Edit: By the way, the latest Namecheap coupon code for October is INDIANSUMMER.

If you know any others or it saves you some $$$ then feel free to post a comment.

This happened again to me last week. I won an auction for a .us domain name. Now, I wouldn’t normally buy a .us domain. This is in fact my first, however it was a single English word AND was also being used as the name of a product line. How could I not buy it? So what happened?

Date Won:      9/8/2008 12:28:00 PM
Yours On:      *9/16/2008 12:00:00 AM

The domain name I won was parked at Godaddy when I purchased it. I must admit, I was quite irritated by the fact that I have to wait 7 days while the parking revenue, from a domain that I purchased, went to Godaddy. As I type this; 6 days later its still parked at Godaddy.

The 7-day grace period has been discussed in many forums, but without an explanation from Godaddy. As such, I asked Godaddy for an official view on this particular issue. While I’m not going to name specific individuals, Godaddy was both highly professional and very responsive.

Here is their unedited view, in full:

“When a domain name expires, the original registrant has a 42 day grace period to renew or redeem the domain.

If the customer has not renewed the domain name 26 days after expiration, the domain is sent to auction through TDNAM.  The auction for the domain runs from the 26th day to the 36th day of the domain’s expiration.

As the original domain registrant has 42 days to renew or redeem the domain, there is a 7 day grace period from the end of the auction (day 36) to the day the domain is no longer available to the original registrant.  While there is a chance for the domain to be renewed by the original registrant, many auctioned domains bid upon are awarded through TDNAM.

When a TDNAM bidder enters an auction for an expired domain, TDNAM states on the bid page (as part of the terms and conditions) the original registrant still has the opportunity to redeem the domain name.”

There you go. It’s pretty self explanatory. If I was to summarize it, I’d say that buy the time a domain expires, Godaddy has a buyer and cash in the bank from a) parking revenue and b) the auction process.

While it might irritate people having to wait 7 days, when you take the time to understand it, it makes good business sense. That’s Bob Parsons for you - which is why I have his 16 Rules for Success poster on my wall.

Using Coupons At TDNAM

When you buy an expired domain name at TDNAM, you can use coupons to reduce the price you pay. The saving is on the 1 year renewal cost, so here is a list of coupons that I ran through a few minutes ago:

Coupon code: “gdbb776” made the 1 year renewal decrease from $9.99 to $7.50, while “cjcbentld” reduced it to $7.64 and “gdbb776” reduced it to $7.50. So take your pick.

Its important to note that these coupons didn’t work for me on a domain name that was listed by a 3rd party. But don’t let that worry you.

Advantages Of Not Buying An Expired Domain Name

One MAJOR ADVANTAGE of buying a name from a 3rd party is that you get to keep the entire history of the domain name. This is something to give serious thought to when bidding.

For the beginners reading this, I’ll explain what I mean. When you backorder an expired / expiring domain name from a backordering company, the domain actually expires and renews as a part of the drop process. As such, search engines tend not to keep their directory listings, cached web pages etc.. BUT when you buy a domain from a 3rd party, it’s not a part of the drop process. If the expiry date comes up, then you just renew it, like you would any other domain name.

The search engines keep all that valuable history, your happy - everyones happy. Now, time to monetize that new domain!