No, this doesn’t have anything to do with SOPA!

Today, I was doing some investigating and ran into something that I haven’t seen yet. "Repossessed by Go Daddy" in the whois data for a domain name? After doing a bit more digging, I ran into some domain names that contained Go Daddy Software but used the email address "domains4sale@godaddy.com".

Personally, I never like when a business has a conflict of interest with its customers and I hoped this wasn’t the case here. I wouldn’t be very happy if GoDaddy was picking from the crop (expired domains) like some domain registrars do and selling domains with starting prices that where out of range with normal expired domain starting prices or not even giving the general public a chance to bid on the domains. This is not the case!

GoDaddy actually gets "stuck" with a lot of domain names that people register and use stolen credit cards to pay for, refuse to pay the credit card bill and I’m sure about 99 other reasons the money never makes it to GoDaddy. At some point a charge back happens and GoDaddy is out of the money paid to the registry for the domains annual fee. Heck, even sometimes 10 years of fees.  In the end, the domain name gets repossessed by GoDaddy and is put up for sale!

So where are all these hidden gems?

Not really any "gems" that I noticed but a ton of TM domains, hyphen filled domains and a large range of TLD’s as well. PoopAndFarts.com was tempting but I passed and saved the $130 for some gas! (ha ha) Prices start at $10 (for a couple .ca domains) and range as high at $410 (highest I seen). Some domains were not overly bad but I thought the pricing was a bit high. I couldn’t figure out a rhyme or reason behind the pricing, so my guess is the prices reflect the amount of cash GoDaddy is trying to recoup from the transactions gone bad. I think the domains would likely do better in a buy now format or mixed in with the expired domains.

How many domains?

More than a couple! DomainTools.com whois indicates some 5,000+ with the potential of about another 2,800 based on one of the email addresses. So I think it’s safe to say a range of 3,000 to 8,000 domains currently. Each domain name is listed in an auction style format.

How do you see the domains?

The domain names are listed in the GoDaddy Auctions section of the site. Upon arriving at the site, you will need to do the following:

Advanced Search (right side of screen)

Scroll down and Click: Type (a small window will expand)

Select: Value Priced Domains

Click: Search (orange button)

All domain names displayed are owned by GoDaddy. Only GoDaddy lists domain names in the Value Priced Domains section. You can clearly adjust your advanced search features with TLD, age etc but be sure to have the "Type" as Value Priced Domains.

GoDaddy does fraud prevention but dealing with as many transactions as they do, some will clearly slip by. Some that look good, turn out not so good and so on. I’m sure some transactions are even charged back due to a spouse seeing a charge not knowing who Go Daddy Software even is but the charge was legit!

So anyway, I thought I would share what I discovered with you in case you ever wondered about the terms used in whois or what happens to domains that get paid for but the real money doesn’t arrive!

Here is a little domain name story that I thought I would share and you may find interest in. Here we go:

Back around this time in 2008 I had purchased the domain name BailoutBill.com on an expired GoDaddy auction for $161. This was right around the time that the bill had passed, so a lot of people were talking about the bailout bill and the money involved with it. After only owning the domain name for a couple days, my first offer came in on the domain for $1,000.

I turned it down because I wanted closer to $3K for it because the domain had huge potential. Even today, nearly 3 years after the bill past, the term "Bailout Bill" is easily known and remember by millions of people!

The $1K offer turned into a $2K domain name sale. I documented the whole story here in a "How to make money online, with domain names".

So why am I talking about this again?

Last week in my daily digging at GoDaddy for my GoDaddy Goodies list I put up on DotWeekly, I happened to see….. BailoutBill.com in the list. Scratched my head for a second and I thought, I think I sold that for a couple grand? Hmmm. I watched the auction and pretty much forgot about. I forgot about it so much that I missed the end of the auction as I haven’t been bidding on domains in sometime. Nobody purchased the domain, so I did in the closeout phase for $11.

Full circle and BailoutBill.com has come back to me.

To juice up the story a little bit more, not only did I sell the domain in early 2009, the new owners never changed DNS when they owned the domain. So the domain remained parked, which I collected some revenue (about $100 some months if I can remember correctly) at Fabulous.com!

BailoutBill.com’s value today?

I think I answered the value a little bit before by mentioning that the term itself is know and easily remembered when heard. This means a lot when it comes to branding and using a domain name. The domain still holds value IMO, even though the bailout bill was signed nearly 3 years ago. History doesn’t go away!

Why did I buy it again?

Mainly, "just because"! Secondly, I still think the domain name has value. Lastly, it gave me something to write about and for you to read.

Here is another round of my hand picked expired domain name auctions that are currently taking place in public auction that I call GoDaddy Goodies. All domain names are expired and no reserve!

Each domain name is directly linked to the specific auction for easy one click bidding or watching. Each auction starts at only $10/$12.

Here we go with the 64 expired domain name auctions that I picked:

30 domain names are listed on each page of the chart above, so be sure to use the blue arrow to see all the domain names. Thank you as always for checking out these lists and your clicks and purchases are greatly appreciated! Happy Bidding!!!