For Sale Domain Catching Memories - Secrets Revealed

[HLK]

For those of you who remember the old days when you could get lucky and grab a name manually, I wonder if you might share some of your success stories. One of the best secrets that we had was knowing that register.com
was pretty good during the drop compared to most registrars who were un-usable during the heavy load of "drop time".

There was a little known feature that was buried in their service called
"one step" registration. So we would have multiple browsers each loaded with a domain and at 6:30 AM EST we would begin cycling through the browsers hitting the register button over and over.

I remember Sept 26th of 2001. NSI had stopped dropping names and we all thought it was over. But the people really watching close knew that we were going to have a drop. It was like fishing with a shotgun that day.
I think we got every name we were going for. AHHHHH, that was a nice day.

Of course the big guns who had the scripts like Ultimate Search cleaned house on those days and ANY DAY.

Some of the big names I saw go: venture.com ( got by a Korean )
virus.com ( we think got by a NSI email template ) videogame.com ( domain bank) .

Anyway, any of you guys catch a nice one at dotregister or anywhere else?
Want to share your story? Let us know..

 

[mole]

Secrets of drop catching today or the days of yore? Today, the secret is a big fat wallet.

 

[HLK]

Mole, you are right about that. But I am going back to a day where $8.95 could make you a nice return

 

[actnow]

Today, the secret is a big fat wallet.

Pool hates it when I pay them with "rolls of pennies".

 

[JuniperPark]

Don't laugh, but I did well a few years with Bulkregister.com. They would crash about 50% of the time, but when they worked, they worked. Of course, this all happened at 3:30AM for me, and had to be up 2 hours later for my day job &*^#^$! The wife stayed in bed, then fought me in court for the domain names acquired "because she was an integral part of the business". Yeah, while FAST ASLEEP. Grrr.

 

[Whois-Search]

I used to use OnlineNic bulk register - two clicks over and over at 2pm EST

Got names like ricks.net that way for $6.69

 

[Theo]

Weeding through the lists of dropped dictionary domains then registering manually, was fun back in 1999. DomainsBot had an excellent service back then.

 

[Alexander]

Man, I wish I was interested in domains back then. I would have registered so many domains. =(

 

[boychik]

I started late in 1999.

Til this day I have only hand reg'd names, but pickins are slim.

But some of my best names were hand reg'd on these days - 12/24-25/99 and

ditto in 2000.

Ah, the holiday season!

 

[nicpal]

I just remember regging names off the DirectNIC Expired domains list at 10AM every morning.....from the previous days drop....how things have changed.

 

[Steen]

Any domain examples? = )

 

[Yoshiki]

Well, I had its plural form grabbed back in the e-mail template registration era with NSI being the only registrar.

I quit in January 2000 after I "got it" enough and the template registration
era was already over.

 

[BLazeD]

Yeah I wanna hear what you guys were able to register manually pre 2000

 

[Yoshiki]

Well, all the good ones you can just dream of today.

For my part, for example, position.com and positions.com in both singular and plural forms.

Yeah I wanna hear what you guys were able to register manually pre 2000

 

[actnow]

I can see the cartoon now.

The son says to his father.

"Tell me again about the times when you could register a domain manually."

 

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah I wanna hear what you guys were able to register manually pre 2000

Like hkg.net which I later sold for $5,000?

 

[toho]

Interesting topic.

Yoshiki had a big effect on me and I joined the domain world in 2000.
I understood drop cycle completly at 26th Sep 2000 . I spent much time, about 4 month.
Lunker (Mark) also effect on me and I started purchase domains in 2001.
Drop game, I used DotRegistrar.com, IARegistry.com and DomainsBot in early 2001.
My turning point was NameWinner. (Owen tuned) I stated use NW in July 2001.
Spent much money for NW at that time, but now my domains bring me much traffic and some offer mail.

Now, I can not join this game.
Last night, AllTravel.com go up US$5K at eNom club drop.
I bidded. but gave up. AllTravel.com is nice domain and some traffic but... Iremember.
When WebMagic fire sale in 2001-2002, If I have US$5K, I could buy Weekly.com.
2nd domain booming comming. But still smaller than 1999.

toho

 

[Yoshiki]

Yoshiki had a big effect on me and I joined the domain world in 2000.

I'm very happy to hear that, toho. I think you were one of the very few individuals in Japan that time who realized the importance of having dotcom domains, and if I had small effect on some people from my posts at the
Japanese website which unfortunately doesn't exist any more, I should be more than happy for having been a catalyst.

Back then, that is, during the period 1997-2000, it was really a wild-west
era when anyone could get good domains if s/he was quick enough before anyone in the world to send in a template by e-mail in most cases and if, when NSI had a system problem, you were lucky to have your template go through after all your competitors' templates got lost. Those were the days.

 

[RMF]

Man, I kick myself for this. In 95, I remember looking at the Internet for the first time and thought about registering a couple VERY NICE domains. Well, stupid me bought new rollerblade wheels for hockey instead...errr. lol

 

[deepstar]

Iremember.
When WebMagic fire sale in 2001-2002, If I have US$5K, I could buy Weekly.com.

Thats funny, I actually go back to webmagic every once in and a while to see if they might have another fire sale. Actually... I cross my fingers hoping they will :approve:

Eric