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Keep up with the domain name registrations you give a damn about! (5/31/08) I've just spent a week getting one back for my wife. I've owned my own name in domain form since forever. My sometimes partner in building websites for writers decided a few years ago to register my wife's name on her behalf. She snagged the name for Amy and every six months or so we lamented that we'd never gotten around to developing a decent site there. I don't know exactly what or when the last thing we said about it was, but I think it was, "Oh yeah, we need to get that transferred to you [me]..." and then something else came up. Let's just say we haven't been communicating as often or as well as we might have over the last several months. Bottom line: I should have been paying attention to AmyCortner.com myself. And when it occured to me to check, it was in "domain redemption." The name had expired less than a week earlier; the registrar would restore the registration for the original registrant (my partner) for a substantial premium of $150-200. I talked it over with Amy who agreed we didn't need to a) throw that much money at it and b) renew a lagging business relationship on such a note. I marked my calendar to try to pick up the name when it dropped. Who would want it? The .net variation was still available, so I knew no other Amy was out to capture the brand. I found the drop date and watched closely on May 28, and, sure enough, it dropped... right into someone else's hands. Thus began my introduction to domaining. Dang, thought I, now it's a link farm. S'OK, it won't get much traffic, it'll drop again eventually, and if we don't get it, we'll make do. So I registered the .net version and a less desirable .com variant just in case. This could have been a strategic blunder on my part, but I didn't know then what I know now. There were reasons to and reasons not to grab the .net domain. In retrospect, this was a dangerous show of interest, but in this case it led to the crucial clue that got me the domain back. On May 30, I got an email from "webnamesolution.com". The enterprising fellow who had captured the domain was evidently offering it to me for a nickel less than $200.00. I thought, he's checked expiring .com domains against .net registrations and identified potential markets and is contacting buyers. Sounds like a lot of work for a few dollars with a lot of speculative risk, but more power to him. My wife and I talked about it. Should we maybe just pay the man and buy back the domain and be done with it? In the end I thought not. A little research revealed that the company offering me the domain wasn't discernably related to the current registrant. I Googled some names and dodgy-looking details and discovered a thread some years old with a valuable clue. In that archived case, the company offering a domain it didn't own was in fact offering a domain on auction at Snapnames.com. Maybe my "enterprising fellow" was working a much less speculative business model: get a committment for $200, then with the money in hand, buy the domain at auction and pocket the difference. I checked for Amy's name on Snapnames. Sure enough -- it was being auctioned and it was due to close in 18 hours. Minimum bid: $9. It hadn't been backordered, or else the auction would not be open to the public at large. Sorry webnamesolution.com, but we don't need the middle man. I registered with Snapnames and prepared to bid for it myself. In one sense, the transparency of the auction concerned me: I could place a bid, but then the name would stand out like a sore thumb. On a list of tens of thousands of names with zero bidders, that one would be flagged as being of interest to someone. if I were an enterprising domain speculator, I'd take that as a flashing buy signal. But lack of transparency at Snapnames worried me, too -- I trust the proxy bidding system at eBay, having used it for years, but could I trust the proxy bidding here? Snapnames would know my high bid. Why wouldn't they simply shill me up to my high bid? (This stuff makes me a little paranoid, can you tell?) OK. So I decided to place my order late with a low maximum. The auction would be extended by five minutes if a bid --real or shill-- went in during the last five minutes, and that would give me a chance to reconsider and bid more, or not, as the mood and my state of suspicion struck me. I rearranged our weekend to be at the computer for the auction close. With six minutes to go, I bid $9 with a high bid of $28. I figured Snapnames wouldn't find it worth their time and effort to milk me for so few bucks. If they did, I wouldn't be out much. The short notice would give speculators less time to react and the low price wouldn't signal a badly-wanted domain name. The outcome: dull and routine, just the way I hoped.
I won the auction as the only bidder for $9. Either I was thinking
undeserved and unkind thoughts about Snapnames or I stayed way below
the radar of worthwhile graft. But it sure was a truckload of manure to wade through and a lot of time wasted. The real lessson here is that I need to triple check the domains I keep for others.
:: back to the slow blog ::
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