Domain name auctions used to be just a typically infamous business where people makes a lot of money by reselling them. As the internet and web2.0 grow rapidly in the past 10 years, bidding for domain names is becoming increasingly competitive.
We have been having success in our career in web development which includes investing in expired domain names. We would like to share our experiences in expired domain names investment in this post.
Different types of expired domain names
Expired domain names are basically categorized into pre-release domain names (or often known as TDNAM = The Domain Name Aftermark by Godaddy), Closeout domain names and Dropping domain names.
Pre-release domain names are domains you can bid on and will be sold by its registrar to the highest bidder. Closeout domain names are domains that were available for bidding, but since no one has made a bid on it, it is available as the “Buy Now” purchase option usually with a relatively cheap price. Dropping domains names are domain that no one bid on and no one buying after certain limited period of time and will be scheduled for deletion. Anyone can register these dropping domain names like how you register a new domain name after they have been deleted by their registrars.
Where you can bid or buy an expired domain names
There are several websites where you can bid on expired domain names. Godaddy TDNAM, snapnames and NameJet are among the most famous domain auction providers. We use Godaddy because they have the most domain names in the world. We won’t go into very detail technical steps on how to purchase an expired domain names. We will only roughly explain how we bid, and win our domains names in the past. You will have to learn them by experience.
We recommend you to first try on Godaddy TDNAM auction before looking for other auction websites such as snapnames (usually with higher starting price and very premium domain names). Because Godaddy has the most domain names in the world, their domain names start at a relatively lower price (from as low as $10). You will also have a vast varieties of expired domain names to choose from in Godaddy Auction.
Go to auctions.godaddy.com. You will see a list of most actively bidding expired domain names. These are of course just a tiny portion of available domain names. Everyday there will be an average of 40k expired domain names added to their database. Start by playing around with the searches available in Godaddy auction website itself. Before you can start to bid on any domain name, you will have to register an account, and subscribe to be a Godaddy Auction member for $4.99 a year. You will have to pay for this membership before you can start bidding.
However, Godaddy search is not that useful if you are looking for a domain with good history background such as a good number of quality backlinks. To search for these quality expired domain names, we recommend http://www.expireddomains.net/. They have a wide range of search filters for SEO information about a domain name.
After you have found a decent one that is worth investing on, head on to godaddy.com and locate the domain name. You can then start bidding on them. A tip about bidding an expired domain names: bid only in the last 5 minutes. That’s when the battle starts to get hot.