Finding Expired Domains

May 2, 2009 by Efficient Entrepreneur  
Filed under DIY, Other Resources
This article is about 900 words long, and will take about 5 to 9 minutes to read.

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Since the discovery of the “most powerful dot-com mogul you’ve never heard of“, Kevin Ham, the rush on expired domain names has flooded the marketplace. But do you even have a chance anymore? Can you really grab the next ask.com or news.com? Can you become a millionaire by just sitting back and buying internet real estate? Although the market is overrun by newly ambitious wannabe’s there’s still something to be said for staking your claim a valuable domain name and flipping it for a profit or turning it into another 800-pound gorilla in the wordwide web.
There are quite a few programs that exist that will standardize this process for you…for a price. Which, if you are serious about entering the field of buying and selling domains, you may be interested in purchasing. But these programs aren’t right if you plan on owning less than a few hundred domains. Let’s face it, gems like watermelons.com is already in the portfolio of Scott Day (another big player in the domain game) and unless you’re ready to dive in full steam and really learn the trade, it may not be worth it to you to buy the software to help you get an edge.
But you still want to dabble, huh? Without buying the software. Well, here’s how to do it by hand. The slow and steady way, but fairly effective none-the-less.

1. Whois.net This is what I use to find who owns what, what’s been owned, and when it expires. Whois.net has a nice extra feature in that it shows you deleted domains. Here you can search based on your main keyword and usually find some pretty good names. For example, I was looking to start a parenting site. So I searched for “parenting” in the deleted domains. On the second page, I found agelessparenting.com. Not Bad.
2. The WayBack Machine: Most fun tool on the net! I love this site. You can check on your competitor’s sites…back in 2003. It’s actually really cute to see yahoo in its infancy. =) Anyway, back to topic. Use this tool to see the history of the deleted site you wanted to check out. I typed in agelessparenting.com and was taken to its short history. Someone cared about it and took care of for a few months back in 2002. Then left it alone and let it die, so you could come by and swoop it up. But what does that mean? Well, if the site was around long enough to build page rank and hasn’t been ignored for a long while, you may get to keep that page rank when you set up your site. Also, since many webmasters put checking their outgoing links low on the priority list, you may get lucky enough to still have other sites linking to a website you haven’t created yet on a domain name you’re about to buy. All these things make it a smart investment. If you look through it’s history and see that it only contains a standard “this page is parked” page, then it may not be worth as much unless you can really see adding value to the name or see it pulling in a good price at a domain auction.
3. Domain Registering: Now it’s time to register your domain. I recommend spending 5 minutes looking through your various options before picking the first registrar you find. I loved iPower for the longest time because they had the best price ($6.50 per year) and they weren’t GoDaddy. But now they’ve started to slip in my eyes a bit. Support left me on hold for 3 hours, the direct line they gave me to a manager only got me to an irritated man that was more interested in making excuses for support than trying to improve the system, and they’re backpanel hasn’t worked for over two months. BUT before all this I would have recommended them in a heartbeat. Ease of use is my first priority and then, of course, cost. I would say avoid the big guys whose contracts say that after your domain expires they own it and can auction it off themselves. GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Tucows etc.
If you just want that one domain name and you’re not just trying to start a mega-collection and you’re willing to pay good money for it, there are three main services you can use when hunting for expired domains: Snapnames.com, enom.com and pool.com. These services snatch up hot domain names just as they expire. Mike Davidson has a great article about that.
If you’re interested in buying software to help you on your quest for domain name domination just search for “expired domain names” in any search engine and you’ll be bombarded by options. These programs constantly search for expiring domain names and analyze their value for you. Some can give page rank and backlink status. Less work for you, but it’s not free. As with any business decision, you need to evaluate the money investing in the product verses the time it would take you to accomplish your goals. Just make sure you really know what your goals are and don’t get distracted by every millionaire’s path to success.