Raining Domain Names

Thanks to an error at Nominet back in March when domain name renewal emails weren’t sent out, there has been something of a drought of domain names being released in recent weeks. That was until yesterday that is, when the floodgates opened and hundreds of previously registered names that had not been renewed were made available again on a first come first served basis.

Unfortunately, I was caught asleep at the wheel during this torrential downpour and didn’t wake up to what was happening until 11 o’clock last night. Fortunately enough, only two of the names that I had had my eye on had actually been registered and I was able to manually register ten others including littlemadams.co.uk, costablancacarhire.co.uk and secureselfstore.co.uk before calling it a night about an hour later.

It’s been quite a few years since it’s been possible to register names like that manually. In fact, doing so brought back memories of six years ago when I used to sit at a computer screen for hours waiting for a name to drop, then furiously try to register it before anyone else did. Back then it was difficult to get anything worthwhile without an automated script (although certainly not impossible), but given the number of domain name catchers watching domains today, it’s now virtually impossible for anyone to manually register a quality .co.uk domain name when it drops. Anything of worth will almost certainly be snapped up within a second of it being released by Nominet on any normal day.

When I returned to the frontline first thing this morning and continued to plough through reams of names, it quickly became clear that this was no normal day. There will still plenty of worthwhile domains that had been made available again just waiting for someone to come along and register them. I helped myself to a further nine names and have since added another two that have been released during today.

At £5 a pop I can’t think of a better investment than domain names. Of the three names listed above, I’ve no doubt that at least one is worth £1,000 to someone.

I’ve still got my eye on another half a dozen out of hundreds that are still to drop so I’d better get back out into the rain.