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Think of a name, any name, and it's probably already registered as a .com domain. Most sites blocking your path to a memorable and descriptive names are owned by domain squatters, businesses buying domain names in bulk and running targeted advertisements from Google and Yahoo!."
Kevin Ham built a $300 million web company in Vancouver you've probably never heard of. You are likely familiar with his work as you drop vowels from the domain names of your favorite web startups such as Flickr or Tumblr, or try selecting a name for your new company or product. Kevin Ham built a domain name empire named Agoga, cutting exclusive deals with local registrars and national governments, attracting over 30 million unique visitors a month according to an article by Paul Sloan in the June issue Business 2.0 magazine.
Think of a name, any name, and it's probably already registered as a .com domain. Most sites blocking your path to a memorable and descriptive names are owned by domain squatters, businesses buying domain names in bulk and running targeted advertisements from Google and Yahoo!. Domain names are not only memorable, they influence a site's ranking in search engines, since a site URL containing the phrase "kittens" has a higher possible correlation to kitten content than a URL without the keyword match. Kevin Ham owns over 300,000 domains, virtual real estate in our online lives. He assembled the portfolio over many years of work, taking advantage of changing technologies, business environments, and legal terms. He is just one example in a global domain industry collecting millions of dollars a year prospecting new names.
Paying off registrars
Quote:
Each top-level domain on the Internet owns one or more root nodes defining the availability and location of sites such as MySpace or eBay. Ham wrote automated programs in the late 1990s that could download a listing of all registered domain names, a root zone file, on a daily basis, comparing multiple versions to identify expiring domains of value. In the beginning Ham ran the programs on a few desktop machines in his office, but he quickly stepped up his operations to stay ahead of competitors.
Ham worked out exclusive deals with domain registrars, snapping up expiring domain names on a direct connection from the registrar's computers into the VeriSign root nodes at the heart of the U.S. Internet. He paid 10-times the typical domain registration fee in exchange for such privileged access to the domain name ecosystem. Ham was able to snap up over 10,000 domains in late 2000, just months after imploding Internet brands vacated their offices and their web brands.
Today registrars directly engage in the game of expiring domains, letting customers set triggers and alerts for a premium price or directing them to a domain resale marketplace.
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