Here's the short version: Reach out and touch someone.
To anyone not old enough to recall that famous campaign for selling telephone services here's a less cryptic hint: Pick up the telephone. Call across oceans if you must. Just call before it's too late in the drop process.
Your jaw would drop if you knew the domains I picked up this way.
I'm giving away my little trade secrets so that there's even more competition in the domain catching business.
When you call be nice. Be professional. Call and let the person know that you are concerned that they might be losing control of the domain unintentionally. It builds credibility and trust. Be true. Don't start off with "I want to buy your domain". First, find out if they were letting it go intentionally. If not, then the call is over and it's thank-you very much time. If "yes, I'm letting it lapse" then you advise "I'm interested in building a website and thought that would be a good URL. If I paid the renewal fee and say....$250...would you be willing to transfer the domain to me? It's all really simple and I'll handle all of the transfer details. All you will have to do is respond to an email."
1 in 3 times the person will be happy to sell it to you for a few hundred dollars at most. FedEx them an official bank check. Don't mess with escrows AND immediately pay the renewal. 1 in 3 times the person will say something like "oh, yeah, I was going to get around to it" or "oh, I didn't know that. Thank-you." The other 1/3 of the time you won't be able to connect and then, if you really want to be nasty or nice - just pay the renewal fee to frustrate the big bad catchers who will beat you out 9999/10000 times.
I really intend to get out of the game. There's just too much competition and more all of the time ;-)
OBTW - just flipped 2 domains last week: $3,500 and $750. Offered $4,000 for another. Thinking about it. These aren't domains I got from cold calls. When I tell someone "I'd like to develop the domain" I really mean it ...and I do.
Still shrinking my inventory, though most of what I hold I hold strictly for development.
Great job WebWork - 3 down... 3,997 to go!
you're giving away the bank on this one webwork, the best ones I own were acquired exactly this way...first contact was through email for me however.
probably a bad thing when a 404 or 'page coming soon' gets you excited and looking at the whois huh...
Thanks for this great post. It was an idea that while might seem slightly obvious after being told, hadn't occurred to me.
Being new to the expired domain game (and enjoying it immensley I must say) I was wondering if I might ask a couple of quick questions that should complement your answer...
What do you do if the owner says YES you can have it (after sending the cheque etc)?
How can you just transfer ownership and pay the renewal fees for him? Do you have to go to his registrar?
Does your registrar transfer the domain into your ownership? What about if it is registrar-locked? Do you walk him through the steps to unlocking?
Can you send him the cheque and then transfer ownership at the same time (so he doesn't run off with your cheque!)
Thanks a lot for sharing the knowledge around, I've found this particular forum excellent for learning more about how the expired domain name game is played
Cheers,
Robin
I think they scan through the domains that others want. I'd like to be in that position of doing nothing but collecting money.
What funny, is that for the money they paid I can hire a web developer for 2 months to build me a rank 5 site that will produce more traffic and within a year will have more inbound links.
So what gives? Who is buying?
A week and a half ago I read this post for the first time. The same night I came across a domain name with a pop score of around 9,000 that had been expired for nearly a month. I decided to go with the "tip" found here and called the owner and offered $250 the next morning. He immediately accepted even though he had to pay $125 to get the name out of hock, and within a week I had control of the name.
The first day I had control of the name I received an email offer for $2,500 for the name, which I declined. (I had already hired a graphics designer for the new site.)
The first 10 minutes that the site was live, I had 150 visitors..... It's a perfect name for they type of site that I develop...
Just wanted to drop a note of appreciation... your advice has improved my holdings substantially.
Incidentally, I have never received any phone calls about my own domain names, but this past week I had 2 calls regarding 2 different domain names, both recently expired. I'm waiting for payment for the first, and just received a PayPal for the second today. I guess there are a lot of people reading this post!
Google says they don't use whois info, how would they know there is a new owner?
I don't understand how the site has so many search engine listings after being down for so long, but the site's back up now and everything is working fine... If the site has this many listings, I wonder how many it had before the name expired.
Google has already crawled the site and the new text is showing in their serps.
"I think they scan through the domains that others want. I'd like to be in that position of doing nothing but collecting money."
I'm actually quite sure that they do do this. I'm always on the lookout for available, quality, domain names, and usually (until now) developed before buying, I'd go back and it would be taken.
These are domain names that don't have any links to them, and so therefore probably haven't existed in a while, if ever, so I'm figuring someone's looking at what I am wanting to register.
It you ever need to liquidate some of your domain names in order to pay the phone bills you have incurred phoning owners of expired domain names, I would be happy to oblige. The fact that you are willing to pay for domain names that have expired but have not yet been released into the public speaks to your strong ethical nature and will serve you well as the WLS (Wait List Service) is introduced. I am sure Verisigns new WLS subscriptions will spur a whold new sub-industry charging for what you have been doing up to this point for free( The thought did cross my mind).:)
