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Domain names do not have a fixed schedule of expiry or deletion. There has been a patchwork of registration entities through the years and several still remain. As a general rule domain names will renew annually (on some multiple of years), but each name’s anniversary can be any day of the year depending on when it was last registered.

In many case you will want to know exactly when certain names will expire. Desired or sought-after domain names go away again in moments, as soon as they are available. There are several resources that have information you’ll find useful.

www.deleteddomains.com is one of the best free resources. The search tool of the website will give you up to 2000 results on domains that have recently expired in the past 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days. The search results of this website are very comprehensive; however the results are limited to already expired domains or ones that are on hold. You won’t get future date information, but it’s still a powerful database for the domain shopper.

www.namewinner.com is also excellent and free for research – and this website publishes a list which is updated regularly of websites due to expire. The list the ‘list of expiring domain names’ which you can search from the drop down menu located on the left side of the homepage. This is also a place where you can set yourself up to buy some domains, as we’ll discuss below.

www.domaintoolbox.com is another excellent source for browsing information on expired domains. Registration on the website is free. The site provides information on expired domains, soon to expire domains and backorder domains. The tool box provides ton of information on expired domains, dropped domains, unfiltered domain lists, and link popularity checker which allows you to assess the traffic on domains.

Other good resources on the Internet will cost you some money but can give you more detailed information on expired domains. www.unclaimeddomains.com is one such source. The website sends emails to its subscribers on expiring domains every week (are you beginning to see this is a cottage industry out there?).

www.localwhois.com is an excellent resource for buying list of expiring domain names. The website also has tools for domain lookup and other search solutions on expired domains.

www.expireddomainsleuth.com also provides link tracking and traffic information through its tools. The website has comprehensive research services for expired domains that include; expiring domain lists, link extractor, status checker, link popularity tool, domain filter and management.

In addition to these and other research tools, there are a number of marketplaces to research and purchase domains. As you can tell from the number of sites, this is becoming a popular and profitable business online.

Marketplaces to buy domains

http://www.icannwatch.com/
http://namestalker.com/
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Domain_Names/
http://www.zoneedit.com/
http://www.domainpunch.com/
http://www.trafficz.com/
http://www.fallendomains.com/
http://www.snapnames.com/
http://www.domainguru.com/
http://www.expirefish.com/
http://www.registerfly.com/
http://www.alexa.com/
http://www.namedroppers.com/
http://www.namewinner.com/
http://www.populardomains.com/
http://www.coolwhois.com/
http://www.zaygo.com/
http://www.sedo.com
http://www.nameprotect.com/
http://www.granitecanyon.com/

Domain names were originally registered for a stipulated period of 1 to 2 years. Many registrars now offer the option of registering a domain name for a period of 1 to 10 years, some with automatic renewal and some without. While it is still possible to watch for availability and then manually register lucrative domain names the moment they become available, the success rate will be relatively low today – as the number of people interested in grabbing the domains has gone up, technology has followed, and the professional resellers are running highly automated programs now. The competition surrounding the most sought-after name can be intense and manual methods alone are unlikely to succeed. The good news is that the automated methods are not very complicated nor are they terribly expensive.

One of the biggest and well known resources is snapnames.com. The website charges a fee of $69 per name. The entire process is automated. Once you specify an expiring domain name for purchase, the website, using its tool ‘Snapback’ attempts to purchase it on your behalf the very second it is made available for re-registration. The website has several tie-ups with other registrars which makes them successful at this repurchase program.

Using Snapback, the chances of getting an expired domain are very good. Remember though any tool only increases the chances of domain acquisition and does not guarantee you’ll get it. ‘Snapbacks’ can be placed for a period of one year. The tool assists for grabbing one domain name every time it is used. This means if you wish to purchase multiple domains you will need an equal number of ‘Snapbacks’ – one each, with the fees to match. This can add up, so think through which names you really want.

We mentioned namewinner.com for free research earlier. You can also set up “grabbing” tools here. The functionality is similar to snapnames.com, however the key difference is that you do not get charged if the domain acquisition proves to be unsuccessful. However, the bidding is restricted to already-expired domains.

Expirefish.com has a different method of pricing and service. You are required to pay in advance for all the domain names you chase. You set up a linked account called registryfly which operates sort of like an escrow account, guaranteeing funds for each domain you may actually win. Because domains expire at different times, you can bid on more domains than your account is funded to cover if you’re careful (set up 10 bids, have 5 domains prepaid, and then add funds as you win the first few). There are several restrictions in how expirefish lets you monitor domains, and in spite of the added complexity their results do not equal either namewinner or snapnames.

Finding names is easy. Picking them is harder. The number of possible domains is almost unlimited, since they can be any combination of words and letters in any language. But of course not all domains have any resale value; and you need a strategy for choosing which ones probably do. The key here is to choose domains that you think would have a high value in the future, or, to someone else right now, or, alternatively, that are useful for generating traffic for you or accomplishing other marketing tasks.

Strategy for choosing domain names

Most people agree on one thing: you want short and simple names which are easy to remember by potential customers or visitors. It is possible to bring people to websites through promotion campaigns such as links, banner ads and search engine optimizations, however a lot of people will type in what they want. So you want use-friendly names that make a memorable impression – which means something that the average person can type into a Web browser easily. Effective domain names are ones that require little effort to remember and ideally say something unique about the site.

Every day as many as 12,000 domain names are dropped from the Internet registries. You can’t buy them all!

First you can generally eliminate all but two extensions. Extensions are the suffix after the name, the most common and well-known one being “dot com.” There are numerous top level extensions such as .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, .info and more. Generally, .com and .net domains are the most preferred by the majority of business and the most likely to be remembered by users. Theoretically each extension is supposed to be for certain kinds of owners – such as .org for non-profits – but these definitions are flexible. The important thing is to buy names that can be easily resold, and the .com and .net domains are the best.

Short and simple words that can be easily remembered, conveying an explicit meaning or a message should be the second criteria for picking up expired domains, for the same reason. For example something hard-hitting and to pointed like “webuycars.com” makes sense but “sellyouroldcarhereformore.com” less so, even if that might be a great slogan.

Also the traffic generated by the expired domain while it was in use by the previous registrar can be a useful metric in some cases (when this data is available). Many businesses are looking to grab an existing website so that it saves them time and effort in establishing their presence on the Internet. Businesses which look for purchasing such expired domains align their businesses in accordance to the previous owner – picking up the previous visitor traffic since they sell, or appear to sell, similar products and services. If you plan to use the old domains to increase your own traffic, prior traffic is one of the most important things.

Here are some more tips on buying domains:

· The simpler the name the better, in general – sales.com, marketing.com, and so forth will command a lot of bids, directmarketingtoreallyoldpeople.biz, less so
· Avoid alphanumeric names unless they are very easy to remember (e.g. 301realestate.com is not good, but route66.com obviously is)
· Avoid hyphenations, because they are easily mistyped and they are hard to say out loud (e.g. you want bigben.com as opposed to big-ben.com)
· Avoid lengthy names unless they are instantly memorable

Once you choose some domains, you’ll want to think about what to do with them.