The Drop Business.

[Lasher]

Roughly how long has the drop business as it stands today been active? I have to think that over time the quality of domain names dropping is just going to get lower and lower because all the best names are being held from previous drops? For the more experience domain marketers here, what do you think would be an appropriate timeframe to expect that?

I would imagine that once we reach a point where good drops are rare that will be a good time for all of us holding domains -- all the money currently going into snap/pool auctions etc will start to move into existing domain sales?

 

[Kate]

The drop game has been going on for some time. I believe companies like Snapnames were already established by 2000 or so. And even before there were clever people like Ultsearch quietly grabbing the good names.
The drop game has evolved for sure.
Last year I was still able to manually register drops (at least I got one third of the names on my watchlist, for reg fee). Now of course everything is grabbed and 'tasted' by myriads of drop registrars.
There are still nice names dropping but there is competition and I see people literally throwing indecent amounts of money on names that are so-so.
It would be good to see the money spent at the drop auctions moving into the purchase of existing domains (mine for example :hehe: )
Anyway the best names are long gone. If you want to acquire a premium name you must be prepared to pay $$$$$$$$$$
The best names will not drop anyway, except in particular cases like deceased person or a dead company. So I don't really think the quality of the drops is going to decrease.

There are more than 50 millions names active under the .com TLD today, growing at a fast pace. The .com namespace is very crowded but since everyone wants/needs .com the scarcity of resources is driving prices up.
Thousands of domains get regged everyday because any existing or emerging company needs to have an Internet presence (domain) just to exist on the marketplace. Therefore ccTLDs will also be gaining ground (and value) too along .com.
IMO prices will continue to soar, just like real estate. Just imagine that tv.com was sold 7.5K back in 1995 :yell:

 

[Jo]

Hasn't there been a lot of really good domains dropping in the past year? Maybe because when regging first started in 1995/1996 the people regged for 10 years? How many people still have the same email address as they had 10 years ago? Did a lot of the people on the growing WWW even think that domain names would increase so much in value? It never crossed my mind back then, the information on regging names/domains wasn't as readily available as it is now. It wasn't until around 1998/99 that I learned that as an individual I could register names...and I tried...and they were gone. Mind you, I didn't search for any generics, just family names and chat nicknames.

 

[SpareDomains]

you will always have dropping domains due to death, bad domain management, bad email address on whois, etc... I do agree that the premium domains dropping percentage will go down once they are in the hands of someone who knows how to manage or keep track of a large portfolio, due to the recent sales reports and mass media coverage surrounding the domain industry this is no longer a hobby and definitely a solid business investment if you can lock down some keepers, if you walk out of your house tomorrow and get hit by a bus does anyone else know what domains you own, your idea of their value and how to manage them should something happen to you? not a bad idea to clue someone in that you trust on how to take over in a emergency if you are sitting on some gems to avoid your own portfolio from dropping someday, you will also see less drops because domain registrars themselves are renewing the expiring domains, quite a few of the domains I acquire for customers after doing a little research I find that the actual owner is the registrar themselves, they like to use whois protection to hide this but in the end it is all exposed godaddy>tdnam enom>clubdrop etc.... registars themselves see the value in aftermarket sales and are tapping into this business angle themselves.

 

[Lasher]

Yeah the drop business has gone crazy. Yesterday I picked a list of 20 domains to watch and see who won them then visited the webpages of the registrars listed. Most of them do not even have a service online where you could actually register a domains as a customer. One of them (udomainname.com) had actually taken the trouble to put up a front-end for domain name registration and then set the new registration price is $100,000 for a .com or a .net

Seems that for us little guys who came to the market late you have to do some smart name spinning to find those rare gems not yet taken and develop the names you get vs just waiting for that $20,000 Sedo sale.