Acquiring an expiring Domain?

There is a grace period after the domain has expired (usually one month).

You need to wait until the grace period ends before you can buy the domain.

I believe it's a 90 day grace period... but I think this varies per registrar

With the expiring domains I find, I've had to wait at most 10 days.

Check my sig if you need a service to find you some nice domains

okay great thanks for the replies now I know I have to wait a bit longer then.

The domain is being reverted back into the pool to be resold after 30 days. Deletion status lasts another 5 days.

If the domain is particularly silly, it’s possible that nobody will try to buy that domain and you can pick it up at your convenience. If it’s something really valuable you can bet people will be furiously trying to grab that domain the millisecond it is deleted. The tools you use to snag an expiring domain must vary with the type of domain you are acquiring.

There is a whole industry focused on grabbing expiring domains as soon as they are deleted. Sites like snapnames or namejet will let you “backorder” a name and then aim a bunch of servers at the registrar to catch the domain the split second it becomes available. They are very good at this. But there’s a catch: once they get hold of an expired domain, they launch an auction to try to sell it to the highest bidder. They create a market for that domain if they get it.

Yup. The more cynical of you might be thinking that the domain catching services have a big incentive to hold you hostage for that domain once they get it. You tell them what domain you want, they have a system to grab it once it’s available, then they run around marketing that domain to as many bidders as possible. Just by using such a service to backorder a domain alerts them that it’s worth buying it. You might even be worse off using such a service because you suddenly are bidding against a bunch of people who otherwise would have no idea the domain existed or was for sale.

My recommendation...

1.Do not backorder the domain anywhere! Do nothing to reveal your interest in the domain to registrars.

2.Using whois <domain> find out what day the domain expires. For example: “Record expires: 2012-09-01 14:21:00″

3.Set a calendar reminder to check the status of the domain 30 days after that date. For example, Oct 1, 2012 at 14:21:00. I think the time zone is UTC by default, but the registrar can specify their own time zone.

4.You should see the domain change to “Pending Delete” status. Set your calendar reminder to 5 days after the time when the Pending Delete Status began.

5.At that time, do a whois. Is there a domain record? No? It’s yours! Go buy it on your favorite registrar. If it’s still pending delete, keep checking. It could become available at any time. This is best accomplished using a shell script so you don’t have to keep checking by hand.

according to registrar because all registrar have their own grace time.

very interesting, I got a domain that I will follow the procedure above on. doesn't matter if I don't get it so worth a shot.


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