For Sale SnapNames - Useful or Useless?

[NameBox]

Anyone here have success with SnapNames recently. Despite their deal with Verisign, they seem to be practically useless ... as is the whole chase the expired domain game sadly :cry:

Sure they had some success last fall/winter, but it all seems pointless (and a big waste of $$) now!

 

[Nic]

On and off I had a few successful snaps.
Although they aren't that good in snapping back really good ones.
generic/2-3let/etc

 

[spietreser]

I know that there are several of these companies that offer snapping. Which one is the best, and which one the cheapest?

 

snap is useful for mediocre names that are not being targetted by the better and faster grabbers. But its not the holy grail.

The more successful snap becomes userwise, the larger the number of domains it has to go for and the less resources it can put behind each one.

 

[NameBox]

Of course, many thought that given the deal between Snap and Verisign, SN would have the upper hand in that VS would choose to "release" names that already had a Snap on them ....

Would have worked beautifully for the Verisign cabal .... take an expired name and instead of getting $6 get $70 through your partner SN!

It just seems that either Verisign isn't playing along (names long expired just aren't dropping) or SnapNames is totally useless ... they've lost out on even VERY mediocre names ...

So my question ... anyone had ANY success in the last 2 months?

 

[David G]

SnapNames has done a good job overall for me, grabbing about 6 fairly good names. However, they were far from 1 word generics, mostly 2 or 3 word terms and phrases.

They were unable to grab any real good names for me, such as 7K.net, long expired but never dropped. I had the snapback for a long time but it was reg'd by a Chinese firm before SnapNames could get it.

This also happened on other good ones where we lost either to the Koreans or BuyDomains.com the usual winner on most of the 'good' names.

 

[Marty]

What is up with SnapNames? They postponed their conference and their monthly report is really late??

 

I've had pretty good luck with Snap, but you need to go into it with reasonable expectations. It is rare that they grab an excellent name, but they have grabbed me several good ones. They will lose names the serious pros dedicate resources to, though. I got some email from them this morning; I assume that they are fine.

Stratton Sclavos (VeriSign CEO) was the scheduled keynote speaker at that conference. Do you really think that he wanted to get in front of a bunch of analysts and industry folk and be asked to explain what the hell is going on at VRSN?

 

[beatz]

Snapnames is still the best of all public available services like that.
It's like
Yun Yee
Buydomains
Snap
Namewinner
Expirefish and all other small grabbers

So Snapnames gets all those names that are leftover by BD and YY, Namewinner gets the ones that are leftover by Snapnames
and Expirefish&Co. gets everything that is left - but then again you could reg those names yourself at that stage.
If you're really into expired names the only things that will REALLY do the work are
- run your own script and using a registrars api/rrp - not allowed really
- have a deal with a registrar meaning they run the scripts on your behalf.

 

[uncle]

beatz, there are also people who ocasionally beat all of the players mentioned by you, and people who very often beat snap, NW, and other 'grabbers'

 

[David G]

Originally posted by uncle
beatz, there are also people who ocasionally beat all of the players mentioned by you, and people who very often beat snap, NW, and other 'grabbers'

That may be so but I agree with Beatz on the general order. With the exception being my belief BuyDomains.com is first, not second on the list.

I also think buydomains is a larger player overall, with more than 100,000 names they now own.

The minor players only succeed a minority of the time I am sure.

It's normally BuyDomains & Koreans #1 and #2, with SnapNames grabbing the ones overlooked or bypassed by the top two.

It's almost impossible to grab any excellent names due to it being an unlevel and unfair competition, a reason I have now stopped trying to grab the drops anymore. :sad:

 

[Drewbert]

You left Ultsearch out of the list. And lots of 2nd rankers.

Snapnames has its godo times and bad times. Right now, they're having a REAL bad time.

I've had about 20 snaps fail in the past week of so.

Luckily with a few of them I got them myself.

 

[beatz]

Erm - ultsearch = Yun Yee ?! Isn't it.

 

[RacerX]

is not Korean! Ultsearch is Hong-Kong CHINA, AND Yee is Chinese! Get with it.

 

Ultsearch was an early visionary in the domain grabbing world - imagine if he had started a Snap-like service three years ago.

I wonder what sort of registrar deals he has? It is tough to imagine how he is covering overhead with clickthrough revenue. As far as I know, he does not sell many names; he acquires for traffic purposes.

 

[uncle]

It surprises me that he's built his whole business around a PPC search engine that uses an EXTREMELY LAME design.

compare:

http://www.ultsearch.com

http://www.targetwords.com/examples/portal1.phtml

http://directory.engine54.com/?ti=6

Targetwords and Trafficsupport have definitely far more attractive looking sites. I'm sure ultsearch would get a much better click through ratio with those designs than with that stupid looking findwhat search engine.


I don't think he resells domains at all. Anybody heard of ultsearch responding to an offer?

 

[mole]

No, but someone once posted that they are willing to exchange names.

But maybe its the price being offered for those domains. Every man has a price.

However, I do agree that the search page that you land up on looks pretty ugly.

 

[Omni]

I second that [or third]

 

What people need to remember with ppc, is that its a "paid exit" system - you want people to click on a link and leave your site rather than admiring how wonderful it looks.

Fast loading, lots of links and no frills are best - and guess what, thats exactly what those pages are.

 

[uncle]

I see clicking on a ppc link more as 'entering the directory' than leaving the site. If the site looks professional, I'm more likely to click on a link because I instinctively expect credible results.

I'm not talking flash intros here, just a bit more professional design.

If the site sucks at a first glance, I exit it using alt+F4.

Don't know about others though..