For Sale Catching Services or Do It Yourself?

[bocajohnh]

I hear that in the ancient past of drop catching, people used their own programs to catch the dropped domains. Does anyone still use scripts or programs of their own to catch domain names? It seems that most of the current talk on dnforums.com reflects a heavy reliance on using either backorders like snapnames, or the auction sites like pool/NW/GoDaddy et al.

Can you still be successful running a program using an API like ENOM? A recent snapshot of two days (Thanks dropwatch.com) showed enom catching almost 10% of the names. I wonder how many of those are enom's back order service, vs. manual or using their API?

I'm just trying to decide where I should spend my time;
- My own Drop catching server to catch $500 names for $8.95
- Website development/promotion
- Name selection tools to pick the really good ones

Any thoughts would be appreciated

 

[ToastyX]

That's ancient history. It's not worth it these days. It's impossible to beat Pool using your own script or program without a registry connection unless there's a glitch and they don't go after the name, in which case you'll probably get beat by NameWinner instead. You will not catch $500 names for $8.95, that's for sure. Heck, even registrars such as eNom and GoDaddy have trouble beating Pool, and they have registry connections. Unless you go after names nobody else wants, you're not going to have any luck.

 

[.com.net.org]

Unless it's just you who want the domain.

 

[clemzonguy]

The problem is that Enom only allows you to send a check command before a register command. The register command sends back an RRP code anyways that says if the name is availble or not. So while you are sending check, somewhere someone in the world is sending register. This might give you a flying shot but you will get banned as Enom basically requires you to use the check command and even that's limited per day. I used to know of people scripting other registrars but it's practically dried up.