Site lists domains listed for sale that are free to register.
Have you ever seen a domain name for sale on or Sedo or Afternic only to find out that it’s freely available for registration?
Someone lists a domain, lets it expire, but the sales listing never gets deleted. The problem used to be rampant. It’s gotten better thanks to new controls and monitoring by both sites (particularly Afternic).
But a new service from domain name search engine DomainWhiz shows that the problem is still there — and let’s you potentially take advantage of it.
The site’s new “Up for Grabs” section lists hundreds of domains daily that are listed for sale but can be picked up at registration fee through your favorite domain name registrar.
Just because the domains were once listed for sale doesn’t mean they’re great domains. After all, someone let them expire. But you might find some gems.
Here are some examples currently listed at Sedo that are available for registration:
DigitalPhonebooth.com – listed at $7100
DirectInvestmentPlan.com – listed at $1000
DiscoMusicLibrary.com – listed at $10000
Ironically, the very existence of this service could render the service extinct. With renewed focus on the problem the markets (particularly Sedo, which seems to have the biggest issue) will hopefully clean up their listings. It shouldn’t be that hard.
I’d be interested in the numbers behind this.
Sedo’s search engine returns 7,229,241 .com domains for sale at the moment. That’s over 15% of .com. But how many of these are legacy listings?
@ Kevin – Good question. Another problem that’s harder to track than this is when a domain changes hands or is bought after expiration and the listing isn’t removed. I bet that number is even bigger than the number freely available for registration.
My numbers in the above comment were wrong, btw. The 15% I got from a calculation I did a few days ago.
@ Kevin,
A company I worked for did a study last year on 17,000 domain names listed on Sedo, about 11% of them were actually “orphaned.”
I guess the number is only worse now since it seems Sedo is not doing anything.
The 17,000 domains I was referring to were all .com domains.
Interesting site.
It also shows that some of the prices placed
by sellers on Sedo are out of whack.
HahaHillary.com $ 10k
GrandCanyon-Northland.com 9,900 euro
DataCentRex.com $ 10k
I guess it eliminates the $ 60. bids.
🙂
Orphaned for a reason.
Where are the monthly search numbers coming from?
There are new expiring domains listed at sedo everyday, i think it would be hard for them to track which domains were deleted from the registry everyday. They would need a team working full time 7 days a week just to keep it clean.
@ Carlos – it can all be automated when a domain expires.
I mentioned this problem and others about Sedo about a year ago on Morgan Lintons Blog. I thought it was normal.
One person’s orphan is … another person’s child.
Actually, think about this.
If Sedo leaves up the orphan listings and receives an offer for a domain that was actually available, lets say $1,000 or $5,000 would they let the person know it was available or would they tell Domcollect (Sedo subsidiary) to pick it up and proceed to sell it for the offer price or higher to the unsuspecting buyer?
I’ve had a buyer one time put a domain name on my generic contact/offering page that we were not brokering and proceeded to make an offer. It was a $50 offer and I simply replied that it was available for registration price 🙂
This list also highlights how delusional so many domainers are in general (ridiculous prices), and how much garbage is registered on a daily basis.
I recently found a domain that I had newly registered listed for sale at Godaddy auctions – even though I had found it available and registered it at Namecheap. I called Godaddy and they removed if from the auction, but it was a really weird feeling to find something I owned listed for auction – when I wasn’t the one that listed it.