Domain Help
I’ve been courting a domain for a while now, it expires in February, I’ve read countless articles on the subject but sadly there’s a good chance that the company will probably renew it making this blog post somewhat redundant.
However, my situation is a little different and I’m hoping because of this that I might stand a better chance of getting somewhere than I would with other domains. The company are based in New York, they are quite big, I’ve wrote to them several times using their “webmaster” email link with no response, I’ve contacted them on twitter with no response and I recently called up their office and after being put on hold for twenty minutes I was told that nobody could really help me, they didn’t even know who handled all their web stuff.
A little background check on the domain told me that it was first registered in 1995 and was held by a company until they were bought over. Since the buyout the domain has been forwarded onto an exisiting page within the companies site. However after visiting this page a few times something struck me, something was very peculiar about the page, then it hit me. Not once does the page in question make reference to the old company, no mention of the old URL, no mention of the company name. There isn’t anything to show the relationship between the old company and the new one? Surely the buyer had deemed the company a rival or something that had shown a good deal of promise and therefore decided to go ahead with a buyout? If this was indeed the case, then surely you would make to maximise your sales and let others know of your affiliation?
As my desired address was taken, I naturally looked at the other options but unfortunately .co.uk, .net and .org have all been taken too. However something that worries me is that the .co.uk address is held by another relatively large company. The reason for writing this post is because I want to get in their first, beating the other people who might be having similar thoughts. It also doesn’t help that the company who helped design the .co.uk are pretty big players and will have a better idea of how to go about things like this.
I need your help, what would you do in a situation like this? Have you ever dealt with anything like this before and if so, have you been successful? What tactics did you employee to get your domain? Should I bypass the “webmaster” who is obviously incapable of doing their job and go straight to the top and explain my situation and their poor customer service? Does the fact that they don’t reference the URL anywhere perhaps put me in a good position?
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Who I am
My name is Jack Osborne and I am a Glasgow–based designer and writer. You should follow me on Twitter.
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What I do
I am a front-end developer with proficiency in; accessibility, design, semantics, usability & web standards.
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Where I do it
I am currently working freelance and I am available for hire. Feel free to get in touch with me if you fancy a chat.
When domains are registered to a company, they tend to still be held for the current owner for some time even after they expire. I had a domain that expired but I could still access it without www infront of the domain name.
Does the domain name match the company name in any way, shape or form? Companies will usually try to have everything related to their company’s name captured in domains (for example you having this domain and a .com / .net / .tv etc…) to maximise their hits & publicity.
I’m assuming you’ve whois’d the domain you’re looking to buy and have obtained the contact details of its current owner. If you haven’t, do so.
You could contact the seller-company who the domain was bought from (GoDaddy or whatever).
As far as “webmasters” etc go, they tend to be people who manage the design & content of the website but never really had a true part in the whole registration of the domain. That’s usually done during the early stages of the company being created & possibly by somebody who’s no longer with the company.
I don’t know A LOT about this kind of stuff, but I hope my answers kinda helped a bit, or at least backed up your original thoughts!
I’ll Retweet this to see if I get any responses aswell.
Good luck!
Hi Sean, thanks for the quick reply.
If you click the first link in the post it says that it takes 75 days between the domain expiring and another person being able to buy it but I’m hoping that I might be able to bypass this and get it from the company before it even goes that far.
Regarding the domain name, no they don’t have any of the other top level domains; .org, .net etc. and the domain doesn’t tie in with the new company but I don’t think that that really matters because they will just end up rebranding everything anyway.
I am not an expert in buying existing or expired domains at all really, but I have had some brief experiences with it.
Obviously if you can acquire the domain off the company before it gets released then that is ideal, and I would recommend doing whatever you can to do this.
Unfortunately if the domain gets released then being the first on to buy it is a complete F’ing nightmare, most of the domains that I have tried to buy as soon as they get released get bought up by domain farmers/squatters. As far as I am aware they automatically buy up domains as they expire and if the domain is perceived to have any value multiple people will try and buy it.
Go Daddy, Snap Domains and a few others offer a service to back order domains so when it comes up for release they will automatically purchase it for you. The problem is that if multiple people try to purchase it then it is a bit of a lottery.
I found a decent post on the subject at: http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/03/how-to-snatch-an-expiring-domain
I am sure others who have more experience in buying dropped domains can help but hopefully the above will help.
Hi James thanks for the comment. The link you’ve dropped is actually the one I’ve posted right at the top of the article, it is indeed a great read that offers up a lot of good information but at the same time it also seems like I have little chance of getting my desired domain.
I think my best shot, as you and many others have suggested, is to simply write to the company again and hope for the best.
oops sorry about that, it will teach me to read things properly next time!
If the domain is a generic, US or UK domain and it has decent inbound links or good traffic, there will be little chance of picking the domain up after expiry as it will just get snapped up. In fact, in the case of generic and US domains, masses of these are renewed or registered right after they drop regardless of any stats. In that case, you will need to monitor GoDaddy auctions, Snapnames, Namejet and Pool to see which of them is going to auction it off, and it is still possible that is could be swiped by one of the others or a rouge domainer with their own drop catching software.
Also, if the domain is comprised of one word, they can end up going for thousands. Domains that are evaluable because of linsk or traffic tend to go for between reg fee and about £1,500.
BTW, like the new design.
Hi David, thanks for the reply.
I’m not really sure of the volume of traffic that this domain will actually have, I’ll need to find a way of obtaining some statistics but I have a feeling that people will probably find the domain by navigating through the site as opposed to typing the exact url into the address bar.
I’m in the process of writing a letter to the guy at the top, so once I recieve a reply I’ll let everyone know how I get on. I’ve really appreciate all the advice I’ve been getting here.
Hi Jack,
I can offer some sort of advice on this.
Don’t wait til it expires!
I was looking at dougaitken.com for ages, it used to be registered to a politician type in the states who ran for office, the domain was due to expire & I email the contact registered on who.is who replied but after a few emails we realised they thought I was THAT Doug Aitken. Eventually they said it was going to expire but they couldn’t do anything (I wanted them rto renew it & I would pay for it but it had lapsed into the renwal period).
Long story short, GoDaddy expired domains go up for auction, base price of $20 but that doesn’t mean you’ll get it.
I settled on .co.uk which makes a bit more sense as I’m in Scotland.
Going to the .com now shows it’s “for sale” and an offer of $995 might be looked at.
So basically, get that letter done & go to the top.