I received an email from someone with an interesting plan. It stated he/she was going to notify “All” dot com owners with expiring domains that their domain was about to expire and be possibly be sold for a million dollars. I thought it was a joke, and it might be, but whoever it is had thought the plan out. He/she said they already scraped the expiring domains to create their own sheets and he could easily create a script using domaintools api to send out an email to each and every one. I asked why?
They said they were tired of the big companies making millions off the “little people”. He also said that the subject line of a million dollars in the email would grab more attention that a general email from the registrars and that’s why he thought his email would get the owner’s attention. I imagine this email was in response to the recent move of Godaddy moving all their expired domains into privacy to prevent people from frontrunning the auctions and trying to buy the domains in advance. Why this person wants to put so much time and effort into helping people is beyond me. Sounds like they are more interested in hurting the registrars than helping people. It also sounded like they could use their skills for better economic use but everyone has a different driver.
Not sure if I’d go that far, however- what this guy should do is threaten GD auctions with this unless they stop the practice of auctioning off names that arent in their possession. Happened to me for the 647832467283th time today and quite honestly, its a complete and utter waste of my time and a useless 6 day hold of my hard earned capital. Unfortuantely, I want expired domain names, so I go back. But they HAVE to be stopped. This practice HAS to stop, in the name of maximizing profit for GD on an expired name. Stop it GD, shame on you already. First acquire the name, then auction it off, so that at the end of the day, I’m bidding on something I know I will own once I put my $ up. I mean, seriously?
You’re also allowing people to get free real time appraisals on their names at the cost and frustration of your paying customers. It’s simply wrong and sick shit. Hope they read this too. This is coming from a “VIP” client with a dedicated phone person and an executive account. Fuckin A man……
Majority are renewed by domain owners, not sure what they mean by a free valuation, as most hold out for end users, and not auction pricing. Yes, you can get a sense of what some generic keywords go for, some even suprise. Larger domains are not getting caught up in some of these newbie price wars. It was bound to happen, whatever this is a business, and godaddy is on top, and others are coming for marketshare.