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Domaining At The Drop

Jason — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:37:23 +0000

I’ve been watching domains drop every day for almost two years now over at GoDrops.com and it’s turned out to be not a small source of domain registrations for me and for some members. First, I have to thank Jamie from DotWeekly.com for getting me hooked and up to speed on the drop-catching process and great “insider” information. (Other domainers have also recently starting blogging about the esoteric science of drop-catching).

Before April 1st, drop-catching decent names was near impossible due to massive domain tasting by Enom, Maxim Internet, various NameMedia companies, Pool and a host of others. Tasters did usually drop their domains for refunds during the grace period, and this provided a second chance to grab whatever you had your eye on. The same taster might register the domains again, a practice called domain kiting, or other tasters would grab these deleted names (e.g. Maxim would catch Enom drops, etc…) It was fun to watch the circus from the view of my whois scanner/database. Tasters now have to be more selective — some taster registrars even collapsed and lost their names — which means there are now more domains available at drop time.

Don’t kid yourself about the domains you are able to get off the drop. Even though it’s the best time to get higher quality domains – before the masses have combed through the various distributed drop lists – these are still domains that no one thought it worth to spend even $18 for a backorder at GoDaddy and most recently Name.com. Good quality brandables and long-tail keywords do fall through the cracks from time to time – that’s the whole rational for drop-catching for yourself in the first place!

Happy Drop-Catching! Keep it real and keep it dot COM!

GoDrops.com – Your Daily Live Domain Drop

Jason — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:35:57 +0000

GoDrops.com is my personal whois scanner gone wild. Everyday, I host the Web’s only “Live Chat and Drop” event where I stream live my dropping domain picks for the day. Not only do you see domain dropping and picked up live by big companies like Buy Domains, Zag Media and Portfolio Brains, backorder services like Pool, Namejet and Snapnames, and domainer/drop-catchers like Dan Rubin, but you also get to chat along — you never know WHO will show up

You cannot find a higher quality dropped domain list anywhere and you can’t get any fresher than the LIVE domain drop. This is the best time to register dropped domains. There is NO filtering going on. I make my picks ahead of the drop time, turn on the whois scanner, and let it rip unfiltered to you everyday from 11am PST to 12:30 PST.

We’ve got a fresh new interface brewing right now, complete with the Live List, a Daily Report of what dropped and a Search. Check it out now over at http://godrops.com!

GeoDomain Expo Recap

Jason — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:30:50 +0000

Andrew from Domain Name Wire and Elliot from Elliot’s Blog have weighed in on the GeoDomain Expo, now it’s GoDrops’ turn!

This was my first domain conference, so I had really little to go on other than being familiar with a few of the personalities on the various panels. Setting up GeoRevolution.com was a good idea and made a great ice-breaker during the expo.

The first person I met very early before the first breakfast on Lexington.net. He had a novel business card with the question “Lexington.net – Should I Develop?” printed boldly on the front. By the end of the expo, I had met and spoken with owners of City dot Coms, pattern collectors of long-tail GEOs, solutions providers, parking companies, major personalities, and so on. Very positive and friendly atmosphere!

If I could sum it all up in one word, that word would be “Partnerships“. Building a business relies on establishing partnerships, but these times call for being more creative. Partnering with journalists who’ve recently been let go or forced into retirement, partnering with other domainers who happen to have been grabbing the same kinds of domains you’ve been collecting, and how to partner with brick-and-mortar hotels, local businesses and even national advertising channels — just to name a few.

The most important messages delivered by guest speakers and members of the Association were: move out of your comfort zone, be creative, take risks, bet on yourself, in short, if you’ve got an entrepreneurial spirit, NOW is the time to engage it. Times of turmoil like these are leaving a lot of people guessing and more receptive to trying new ideas. There was a lot of talk about the current window-of-opportunity and how it won’t last forever. Old media will regroup for a comeback next year…

See You At The GeoDomain Expo!

Jason — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:31:01 +0000

Wish me luck getting down there tomorrow! Don’t worry if I end up on the side of the road, the GoDrops scanners will still be plugging away for drop-time. Maybe I can get a projection screen and have a 10 foot tall Live Chat + Drop tomorrow =)

The Daily Drop will occur during the “Dailies: They’re gone, now what?” session. That’s where I’ll be. I will check in to see how the drop is going, though. On Saturday during Drop Time is “Travel industry Tips and Tricks“. I’ll be sitting firm in on that as well…

See You There!

GeoRevolution is Live!

Jason — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:22:38 +0000

I’ve finally stood up GeoRevolution.com in time for the GeoDomain Expo in San Diego that starts tomorrow. If you’re attending then I encourage you to Sign Up to have your tweets aggregated at the site. Also, during the event, I’ll have a live chat working so people at home and participate in any goings-on.

So, to find out what’s happening at the GeoDomain Expo, check out http://georevolution.com! The festivities start tomorrow evening, but I’ll be getting there just in time for Friday’s breakfast.

Gearing Up for San Diego’s GeoDomain Expo

Jason — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:41:00 +0000

I’ll be trotting down to San Diego later this week for the GeoDomain Expo. This will be my FIRST domain conference — first of many if all goes well. While I’m there, I’ll be twittering, blogging and chatting on my new social platform that I’ll be rolling out later today.

I really believe in GEO – not just because I’m a cartographer by training — but you’re not getting anything for free unless you’re holding premium city/country names. Long-tail GEO domains can work for local marketing campaigns as Shoe Money has demonstrated. The tools to GEO target internet users are abundant now: Google, Facebook, MySpace have advertising tools that get you very local.

Like any domain name, I like my GEOs to be short, clear, have over 100k residence, dot COM and to target popular services and products. Yes, that does rule out a lot of possibilities, but that’s good. E.g. I won’t be registering any names like SanBernardinoHomeInspectors.com (taken) any time soon.

Anywho, stay tuned as GoDrops.com gears up for San Diego! More to come!

Anyone Going to GeoDomains in San Diegeo?

Jason — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 03:14:42 +0000

I’m seriously thinking about going as it’s literally just down the road from me. Looks like the who’s who will be there and lots of good topics scheduled… Anywho, If anyone is going give a shout-out here… maybe GoDrops.com can have a Birds-of-a-Feather meeting down there over some ale… =D

Resident Tourist » News

Domaining At The Drop

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