Expired Domains Explained

I wrote this guide to expired domains a few years ago, in order to help newcomers to the domaining industry. Given I’m still getting questions via email and posts on forums, I thought I’d post it up on Domainer Income. Hope it helps.

Purchasing A Domain Name

Anyone can register a domain name. The person or entity (company) that registers a domain name is typically called a registrant. The company that sells you a domain name is called the registrar. For example: Godaddy or Moniker. The company that manages the top level domain is called a registry.  For example: Verisign manages .com

Domain Expiration

A domain name is registered for a period of time. Depending on the type of domain name, it can be registered for up to 10 years. Once registered, the domain name becomes active. You can see the status of a domain name by viewing the whois information and looking at the status field. Note that there are a variety of different status codes (which is beyond the scope of this article).

In the first five days from the date of registration, a domain can be deleted by the registrar and the money refunded to the entity who purchased the domain name. This is called “Domain Tasting“. Most registrars do not allow you to do this; those that do, usually charge you a fee.

Domain Renewal

Lets say you register a domain name for 1 year. Usually 30 days before a domain expires, the registrar will send you a reminder notice, asking you to renew. In this example, if you don’t renew and the 1 year period is up, the domain name changes status to Redemption Grace Period. When this happens, the website and email for the domain name stops working. Of course, you can still renew your domain name and get it back.

If your registrar (eg: Network Solutions) has an agreement with a backordering company (eg: NameJet), then the backordering company is informed that your domain name has changed status. The backordering company may display the domain name on their website as being “available soon”. However, a user may decide to renew their domain name at this point and pay fee to get it back.

Dropped Domain

If the user does not renew their domain name, the domain state changes to Pending Delete. It stays in this state for approximately 5 days.

Once the Pending Delete period is finished, the domain name has expired. The domain is then released by the registrar (in theory) and becomes available to anyone to register. This process is called “the drop”. What happens in reality is that the registrars “hand over” their expired domains to the backordering companies, who then auction them off to the highest bidder. Domains that go through this process are also called dropped domains.

Expired Domains

Most domainers would agree that almost (if not) all expired domains are renewed and tasted. This is done to see if the domain can be monetized. If it can’t make money, then its left to expire. At this point each day, a large list of expired domains are available for anyone to register.

And that’s the circle of domaining life! Hakuna Matata.

Match.Com Acquires Dating Sites For $80 Million Cash

IAC (NASDAQ: IACI) announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire People Media from American Capital Ltd (NASDAQ: ACAS).

People Media had $11.6 million of EBITDA in 2008 and operates 27 dating sites including BlackPeopleMeet.com, SingleParentMeet.com, SeniorPeopleMeet.com, BBPeopleMeet.com and LDSPlanet.com, with a combined 255 thousand paying subscribers.

New Deal On .Info Domain Names From Afilias

For those that don’t own their own registry, you may be surprised to learn that registrar deals even exist! Every now and again a special offer comes out, allowing you to buy that TLD or ccTLD at a discount.

Most of these secret deals are kept under wraps and are not published; however this has now changed. Afilias (the company that looks after .INFO) has published a deals page! This allows us to keep track of the latest registrar deals, sorting special offers either by date or registrar name. I think its great.

Save yourself some money on .info domain names and check out the deals page before you buy.

Woman Changes Her Name To Princess-Rainbow.com

Its been reported that a woman in the UK has become the first person to change her name by Deed Poll to a domain name.

24 year old Claire Forshaw changed her name earlier this week to Princess-Rainbow.com.

“I knew that if ever I got the chance I would change [my name] to a web domain, to hopefully become the first. My boyfriend has always told me it cost hundreds of pounds to do, so I just forgot about it”

“When I realised it actually cost as little as £10 my boyfriend said that Princess-Rainbow.com was ideal for me because I am mad on rainbows!”

“My dream has always been to sell my artwork to a wider audience and after studying art at college, me and my friend who has an art degree, said that we would love to go into business together selling our creations. Changing my name has given me that kick-start into pursuing my dream and the new site will feature everything from paintings, textiles, 3D work and jewellery.“

“My name change is great and although my friends have started referring to me by my new name, and my place of work have changed all of the paperwork to include my new name, both my boss and my mum are refusing to call me Princess-Rainbow.com!”

Commentary

To be honest, I’m surprised that certain individuals in the domaining industry haven’t changed their name! Perhaps this will spark a new trend?

I’m going to change my name right now to:

“domaining wire king journal acro elliot whizzbang parked chef”

What do you think? Like my new name? Ohhhh…. what’s that? I can hear the ka-ching of UDRP’s coming!

Sources: Independent and PRUrgent.