th Feb ~ 111K

In the past 6 weeks it looks as though more people have dropped 4 letter domains than purchased them. It appears that this countdown may take quite a while. I would recommend anyone considering purchasing 4 letter domains to be very selective at the moment. Personally, I am thinking that I'd wait until there is less than 8% (36500) remaining before considering purchasing random 4 letter domains. I only buy what I think I can sell and I can't sell random letters at the moment.

Something else that people may find interesting. The most commonly regged letters in four letter domains are S, C and A. Below is a the most common letters regged.
1st. SCA
2nd. DEMIT
3rd. BLON

 

[fonzie_007]

Helpful post VURG. Rep added

 

[Aaron D.]

The problem is a lot of the remaining LLLL domains are junk eg XQXZ.

 

[netzilla]

I agree Aaron but some of them are still brandable. Think of all the well know names out there that are made up of just a few letters.

 

[XDuncan]

Any updates?

 

[floatingworld]

earlier this month a 4L reached NP$350 in the np auction which really pissed-off the seller who expected more...also about average 4Ls are getting just above reg fee in the afternic bazaar, so no great riches just yet.......

 

[XDuncan]

Like how many are left?

 

[iggy]

1% changes at this point may seem trivial to many people and so I will increase the updates to 3% changes. I’ll update the thread at 19%, 16% and 13% and the last 10%, I’ll update 1% at a time.

firebeastm, I don't know what your talking about. I only know of 26 letters.

I have a list of over 300-500 domains and most of them are 4 letter domains and a lot are still open. I am selling the list if any of you want it, please PM me with a offer for the list with over 300-500 domains. Thank you and Good luck to all.

 

[harpo]

remember now that these LLLL.coms were all regged and gone at one point in time i think during the dot com rush if someone could elaborate on this topic would be moist interesting.........................
but were not regged again so they all dropped......

 

[floatingworld]

vurg...it is for sure not clear that the numbers are systematically going down as there as a high drop-out rate going against the reg stream as you have pointed out...there are still a few worth regging though

 

[kev]

there are plenty of good ones left that are pronouncable and brandable
I always browse the expired list and pull out a few gems. yikz.com was my best ever find closely followed by jecx.com

Go to justdropped.com and you get to few 4 letter domains dropped in the last 4 hours.

e.g.

icxy.com is available. i was going to register it but i dont have enough dosh. Please add rep if you reg this name

 

[Malaysia]

hahah only 60k are left
i scanned them as at march 23rd 2006.. fulllist left 60k LLLL.coms at this rate its gonna be gone soon within this year or next

 

[edwinfelix]

lol :D :D
I just sold one yesterday for $50, and it's not even one of my best LLLLs.

 

[XDuncan]

hahah only 60k are left
i scanned them as at march 23rd 2006.. fulllist left 60k LLLL.coms at this rate its gonna be gone soon within this year or next

--

They will be gone in 3 months, becuase once they get under 50, random folks will buy an LLLL.com to say they own one.

 

[VURG]

vurg...it is for sure not clear that the numbers are systematically going down as there as a high drop-out rate going against the reg stream as you have pointed out...there are still a few worth regging though

I think that there is a downward trend but the numbers seem to be fluctuating plus or minus 1.5% of the average trend. There is more than 60000 unregisterd LLLL.com domains. My estimate for today is 94431. I now have a page where I put up my weekly estimates. (VISIT PAGE) If you visit my page you can see that the estimates go down more often than they go up. (7 out of 10 times.)

I think that there may be somebody buying 4 letter domains that start with the letter A. I only found 1 of the 98 that I checked today unregistered.

Does somebody have a list of the unregistered 4 letter domains starting with the letter A?

I will aim to make a comment when I see the domains cross the 19% remaining barrier but I still haven't seen that happen yet.

 

[cache]

so from your data, it looks like the un-reg llll.com did come down. But the rate is pretty small, it will take not just one year, but could be many years.

One question: how did you estimate it to be 90K while Malaysia claimed the full list to be 60K?

I think that there is a downward trend but the numbers seem to be fluctuating plus or minus 1.5% of the average trend. There is more than 60000 unregisterd LLLL.com domains. My estimate for today is 94431. I now have a page where I put up my weekly estimates. (VISIT PAGE) If you visit my page you can see that the estimates go down more often than they go up. (7 out of 10 times.)

I think that there may be somebody buying 4 letter domains that start with the letter A. I only found 1 of the 98 that I checked today unregistered.

Does somebody have a list of the unregistered 4 letter domains starting with the letter A?

I will aim to make a comment when I see the domains cross the 19% remaining barrier but I still haven't seen that happen yet.

 

[VURG]

I use a sampling procedure testing a stratified sample of 2600 potential domain names.

I have seen a large variety of answers for determining the number of unregistered domains and so I stick to my method of sampling. It is quick and it doesn't have the risks associated with looking at all 456956 possibilities. Being a statistician by trade, I am very confident that my sampling procedure gives a relatively accurate estimate.

I am guessing that Malaysia has an accurate list of 60000 unregistered domains but has missed out on all the domains that have dropped since the initial list was generated (I don't actually know why there is a difference in our estimates). I do know that there is a lot that can go wrong when trying to generate an accurate up to date list of unregistered domains of all the domains and that by the time you have finished the list, some on the list are registered.

(aaxy.com currently unregistered. This is a good one!)

 

[XDuncan]

(aaxy.com currently unregistered. This is a good one!)

--

Thanks a ton -- I regged it. BTW the first 4,000 A combo names are now regged.

THERE ARE ONLY 543 ALLL.COM'S LEFT.

COMPLETE LIST HERE: http://www.furca.com/4letter.txt

 

[kev]

hi there,

do you have the script for this for sale?

Thanks

 

[ilcesco]

hi there,

do you have the script for this for sale?

Thanks

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

Have fun

 

[cache]

a lot of names from that list are regged already.

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

Have fun

 

[ilcesco]

a lot of names from that list are regged already.

I know.. that list is about 2 months old.. but it's a good starting point.