Exactly one week after covering Go Daddy’s sham backorder service, here’s a prime example of the company in action. After a customer failed to renew the domain PondPumps.com, the registrar sold it at auction for $15,671 USD. Talk about a great deal for Go Daddy.

While I’m all for a free market economy, something just doesn’t seem right here. Registrars should not have first-grabs at expired domains. Companies like Go Daddy are using their position to capitalize on customers and exploit the domain industry.

In other news, the domains H3.com and 9s.com sold for $12,752 USD and $10,599 USD respectively. Both look like great buys, especially H3.com because of the popularity of the Hummer H3.

Source | The Domains
Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: GoDaddy sells expired domain for $15,671

For years, Go Daddy has offered a backorder service. At a price of $18.99, the company claims the product provides a leg-up in acquiring soon-to-expire domains. But as the New York Post reveals, this isn’t necessarily the case.

It turns out that Go Daddy has been allowing multiple customers to backorder the same domain, taking their money without mentioning the other prospective owners. When this happens, it forces the clients to bid against each other in an auction. As one dissatisfied domainer said:

When I paid my $18.99 back order fee in January, I thought GoDaddy would act as my agent to go out and buy the domain name. But what I learned was that several other customers had also paid the fee and that we would all be pitted against one another in an auction.

Go Daddy takes all the revenue from these expired domain auctions. So if four customers backorder a domain that eventually sells at auction for $100, it’s collecting the auction price plus the backorder fees, a total of $175.96. And it’s not even legally clear if registars have legal ownership of expired names.

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Godaddy's backorder service is a sham

Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug LaFollette has been in his job since 1974. Running virtually uncontested each election year, he decided he could save a few bucks by not paying his registration fee, letting the domain expire, and picking it back up when it came time to run for office again.

Big mistake. After the domain expired, Internet users looking for LaFollette’s site got a bit more than they bargained for– hardcore pornography. The Democrat reports knowing about what had happened for several months, but did nothing, waiting to be contacted by the buyer, a Russian by the name of Andrey Serkov. The eight-term politician says he thought the man was a cybersquatter holding the name for ransom.

For those interested, the domain is douglafollette.com. It currently displays a “Page not found” error. The new owner offered to sell it back to LaFollet for $500 USD, but the politician has declined and is now looking into developing a new website. “I don’t know what to do about it,” he said.

Continue reading: Politician too cheap to renew domain, gets surprise

Looking to dominate the domain industry? You may want to look into Domize. It’s a free tool that lets you track domain registration trends and find available names.

The statistics feature is quite useful. Today’s report, for example, says that 1,020 domains containing the word “michael” have been registered, while 300 “art” names have been deleted.

The site will also give you the most popular terms over a 30-day period and tell you the number of registrations per extension. “Insurance” has been the third most popular term over the last month. In the same time period, registrations have grown 0.44%.

Domize will also let you bulk search domains and give you suggestions based on the entered keywords. It can also help you find expired names.

I’ve seen quite a few domain registration tools out there, but this one tops the list by a long shot.

Continue reading: Track domain registration trends with Domize

Most of the time, anything previously used by another person is less desirable. Used autos cost a fraction of models just a year newer and computers drop in value very quickly after being purchased. The opposite is true for domains, however. The more a domain has been used, the more valuable it becomes.

Given the rampant nature of domain speculation, it is often hard to register the name you want. One option many webmasters don’t think about is buying an expired domain.

Every day, thousands of domains expire. Some may have been belonged to a failed business or the owners may have simply forgotten to renew them. Either way, someone else’s loss can be your benefit.

Continue reading: Registering Expired Domains