For Sale OpenSRS Drop Catching

[MerlinK]

Hey.. Quick question:

What is the best way to catch OpenSRS dropped domains? Do accreditted ICANN registrars also get "batch" connections to the deleting database, which allows them first bids, or does Tucows/OpenSRS have priority; as in, is the best bet to become a reseller at OpenSRS, and try to reg. it immediately after dropping?

Is becoming an accreditted registrar a good idea to catch 3rd party (registrars not affiliated with drop services) names?

-Merlin
[email protected]

 

[Domainut]

The releasing registrar has nothing to do with the next registration. So it does not matter whom you BO with. What matters is which registrar sends the register command at the right time.

 

[Donny Simonton]

Hey.. Quick question:

What is the best way to catch OpenSRS dropped domains? Do accreditted ICANN registrars also get "batch" connections to the deleting database, which allows them first bids, or does Tucows/OpenSRS have priority; as in, is the best bet to become a reseller at OpenSRS, and try to reg. it immediately after dropping?

Is becoming an accreditted registrar a good idea to catch 3rd party (registrars not affiliated with drop services) names?

-Merlin
[email protected]

Merlink,
Just to give you an idea of what it costs to start up a domain registrar. About $125,000 in cash just to have access to 1 registry, like the .com and .net gTLDs. Then about a month worth of programming if you are a good C programmer. Java, who knows.

Trust me just to become a registrar to grab dropped domains is not worth it. I have heard of a few registrars already interested in getting out of the market because they are not even breaking even.

Donny

 

[Peace]

Merlink,
Just to give you an idea of what it costs to start up a domain registrar. About $125,000 in cash just to have access to 1 registry, like the .com and .net gTLDs.

Is that the annual fee? or just a one time payment? How much is the annual fee?

.

 

[Donny Simonton]

Is that the annual fee? or just a one time payment? How much is the annual fee?

.

You pay per domain to the registry, you pay per domain to ICANN. Plus you pay yearly fees to ICANN as well. I think the yearly fees to ICANN not including the per domain fee is about $25,000 if I remember correctly.

Donny

 

[Chaiki]

Donny. you're assuming a prospective rar posts an all cash surety/bond.. not likely (very few in this biz have real cash all at once) There are rar fees, there is insurance, but depending on which jurisdiction (country) you base from and how good an insurance policy you can find. A registrar will cost you a couple of thousand for the app.. 5-7k annually for ICANN creds (if not catching) and anywhere from 300 bucks to 20k for insurance and bonds depending on your insurance company and home country (the swing in this laswt bit is obviously key to profitability). There are registrars being operated on less than 5k a year. Of course you wont find and established rar trumpetting those facts because most with more than a few thousand names would be streaming for their own accreds if they knew how easy it was.

 

[MediaHound]

The releasing registrar has nothing to do with the next registration. So it does not matter whom you BO with. What matters is which registrar sends the register command at the right time.

Wake up and smell the coffee, thats not 100% true.

 

[Steen]

Doesn't Tucows/OpenSRS not release requested domains now? Instead they are auctioned off.

 

[adoptabledomains]

Doesn't Tucows/OpenSRS not release requested domains now? Instead they are auctioned off.

If they haven't teamed up with someone yet, they either will very shortly or will create an auction site of their own. Pool.com is trying to partner with it's open auction to pick up drops from smaller registrars, but Tucows is proably big enough to start their own.

 

[Donny Simonton]

Doesn't Tucows/OpenSRS not release requested domains now? Instead they are auctioned off.

Tucows will be offering their own service soon, from a press release I saw.

Donny

A registrar will cost you a couple of thousand for the app.. 5-7k annually for ICANN creds (if not catching) and anywhere from 300 bucks to 20k for insurance and bonds depending on your insurance company and home country (the swing in this laswt bit is obviously key to profitability). There are registrars being operated on less than 5k a year. Of course you wont find and established rar trumpetting those facts because most with more than a few thousand names would be streaming for their own accreds if they knew how easy it was.

You forgot the $10k Verisign fee for their software. Then that you have to prepay with each registry. You can't just go to Verisign and say here's $6 for my first domain. There is also the $1,500 SSL cert that you have to buy from Verisign per year. I did verify yesterday, for startup for our last registrar cost us $113,000. That's doesn't include any servers, which we bought 6 of them, for right about $75,000. We already had the software developed to connect to the registries so that was a freebie.

So our initial cost to register our first domains was right at $200k.

Sure some large customers can get accredited and save a few bucks, but I helped one get accredited a while back. And he dropped it after about a year, because it was cheaper to use us instead of having 2 employees fulltime to deal with everything.

Donny

 

[ExpireGuy]

Wake up and smell the coffee, thats not 100% true.

Correct.....Netsol to SnapNames......Dotster to Namewinner.....etc....yes it does matter.

 

[QuantumBeam]

 

[cambler]

Wake up and smell the coffee, thats not 100% true.

Yes, it is 100% true, if the name goes into pending-delete.

On the other hand, if the name is shunted to an auction (like what NSI and Snap are doing), then the name never makes it into the drop, so it's irrelevant.

Starting a registrar can be done for much less than that, but that presumes that you're not going to be rolling out your own front-end, but will be hosting it with a provider who will do it all for you, in exchange for a per-domain fee (which you would add to your retail cost, presumably), and then license the credential out to an aggregator for the drop.

In that case, it can be done for under $20,000, presuming that your credit is spotless and you can get your insurance and bonding inexpensively as a result.

With the number of credentials in play, and the fact that major registrars are preventing higher-value names from going to the drop at all now, it is doubtful that you'll break even on the per-year costs, especially with ICANN fees having gone up.

If, on the other hand, ICANN chooses to put a stop to the private-renewal of expired names, and insists that they must follow the deletion path to the drop, you will find that you'll easily break even.

However, and this is the kicker, if Verisign then implements a ratio model, as is looking likely, you'll see the value of a new credential, without bona-fide business drop to zero. Poof.

May you live in interesting times.