Blog Atha Cliath

I have a few domain names that I registered a couple of months ago when I was thinking about getting involved in ‘Domaining’. This is speculating in domain names, which basically involves finding and registering good domain names and re-selling them for a profit.

The most valuable domain names are usually .coms. The next after that are .net and the rest are pretty far behind that. It is pretty safe to say that all of the good, valuable .com domain names are already taken (along with most of the worthless ones as well).

But sometimes someone will register a good .com domain name and for whatever reason they will not renew it when the registration expires. When this happens the domain name is up for grabs. A really hot domain name will be grabbed quickly by people who have placed ‘back orders’ on them but some good ones still slip through.

A good place to go to look for expired .com domain names is the Domain Name Aftermarket. Here you will also find highly over-priced domains that will never be sold. But if you go to the ‘expiring soon’ section you will find domains that are, well, expiring soon. The starting bid on these is $10 on top of which you would also pay the normal registration fees if you were to buy them.

They are listed in the order they are going to expire in and here you will find some average domains, some good ones and some that are frankly depressing.

This is why I never got involved in domaining: Because of all the lists of expiring domains where somebody has registered every conceivable variation of some stupid, useless url just to stop anyone else from getting it – as if anyone would want to.

Because they are listed in order of expiration and they are usually all registered for the same period of time you can tell the order they were registered in and almost see inside inside the mind of the person who registered them.

In years gone by, I would often be at home late at night after a heavy meal or a few drinks when I would suddenly get some business idea that seemed fool-proof to me. Because I didn’t have a credit card or internet access at home at the time I couldn’t act on it. Usually when I’d wake up the next morning I’d realize that I was kidding myself and get over it.

Nowadays however you have to exercise greater self-control because the ease of access we now have to credit card and the Internet makes it so much easier for us to put our half-baked plans into action.

The trouble starts late at night when you start thinking about your bills. You have to find a way to make more money. Make more money. Get rich quick. Get rich quick? Why the internet, of course! There must be a way to make money out of the internet.

Billions of people use it every day, you tell yourself. If only 1% of the people who used the Internet visited your site then that would be a zillion people visiting your site and if 0.5% of them bought something you’d be making oodles of money in no time. So much that you’d better start doing some weight lifting to practice for carrying your wallet around.
 
The first step in your plan is to think of a domain name. You need something catchy if people are going to remember it; something like StupidIdea.com. Suddenly you pause. Your thoughts start taking you in a different direction: You don’t even need to sell stuff over the internet to make money. All you need to do is to register the domain name and then sell it on to some other sucker who can do all the work! That would be much easier.

But when you try to register it you find it’s already been taken. (It is. I checked.) However the domain name registrar tells you that the following ARE available: stupidnotion.com, sillythought.com, dullthought.com and sillyconcept.com. You like the sound of it and so you register stupidnotion.com. Then to protect your investment you also register the .net, .org and all other available extensions.

Then, to prevent copycats you register variations such as stupid-notion.com, stupidnotions.com, stupidnotionz.com, astupidnotion.com, mywhatastupidnotion.com, stupidnation.com, stoopednotions.com, 123stupidnotions.com. And the list goes on.

The Domainname Aftermarket is set by default to display something like 50 domains at a time. I have at times scrolled through several screens of domain name variations like this, registered at intervals of a few seconds or a couple of minutes each. When I have, I have always felt a great deal of sympathy for the people who have registered them. I realize how easy it is to become self-deluded that you were making a wise investment by spending hundreds of dollars on web addresses that are no good.

Only very exceptional people should get involved in Domaining. You need to be able to analyze trends in modern culture to be able to guess accurately what buzz words will become hot and what domains will become valuable in time. For the rest of us, its better to stay away from it.

If you ever get the idea to get involved in domain name speculation I think the best thing to do is to do nothing about it for a couple of days. The idea will probably go away by itself. If it sticks with you then I think it is best to be very selective in the domains that you register and also to choose domains that you could conceivably to able to develop yourself at some stage.

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