Buying Expired Domain Names

Have you ever tried buying an expired domain name? It’s much easier said than done.  In order to buy an expired domain name you have to wait until it drops and then you have to battle all of the services that are also trying to get that expired domain name. Let’s take a look and see what you need to do to get an expired domain name.

You could develop your own API script that plays the drop catch game along with the big players. Unless you are a programmer though that is not likely to happen. Most registrars show an expiration date for all of the domain names that they have registered. That date is not the same as the drop date though. When a domain name expires there is a 40 day grace period that allows the owner to still renew their domain name.  The domain name owner can renew during that 40 day period without penalty.  Once that 40 day period has passed a domain name now enters what is known as the redemption period. During this period the Whois information starts getting purged. If the domain name owner tries to renew during this phase then they will need to pay roughly $100. After the redemption period the domain name becomes locked while it goes into the deletion process phase. It takes roughly 5 days for the deletion process phase to complete. During this time the domain name will be dropped from the ICANN database, and now becomes available to the public. This process takes roughly 75 days in total.

The trick now becomes being the one to get that domain name once it drops. The drop occurs when Verisign releases it from their database. In order to get into the game of snatching this domain name you should have a snatching service working on your behalf. These services ping Verisign frequently and try to snatch that domain name.

So who are the services that you can employ to get these domains for you? We recommend three services. 1.) Enom at www.enomcentral.com, 2.) Pool at www.pool.com, and 3.) SnapNames at www.snapnames.com.

Happy Domain Name Hunting!