Yet another popular question which I get asked very very often by our members… “What is up with this 3 day auctions over at SnapNames and NameJet??!” People are confused and it doesn’t really make sense if you don’t know the history of how the aftermarket operates.

Well, the guys over at SnapNames and NameJet are geniuses when it comes to squeezing out each and every penny possible out of the domains which they catch / auction off. The 3 day auctions are nothing new really and it has been going on for quite some time now.

Basically by having the domain in a 3 day auction they can do whatever they want with it most of the time as it is under their control, so they have  the domain’s DNS (name servers) pointing to their own PPC filled parking pages. Guess who pockets all that money from any clicks generated? Yup.. It’s the guys over at SnapNames, NameJet, Pool, GoDaddy, and registrars themselves.

High trafficked domains can easily generate a few hundred bucks in 3 days.. Hell, even a few thousand bucks in some cases. Few years ago the inventory of expired “linkpop” and typo / type-in domains was booming… So this is really why the 3 day auctions exist. There isn’t a “first come, first served” type of deal here, although there used to be way way early on

Nowadays the auctioned off domain inventory isn’t what it used to be, mainly because the registrars are keeping most of the high traffic (income generating) domains for themselves. They aren’t giving up shit… They got their own portfolios to bulk up.

Here is an interesting fact… A company such as SnapNames for example generated $49.2 million in total revenues at the end of 2006. Guess how much of it was from PPC revenue??! Oh… it was a lot I am sure. Maybe a third or fourth of their revenues was from parking all those dropped, caught and auctioned off domains. Little by little it always adds up! Winning and proven formula.