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Domain Name Goldrush Part 1 - The Rules of Play
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Why the Demand for Domains
So that's how it all works, but just why are thousands of domain speculators clogging up the world's registration systems trying to register domains that the old owners didn't want?
To try and find that out, I talked to Alex Kovalenko, the founder of DomainsBot.com, a firm which specializes in tracking on-hold and 'soon to drop' domains.
"Although the majority of on-hold domains have little or no resale value, there are tens if not hundreds of names dropping each week that do. What we do at DomainsBot.com is to track all of the thousands of on-hold domain names, and inform our members when they are going to drop. In particular, we alert our members to particularly valuable names about to drop."
Kovalenko is right when he says that valuable names drop each week. Recently dropped names include valuable three letter dot coms such as jcw.com, sfi.com and bsb.com. These types of domains sell in the resale market for anything up to $100,000. In addition, many generic two-word dot coms also become available again. A few recent examples include winterbreak.com, knockout.com, stockdealing.com, and travelshop.com, but the list goes on and on.
Currently, the on-hold domain industry is booming. The number of on-hold domains is increasingly weekly, and the number of people interested in registering on-hold domains is also greatly on the increase. Kovalenko offers one explanation for this: "At the beginning of last year there was a massive explosion in the number of people speculatively registering domains. Many of these people registered hundreds of domains because they thought doing so would make them rich. A year later and reality has hit home. Many are choosing to give up the names rather than pay huge renewal bills. All these names come back into the system, and the best ones are picked off by the savvy domain speculator".
So the next time you want to register a domain name and the registration system is taking forever to respond, you might want to glance at the clock. It could well be 6.30 AM in New York.