9 ms·

My Dip Into Domaining

76 points by bdr 16y ago

ryanelkins 16y ago
> lezass.com (French for "the zass") I have to say, not the first thing that came to mind. It would be interesting to see how this would map out if you went further to 3,4 and 4,3 domain names. I'm sure there are quite a bit more 4 letter words though, so that would be another thing to sort through.
- WillyF 16y ago
  Yeah, I think he's definitely undervaluing that one.
vaksel 16y ago
for this to be a true "dip" you should be trying to sell those to see how much you'll make off them
- techiferous 16y ago
  What's a good way to sell a domain name?
  - kitcar 16y ago
    to other domainers: dnforum.com or sedo.com .
  - prawn 16y ago
    If they're Australian domains and you have a portfolio you want to offer, you could try Drop.com.au who sometimes do specific auction sales in addition to their daily droplists. I buy there now and then.
    - whatusername 16y ago
      how do you get around the Business Name / Trademark rules?
      - prawn 16y ago
        You can lay claim to a .com.au if the domain name is "closely and substantially connected" to you as the registrant. This includes things like selling a product or offering a service with that name. auDA ruled a few years back that "domain monetisation" falls within "a service that the registrant provides" (with a few exceptions). Sales/transfers of domains were a bit painful back in the day but have been relaxed now. There are restrictions (from memory, you can't register a domain and then sell it within six months) but it does make speculation a bit easier for domainers.
  - ohashi 16y ago
    There is reselling to other investors: dnforum.com, namepros.com, domainstate.com plus many of webmaster/IM boards have domain areas (ie. digitalpoint) Marketplaces: sedo, afternic and plain ol' contacting people who might be interested via email, phone, letters, walking up to their store.
  - jonpaul 16y ago
    flippa.com
- FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago
  I'm glad he didn't. Purchasing domains in hopes of selling them to people who want to _actually_ utilize them for legitimate purposes (read: not spam) is one of the most irritating and selfish practices around. People who do that are contributing nothing by skimming off of other peoples' ventures.
  - richardw 16y ago
    I generally agree (and hate domain spam), but I've also wondered if it's not the same as speculation of any kind. The original domainers found this resource the rest of us were underpricing hugely. Same as property - it doesn't go to the person who has the best use of it, it stays with whoever's (great, great) grandfather found it first, or bought it cheap. I wish it weren't true - many times I've wanted a perfect domain to find it taken up by some loathesome spam page.
    - FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago
      There's a huge difference though, you can't buy thousands of plots of land at once for zero-investment cost ( aka domain tasting - did ICANN ever fix that?) and then see if someone expresses interest. Most people who speculate property invest more time, energy, money and research than the average domain-squatters do. Furthermore, stuff that's common practice amongst squatters is expressly forbidden in other areas. At least in the US, you'd have a very difficult time trademarking an software company spelled "Microsoff", but typo-squatting is _rampant_. There's a massively disproportionate amount of risk/reward for property speculation than there is for domain 'speculation'. If I find out about some new product coming to market and squat the domain - the company could potentially lose a huge amount of revenue, whereas I'm risking the cost of a latte.
      - richardw 16y ago
        I was thinking more of great grandpappy walking up to an area out West and saying "mine!" (possibly with a small payment) - it took a while before everything was owned and more rational prices were set by the market. The earliest domainers had a similar experience - no owners, so they didn't have to buy it from anyone. In the end, any resource that is limited, underpriced and has some ability to produce income will get nailed by speculators sooner or later, and the price will rise.
3dFlatLander 16y ago
What method did you use to see if a domain was available? I was never able to find a service that didn't throttle my usage when checking on a large list.
- soult 16y ago
  Use DNS. If a.gtld-servers.net (or whatever server the registry uses) doesn't have NS records for the domain, it doesn't exist. Be careful, some registries don't require that you set a nameserver (most do). For those you will have to fall back to whois. Of course there are internal APIs for registrars to use, but as a small fish you don't get access to them.
  - kree10 16y ago
    As long as you're not dealing with a TLD with a wildcard (like .ws) you should be able to just check for NXDOMAIN status on your NS queries.
- SageRaven 16y ago
  Scripting the nslookup, dig, and host commands is predictable and easy. In contrast, there appears to be no consistency in the output for whois queries, making them infuriatingly difficult to parse reliably. While not the most accurate way, in my own efforts brute-forcing of DNS name space (I was checking every word in my local /usr/share/dict/words file for possible free domain names), I have found that simple DNS queries are relatively effective and don't raise eyebrows, especially if you use your own name server. Plus, they're much faster than whois queries. Usually resolving domain.tld and www.domain.tld will tell you if the name has been registered with fair accuracy. As an added bonus, you don't have to worry about someone using whois queries to park/squat interesting domains.
- bdr 16y ago
  I used whois, but it sounds like that was suboptimal.
- DotSauce 16y ago
  Moniker is the most reliable, speedy and trustworthy bulk domain lookup in my experience. It requires username registration. https://www.moniker.com/domains/batch_reg.jsp https://www.moniker.com/domains/batch_reg.jsp
vinhboy 16y ago
Great post, you've taken something that I've always thought of as random prospecting and applied a methodology to it. I am quite envious of your critical thinking skills.
JoachimSchipper 16y ago
As pointed out by gizmomagico before me, requesting domains you don't (intend to) use is ethically troublesome.
- ilcesco 16y ago
  It's pretty much like buying land. It's not like it's unethical to buy land if you have no plans of building an house on it, imho.
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    It's pretty much like claiming "new" land, to use an American analogy - you pay a small administrative fee, that's all. Is it ethical to claim as much land as possible, for the sole purpose of selling it in the future to people who had the misfortune to come later? It's clearly legal, but it's also abuse of a common good.

76 points by bdr 16y ago

> lezass.com (French for "the zass") I have to say, not the first thing that came to mind. It would be interesting to see how this would map out if you went further to 3,4 and 4,3 domain names. I'm sure there are quite a bit more 4 letter words though, so that would be another thing to sort through.

WillyF 16y ago
Yeah, I think he's definitely undervaluing that one.

vaksel 16y ago

for this to be a true "dip" you should be trying to sell those to see how much you'll make off them

techiferous 16y ago
What's a good way to sell a domain name?
- kitcar 16y ago
  to other domainers: dnforum.com or sedo.com .
- prawn 16y ago
  If they're Australian domains and you have a portfolio you want to offer, you could try Drop.com.au who sometimes do specific auction sales in addition to their daily droplists. I buy there now and then.
  - whatusername 16y ago
    how do you get around the Business Name / Trademark rules?
    - prawn 16y ago
      You can lay claim to a .com.au if the domain name is "closely and substantially connected" to you as the registrant. This includes things like selling a product or offering a service with that name. auDA ruled a few years back that "domain monetisation" falls within "a service that the registrant provides" (with a few exceptions). Sales/transfers of domains were a bit painful back in the day but have been relaxed now. There are restrictions (from memory, you can't register a domain and then sell it within six months) but it does make speculation a bit easier for domainers.
- ohashi 16y ago
  There is reselling to other investors: dnforum.com, namepros.com, domainstate.com plus many of webmaster/IM boards have domain areas (ie. digitalpoint) Marketplaces: sedo, afternic and plain ol' contacting people who might be interested via email, phone, letters, walking up to their store.
- jonpaul 16y ago
  flippa.com
FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago
I'm glad he didn't. Purchasing domains in hopes of selling them to people who want to _actually_ utilize them for legitimate purposes (read: not spam) is one of the most irritating and selfish practices around. People who do that are contributing nothing by skimming off of other peoples' ventures.
- richardw 16y ago
  I generally agree (and hate domain spam), but I've also wondered if it's not the same as speculation of any kind. The original domainers found this resource the rest of us were underpricing hugely. Same as property - it doesn't go to the person who has the best use of it, it stays with whoever's (great, great) grandfather found it first, or bought it cheap. I wish it weren't true - many times I've wanted a perfect domain to find it taken up by some loathesome spam page.
  - FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago
    There's a huge difference though, you can't buy thousands of plots of land at once for zero-investment cost ( aka domain tasting - did ICANN ever fix that?) and then see if someone expresses interest. Most people who speculate property invest more time, energy, money and research than the average domain-squatters do. Furthermore, stuff that's common practice amongst squatters is expressly forbidden in other areas. At least in the US, you'd have a very difficult time trademarking an software company spelled "Microsoff", but typo-squatting is _rampant_. There's a massively disproportionate amount of risk/reward for property speculation than there is for domain 'speculation'. If I find out about some new product coming to market and squat the domain - the company could potentially lose a huge amount of revenue, whereas I'm risking the cost of a latte.
    - richardw 16y ago
      I was thinking more of great grandpappy walking up to an area out West and saying "mine!" (possibly with a small payment) - it took a while before everything was owned and more rational prices were set by the market. The earliest domainers had a similar experience - no owners, so they didn't have to buy it from anyone. In the end, any resource that is limited, underpriced and has some ability to produce income will get nailed by speculators sooner or later, and the price will rise.

3dFlatLander 16y ago

What method did you use to see if a domain was available? I was never able to find a service that didn't throttle my usage when checking on a large list.

soult 16y ago
Use DNS. If a.gtld-servers.net (or whatever server the registry uses) doesn't have NS records for the domain, it doesn't exist. Be careful, some registries don't require that you set a nameserver (most do). For those you will have to fall back to whois. Of course there are internal APIs for registrars to use, but as a small fish you don't get access to them.
- kree10 16y ago
  As long as you're not dealing with a TLD with a wildcard (like .ws) you should be able to just check for NXDOMAIN status on your NS queries.
SageRaven 16y ago
Scripting the nslookup, dig, and host commands is predictable and easy. In contrast, there appears to be no consistency in the output for whois queries, making them infuriatingly difficult to parse reliably. While not the most accurate way, in my own efforts brute-forcing of DNS name space (I was checking every word in my local /usr/share/dict/words file for possible free domain names), I have found that simple DNS queries are relatively effective and don't raise eyebrows, especially if you use your own name server. Plus, they're much faster than whois queries. Usually resolving domain.tld and www.domain.tld will tell you if the name has been registered with fair accuracy. As an added bonus, you don't have to worry about someone using whois queries to park/squat interesting domains.
bdr 16y ago
I used whois, but it sounds like that was suboptimal.
DotSauce 16y ago
Moniker is the most reliable, speedy and trustworthy bulk domain lookup in my experience. It requires username registration. https://www.moniker.com/domains/batch_reg.jsp https://www.moniker.com/domains/batch_reg.jsp

vinhboy 16y ago

Great post, you've taken something that I've always thought of as random prospecting and applied a methodology to it. I am quite envious of your critical thinking skills.

JoachimSchipper 16y ago

As pointed out by gizmomagico before me, requesting domains you don't (intend to) use is ethically troublesome.

ilcesco 16y ago
It's pretty much like buying land. It's not like it's unethical to buy land if you have no plans of building an house on it, imho.
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  It's pretty much like claiming "new" land, to use an American analogy - you pay a small administrative fee, that's all. Is it ethical to claim as much land as possible, for the sole purpose of selling it in the future to people who had the misfortune to come later? It's clearly legal, but it's also abuse of a common good.