I’ve been closely watching a few of them and its coming down to the wire. Here are a few interesting names across multiple price ranges, that I’ve hand picked.

zeel.com – $775.00
saskatoon.net – $660.00
prot.com – $525.00
superhero.net – $485.00
joystick.net – $550.00
orlandohotelrooms.com – $485.00
helicoptersforsale.com – $450.00
imply.com – $1,380.00
entrepreneurs.info – $375.00
epick.com – $375.00
flowerstands.com – $375.00
n81.com – $535.00
adulttelevision.com – $665.00
assaulted.com – $640.00
bar.biz – $375.00
born.info – $375.00
clicknews.com – $2,460.00
contactlenscleaner.com – $375.00
cutlery.info – $350.00
deliveryboy.com – $1,280.00
duty.net – $640.00
forecast.info – $350.00
franchiseopportunity.net – $350.00
inaugurations.com – $350.00
internetbroadbandphone.com – $350.00
gotrich.com – $1,950.00
investigations.info – $325.00
laptopbatteries.info – $325.00
millionaire.org – $6,140.00
squatter.com – $3,400.00
terrorist.org – $1,230.00

With names as low as $325 there are definitely a few bargains. Let me know how you go.

This wasn’t a pro-active step on the part of Directi or Snapnames; I had contacted Snapnames after winning the auction requesting their assistance to get the credentials. When I logged into Directi I noticed that auto-renew was conveniently turned OFF.

Here are the lessons I learned (again) from this experience:

1. Keep track of the domains you win at auction.
2. Ensure you are sent the credentials – if you don’t get them, follow up with the auction/backordering company.
3. Have your default DNS settings (at the auction company) point to your favorite parking company.
4. Add the domain name to your parking company a few days after you win the auction.
5. When you get the credentials, transfer the domain to your favorite registrar – that way you dont have domains spread everywhere.

Points 3 and 4 will ensure that when the transfer happens, you start earning $$$ immediately. The domain I won had traffic and was directed to my favorite parking company. Unfortunately I did not add it to my portfolio! As such, the parking company has made 4 months of revenue from it. This makes me wonder; what is the % of names pointing to a parking company that don’t have an owner? Must be a nice little earner for the parking company!

I eneded up transferring the name to NameCheap. While doing that, I tested out a few coupons. Here are the ones that work today:

SWITCH2NC – $6.99 transfers
7TULIPS – $6.99 transfers

Happy Easter!

The only problem with their email was that it didn’t tell me what domains were with that registrar. I didn’t know if it was 1 or 100. It turns out that the support staff at Snapnames couldn’t tell me either! Thank goodness I had kept all of my backordering emails, auction results and other little gems in an archive. A quick search found that I had previously transferred the (1) domain away.

— starts —

Our records show that you have registered one or more domain names at
The Names Registration, Inc.  SnapNames will be terminating its
relationship with The Names Registration, Inc.  While that will have no
direct impact on your name(s) registered with The Names Registration,
Inc we nonetheless recommend that you transfer your domain name(s) to
another registrar well before the name is set to expire.  We will assist
you in any way that we can, but please be aware that we have no ability
to control or influence the operation of The Names Registration, Inc.

If you have difficulty locating the domain names registered with
The Names Registration, Inc you may download your registration history
from your SnapNames account and search for The Names Registration, Inc.

SnapNames.com

--- ends ---

Did you get an email from Snapnames? How many domains did you transfer?

I’ve always maintained that now is a great time to buy domains. Those that are focused on the short term (or need cash to pay off their mortgages) are selling or simply not renewing. Those with cash (who are buying), have less competitors in auctions because some people don’t want to spend.

Here is an example of a name that went for more than $2,300 this morning over at NameJet. It was InternetMarketing.org. To be honest, I was in the auction but decided to sleep in on Sunday. The drop times are not that attractive to those outside the USA.

After I got up and had a coffee, I decided to have a look over at Snapnames and found some great domains with low starting prices. Check them out:

• tuition.com – $60 min bid
• corporateevents.com – $79 min bid
• rentalpackages.com – $79 min bid
  
• punishable.com – $79 min bid
  
• socialiser.com – $59 min bid
• letteropener.com – $79 min bid
• ferriswheel.com – $79 min bid

My favorite is of course tuition.com, followed by ferriswheel.com. Tuition is highly searched on, just think of all the college students! People are addicted to going on FerrisWheels, so having FerrisWheel.com might be a good novelty / niche site.

On Feb 2, 2008 I won a Snapnames auction with a final price of US$173. The domain has more than made its money back, yesterday it made US$1.50.

When I won the name at Snapnames, the registration provider was ItsYourDomain.com. The domain expires in December 2008 – so I thought it was about time that I transferred it out to another provider.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to get the name transferred. The domain is in my account, I have the auth code, transfer shield was disabled – everything is ready to go.

The only problem was that it appeared that SecureWhois appeared to be on and therefore my new registrar couldn’t send emails to the admin and technical contacts. Here is what it looked like:

Registrant
Pending Renewal or Deletion
SecureWhois, Inc.
pend...@onlineaccess.net
96 Mowat
Toronto, ON M6K 3M1 CA
+1.4165385428
+1.4163520113 (FAX)

After a number of failed requests to disable SecureWhois, I received this email from their Technical Support staff:

“It looks like the domain had expired long time ago and was deleted from our system, it is now in pending delete status at the Registrar level. If you are interested we can check the price to get the domain back from the registrar.”

I was thinking… wait a minute…. something isn’t right here… I won this thing in Feb! So after writing back to their support dept asking them to “get the domain back immediately” – I decided to give them a call…. and by some miracle, they answered their support number!

It turns out that I never received the domain in the first place! Although the name appeared in my registrar account and I could make changes to it, the domain was “marked in the system” as being a backorder, and not actually “allocated” to me. After feeling somewhat in the twilight zone, I was told that they would immediately put a request through to allocate it to me and that I should see the change in the whois record. Sure enough, the change went through. That domain in my account that I’ve been making $$ from is now… well… mine.

What’s the lesson learned from all of this? Just because you see a domain in your account at your registrar, doesn’t mean its yours! Check the whois record.

P.S. Yes, this is a separate issue from yesterday. I don’t know whether its the “law of attraction” here, but everything seems to be happening at once!

—-

Dear Simon,
I am sorry to have to inform you of this, but there was a mistake in the auction for <SNIP>. The registrar informed us that this name was available for us to send to auction; unfortunately, the name was renewed at the last minute and we were not informed in time to stop the auction. We apologize for this inconvenience. It is a rare occurrence but it unavoidably happens from time to time. Of course, a refund has been issued to you for the $<SNIP> that you paid for the name.

If you have any questions, please let us know.

—-

Snapnames – the obvious questions are:

1. Who was the registrar?
2. What process have you and the registrar put in place to prevent this happening to other people?

Has this happened to you at Snapnames or anywhere else? Feel free to post and let me know.

As I type this post, the SnapNames website reads:

“We do not currently have an estimated up time. We will try to update you as we know more. It is probable that auctions scheduled to close Sunday will be moved to Monday. Check the site at 10am PDT Sunday for confirmation of that delay. We’re sorry for this inconvenience.”

You don’t exactly give your customers a level of comfort by using the word “probable“. Perhaps your PR / Corporate Communications people should come up with a nice spiel for your web page when everything breaks.

It’s also interesting to note, that this time last week your website was also down.

Snapnames, what’s the deal? Isn’t it about time you provided an explanation for all this downtime?

This is really quite strange as Overture belongs to Yahoo. When you visit the link you get:

To VIP Status: OK
Server Status: OK

The title tag changes to “Hello from Apache ”

and then it diverts to the Overture Small Business website. Perhaps Snapnames has included some Yahoo code somewhere?

—

Dear SnapNames Customers:

As you are likely aware, the SnapNames service was unavailable between last Thursday evening U.S. Pacific time and today.  We are pleased to tell you functionality has now been restored and that important data, including transaction history, has been fully retained.

Please note that auctions scheduled to close between July 4-7 will now close at (time EDT) on Tuesday, July 8. Please monitor any auctions accordingly.

We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced during this time.  Should you have furtherquestions, you can reach us here:

Technical Support:         support@snapnames.com
Telephone:                    (800) 385-4075 (toll-free in the U.S.)
+ 1 503 241-8547 (outside the U.S.)

Sincerely,
The SnapNames Team
—

Their website reads:

Thank you for your patience during the recent outage to our service. The SnapNames system is again fully functional and ready to accept your orders and bids.

Please note, auctions scheduled to close between July 4-7 will now close on Tuesday, July 8 or later. Please monitor any auctions accordingly. If you have questions, please contact us at supp...@snapnames.com.

Not only is this very unprofessional, but it gives their competitors such as NameJet and Pool a  clear advantage.

There has been some discussion on DNF and a thread on NamePros regarding this issue, but nobody from Snapnames has posted. If you know what the situation is, please contact me.