Despite a turbulent year, SnapNames is still #1 for expired domains.

37% of respondents in Domain Name Wire’s third annual domain survey use SnapNames more often than other expired domain catching services. This is the third year in a row that SnapNames had led the charts, despite a very challenging year for the service.

After being acquired by Oversee.net, SnapNames lost key registrars Network Solutions and eNom. The two registrars formed a competing drop catcher called NameJet. The drop in premium inventory may be part of the reason SnapNames fell from 47% of the vote in 2007 to 37% this year.

There are two new services on the charts this year — and one no longer on the list. eNom’s ClubDrop ceased operations as it moved to the NameJet platform. NameJet is used most often by 15% of the domain industry, according to the survey of 841 people. Afternic also joined the expired domain club with domains dropping from Melbourne IT. Afternic took 8% of the vote.

The graph below shows the complete results for 2008. Numbers from prior years do not equal 100% because defunct drop catchers aren’t included.

[View survey results here.]

Have you ever felt like you got really lucky on a domain name purchase?

Competition for domain names at auctions can be intense, especially expired domain auctions at SnapNames. Have you ever scored a domain at auction that you feel was really undervalued? You couldn’t believe it when other bidders stopped bidding, as you kept refreshing the screen to make sure no one else snuck in a bid at the last second?

I had that wonderful feeling last week. But the story starts about a month ago. I was bidding on a generic compound word .com* at SnapNames. Bidding was intense, and the domain quickly escalated to a few thousand dollars. Before the auction began I told myself I wouldn’t go higher than $4,000, but then I got swept into the moment and kept bidding higher. When the domain topped $5,000 I decided I had enough. I lost the domain.

Fast forward a few weeks. I received an email from SnapNames informing me that the auction would be re-run. The winning bidder didn’t pay.

But a strange thing happened during the second auction. Perhaps people weren’t aware of the auction, but bidding was light. I cautiously bid during the final minutes as the domain escalated close to $1,000. Then SnapNames faithful “BenFranklin” showed up. “Darn,” I thought. “Now the real bidding will begin.”

But it didn’t. BenFranklin only placed one bid. I was still in the lead. I kept refreshing the screen as the minutes ticked off. Then someone else popped in with a bid. “Who the heck is that? Surely he’ll push this domain up into the thousands.” But he didn’t.

I ended up getting the domain for only $1,250, compared to the $5,000 I bid the first time around. Talk about a great feeling — a “domain name break”.

*Because I may flip the domain soon, I’ve withheld the name from this article.

Domain name owner thinks he got his web site back because he was savvy. He just go lucky.

I came across a blog post by Zack Katz titled “How I got my domain name back from cyber squatters“. In a fit of stupidity, Katz let his domain name expire to make it easier to transfer to another “host”:

I was given the domain zackkatz.com for my 17th birthday by my mom…I owned the domain (and let it stagnate) until around 2006, when I wanted to switch hosts. I waited for my domain to expire so that I could transfer it to another host (I was lazy!). Well, it was registered out from under me, and I lost my domain.

Katz tried to get the name back by threatening the new domain registrar of the domain, but after a few months the domain was sold to what Katz calls a ““Traffic Monetization Firm” that was using my site as an ad spam website (you know those sites with a bunch of ads.” There was a link on the page to purchase the domain, so Katz made a $10 offer:

My domain had a link to “Make an Offer on this Domain,” and I offered them $10…I wanted to see what they were going to do. They wanted $150.00.

I countered with an offer of $100.00, which they accepted. I was not willing to pay $100.00 for my domain back. So I just waited. The offer expired, and they didn’t renew their registration.

So what’s the lesson, at Katz sees it? He thinks that by making an offer and then not upholding his end of the bargain he frustrated the domain owner, which caused him to just let the domain expire:

I believe the last straw for this company was me offering them money, them accepting the offer, and me never taking them up on it.

If you want your stolen [sic] domain back (and don’t want to go through a legal battle), make offers on your website, then let them expire. I believe this was a major contributor to me getting my domain back.

Yikes! That’s terrible advice. Making an offer on a domain signifies that someone is interested in it, and this is one reason someone will go ahead and renew it even if it’s not making much money. (This also ignores the fact that Katz make a legally binding offer that he didn’t go through with.)

[Editor’s note: I’m not a fan of registring firstlastname.com combos for resale, but the point is the same regardless of the domain Katz was writing about.]

Afternic gets a big win with for its expired domains program.

It’s been several months since Afternic announced it would begin auctioning expiring domains. I’ve played around with Afternic’s expired domain auctions, but until this weekend most of the auctions have ended for less than a few hundred dollars.

This past Saturday that changed: an expired domain auction for DrivingRanges.com ended at $7,455. More importantly, it received 46 bids from about a dozen members including some big players in the industry.

DrivingRanges.com is a good domain to which I peg an investor value of about $5,000-$10,000. It will be easy to develop and a great investment. My last bid was around $5,000 before I got tired of trying to submit bids on my Treo while standing in line at Six Flags (I think my wife was getting frustrated with me). At NameJet or SnapNames I suspect this name would have gone for more money; that’s why savvy domain investors look in the off-beaten path for domain bargains.

Congratulations to Afternic and the buyer.

Pool sold Shoppers.com for over $166,000 this week, but the name should have been exclusive to NameJet.

[Updated 10:24 CST] Pool.com landed a whale this week, catching Shoppers.com and selling it for $166,000 through its auction. Although the value of the domain is debatable, the bigger question is how Pool landed the domain since it was registered at Network Solutions, which has an exclusive relationship with NameJet for expired domains.

One rumor was that the domain was deleted due to invalid whois information. That isn’t true. The domain had a private registration at Network Solutions until late last year, when its email changed to novaildemail@verisign.com [sic, notice the wrong spelling of valid.] This suggests that the domain had incorrect whois information. However, the domain had an expiration date of October 28, 2007, so the domain did expire.

I checked in with Susan Wade of Network Solutions to check on the company’s policy for invalid whois information. She confirmed that Network Solutions doesn’t delete a domain for invalid whois. Instead, the company suspends it pending correction, much like other registrars do.

But that didn’t solve the mystery as to why the domain didn’t go to NameJet. I talked to Pool and it didn’t know (but is delighted). I talked to NameJet and it didn’t know, either.

But we now have an answer: NetSol’s Wade told me it was a glitch. For some reason, Network Solutions didn’t recognize the domain being in the RGP, which is when it pushes the domain to NameJet. Network Solutions is obviously dissapointed, and whatever caused the problem has been fixed.

It was a costly mistake. But no one at Pool is complaining.