Where to start? I was really excited with the new $0.20 fee ICANN put in place, but I think it’s clear after a couple of days that companies and other’s do not really care about it.
Sunday was the best day for being able to catch anything and has went WAY down hill since. Today was the worst yet. By worst I mean that nearly all the domains are being registered again!
It seems like eNom didn’t get the memo on the new fee, because they are picking up a TON of domains! I didn’t check all of the domains, but I just picked random ones and eNom got a great deal of the domains.
Today I went for 12 domain names and didn’t get a single one. I had one in my cart, but got beat out in checkout (I do drop catching manually) so I got a refund and no domain. Below is the list I went for. After the domain is who got it.
RespectYourElders.com ~eNom
ValueMagazine.com ~Yellow Start
NationalMoney.com ~Own Identity
SelectHearing.com ~ eNom
DorkWeed.com ~ Blackice Domains
PrivacyKey.com ~My Name Now
DesignerNapkins.com ~Fenominal.com
TestingUnlimited.com ~RentalDomains.net
JumboBat.com ~Fenominal.com
EarthDepot.com ~eNom
LaserjetParts.com ~Snap
8×9.net ~eNom
Going back to Sunday, I wasn’t fully sure on the "times" the .com & .net domains would drop. By Tuesday, I had a pretty good idea. From my understanding there are really 2 different drop feeds. The registrars get first crack at Pending Delete domains. Then if the domain is not picked up then, it goes to the general public. So when I reported before that the .com & .net drop times were 1:00-1:30 PM Central Time, I think that is for the "first drop". Then depending on when the domain is dropped in that string, depends when it will drop in the second string etc.
To give you a hint, I went today for 1 full hour. 1-2 PM Central Time. So on Sunday, I could take a random list of about 500 domains from the pending delete list and check them. 95% would be available to register by 1:45. Monday was about the same way. Tuesdayy was a little worse. Now today, I took all the 4 letter .net’s from today’s list and ran a scan…. All Taken, when yesterday they were available. Tuesday, I really had my pick at nearly any 4L .net or even 3 character .net’s. Not today.
I even just grabbed a random group of 500 domains from today’s pending delete drop list and scanned it and all the domains were taken! I grabbed a second 500 and 3 of the 500 were available (ircjerk.com, bitcont.com & atbuzik.com) I did this same thing on Sunday-Tuesday and 95% were available!
I would think most of these domains would be back in the old state (tasted) and be dropped again over time, but I have to look into that to be 100% sure. I think ICANN needs to put in a Fine if they are going to stop tasting! After 100 domains or whatever, the registrar would start to be fined $X amount. Then the registrar simply would be forced to not allow people to drop a domain and get a refund.
I know I won’t be going after PD domains for a bit. I might check it from time to time, but unless your loaded with Software or own a registrar, it’s going to be hard to grab any!
max
enom is registering all the domains. I don’t think they plan to release these anytime soon. Registrars are now making more money from their parked domains than they do from their main business.
Enom has over 4 million parked domains. They’ll keep on re-registering these every year, except the ones that get bid on in auction.
Registrant Search: “c/o eNom, Inc. on behalf of eNom, Inc. Customer” was found in about 4,335,397 other domains
**Jamie Says**
I agree Max with most of what you said. They are registering a lot of domains on the Pending Delete drop, but they are also tasting many during the RGP and deleting a great deal also. The number that whois.sc shows is RECORDS so keep that in mind. That is not an Actual number of domains.