Domain Owl

For domainers looking to pick up a few great domain deals here is a typical analysis of the Pool hotlist and the drop evaluation technique. The Pool list is published via email from Pool.com daily in anticipation of recipient interest in bidding on names at the Pool.com domain name auctions held daily online. These names drop or are put up for sale by domainer sellers daily.

Deletion lists can be addicting because they show what other domainers have been up to. Drop lists show what domain names other domainers have decided are either not worth their while to renew, or what domains they have not gotten around to renewing. As many a domain name fish story will start, the “renewal email got lost in the shuffle’ incidence can happen very easily indeed.

Unless a domainer already has a site invested for a given trademark, trademark names are best avoided. One reason they are in the drop to begin with is that the owner has either gotten a “Cease and Desist” letter from the copyright owner or fears one will arrive with any further development of the name. Trademark names are a risk. The domain Amazondiscounts.net is an example of a possible trademark name.

Short names are always good to review because they may come very close to names you already own or may be acronyms for longer names you already own. This begets “type-in” traffic domainers want. A name in tomorrow’s Pool list, like r0b.net, could be good for domain name owners and administrators named Rob or those with burglary aspirations, or those with acronyms totaling R-O-B.

A name for sale like cashmonk.com might be a very good site name for an affiliate or cash raising site or a website with strategems for building multi level marketing or popup revenues online. Keywords like “cash” and “money” can be competitive bidding arenas, so domainers should have their checkbooks ready for active bidding. Money words are genuine traffic attractors because so many people are looking for information about money markets, investing, budgets and so forth online all the time.

Hyphenates are an acquired taste. Some domainers stem from the “old school” of domaining where almost any hyphenate was a detractor for original name value. Symbols were estimated as harder for web users to remember, type in, or use. Hyphenates always stand the risk of building type-in traffic for the name owner of the same domain name without the hyphen.

A name like debt-elimination.com has “money” name appeal but a hyphenate detractor element to it. A domain name for sale at Pool.com like rugged-notebooks has a tech designation but a hyphenate detractor dynamic as well. Likely buyers for this name should be those with other names with “notebook” in them for traffic continuation or site keyword mirroring and linking.

A deleting name like foreclosedlists.com reflects conflicting factors within a qualified domain name up for auction. This is a real estate name, and a partial money name, but also a list name, and can be considered too long by some purist domain name investors. But the likelihood of searches for this type of site might be estimated to be high enough to realize value and profit for affiliate and traffic visits.

Prohomes.com follows much of the same logic, except it can be argued to more valuable because it is much shorter to type in than foreclosedlists.com. The homes market for domain names may also be seen as a longer term viable keyword investment than the “foreclosure” arena of recent financially related real estate activity. Prohomes.com could be an excellent long term domain “flipping” investment waiting for the right corporate buyer.

Foodcult.com and fakeplants.com make amusing ideas for websites if the bidding price can be kept within the probable window of return on domain investment. The domainer should have an idea what assembling a directory and a number of articles should cost and a link building strategy for the site.

Further on down the list, On99.com might make a good site if the number 99 has some relevance to another data item or price level, such as 99 cents or 99 dollars. Numerical domains can be tricky, but a good example of a site is gymnastics2010.com, which has up to the minute gymnastics articles for this current year. Date domains can be worthwhile to acquire and develop in their current “date year”.

Download the full Pool.com list is available at the pool website, and searching out special domain names or names not featured on the list is a domainer’s stock in trade. Expect higher bidding for short names, and money names, and manage bids so cascading auctions don’t rob the domainer of time to rebid. Finally, resist the urge to get in a bidding war or rally to a name that builds interest simply as an auction win to acquire.

Safe and happy drop listing, everyone!

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Skimming the drop lists is one of the first ways a newb domainer can teach themselves the ropes. Drop lists are available for free and can be perused using whatever script or program seeking search the domainer can devise. Drop lists and deletions lists come from expiring domains whose owners have elected not to renew them.

Drop names also come from registrars who have elected not to retain the names any longer. Registrars have the right to retain the name for new registration after it has passed its last pending renewal period. But some registrars may not want to include the name in its database. The load on the servers may already be too taxing. Or the registrar may simply only want to support paid active registered names.

The domainers’  task is to ferret out which marketable names occur on the drop list and which they might bid on and get at a reasonable price. Some names may seem like they would be very competitive, but for that day the other bidders might be overcommitted or doing something else. Marking out which names you want to bid on and which values you want to assign your highest big sharpens the domaining instinct.

The competitive bidding inside the drop lists day by day is a sport of domainer kings. Keeping abreast of the list for chosen keywords or subject names or even niche terms can pay off with great picks. but the raw data can be too much for some domainers to handle daily. So the drop lists can be downloaded in five day advances for the next five rolling days of drop name auctions.

Many domainers specialize in drop scanning and bird dogging for bargain names in the deletions bin. They develop customers who want certain niche names like typos or sports names, adult names or short names. These domain name buyers create another layer in the domain name game.

User names in auctions become familiar, especially among drop list customers. A history of other bidders can also be seen in some cases. That way domainers know what kind of heavy hitters they are bidding against. Or they can assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of another domainer bidder and decide on their bidding strategy for a certain domain name based on those things.

Identifying keyword terms to your choice is a good idea before scanning the drop lists. Choosing certain names or words that you want to build up into a concentration inside your domain name portfolio can also make this task easier. If domainers are not careful, they will go on bidding and buying sprees for domain names without consolidating a strategic market plan first.

Continuing deletion auctions show names which have been auctioned up into a froth of new bidding wars from their “deceased” status. Often a domain owner will put their domain name into the drop lists to see which avid offers they can get. Or they simply have too many names to handle at present. One domainer’s drop can be another domainer’s mountain of gold.

Expiring names can also be accidental “drops” from the owners who are too busy to scan their expiration emails. They can also be packs of domain names very similar to each other being jettisoned in groups by weary former owners. Knowing what you are looking for in advance, or setting a ceiling on auction bids will save time and resources when bidding on drop list auctions.

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