Patience dot net
In this world of “ZOMG you don’t own your real name as a domain name?”, I fought very hard to decide if I really cared enough to get my real name as a .com or .net. I found that as time went on, it would be better to have it, at least in my back pocket, rather than regretting it later on in life.
Checking out the domains with my real name in them, they were all taken. Even if I tried different iterations of my name, they were all taken. However, I tried with Godaddy.com which doesn’t give you detailed information about the sites unless you do a little extra work. Since I’m on a Mac, I pulled up a terminal and did a “whois” on each of the names. Some of them expired in 2010, but one expired a week from when I first checked. Checking the site, there was no content, no forwarding, nothing at all. It was a dead link to a seemingly abandoned domain.
So my first reaction was to run out and ask the person who owned the domain if they wanted to transfer it. My immediate second thought was that people are probably not as nice and giving as I am and would probably ask for a ton of money had they known that someone wanted to buy it. Instead, I decided to be patient and wait for the domain to expire. It did. It wasn’t renewed.
However, it took a while to revert back to being available. I did some research and found that there are grace periods for when domains expire. If person A buys a domain from company Z, company Z can still hold it for about 30 days. Past that, it can be let go. To be honest, I didn’t read any ICANN documentation on this procedure, but it seems to be the consensus of how it worked.
Thirty days went by. Forty-five days. Longer. After a while, I decided that one of two things are going to happen: the domain’s going to expire on its own, or the people that own it are going to want to dump it, so I sent out a charming email to the registrars asking if they would be interested in transferring the name to me.
This is the response I got:
Dear Mike,
The domain name is no longer in active use. We would be willing to release the name to you for $995.00. Please let us know if this is acceptable and how you would like to proceed.
Thank you.
–
Best Regards,
Christine
Yes, you read that right….$995.
I used webmail to respond so I don’t have my actual response but it went something like this:
Christine,
That is a laughable amount for a web site that obviously has no true value. It’s a site for someone’s name, unless they themselves have a ton of money to blow on a business, it’s not going to sell for that much. I’ll be willing to give you $200 for it, but no more.
Mike
And I never heard from them again.
It had become a habit of checking the web site’s domain with whois every once in a while. Today, I checked it on a whim and I had to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. The name was released. I actually went “OMG!” out loud and quickly snagged it for myself, saving $969 in the process.
So, be patient when it comes to domains expiring. Emailing the person who owns the domain can always be tricky. Will the person be honest and give you the domain for a fair price, or snag it for another year out of spite? I got lucky. VERY lucky. I think my email told them that there’s no real demand for that name (and I was being truthful) so they probably decided to let it go. Or, maybe the domain actually expired under their noses. I really don’t know, nor do I care.
I will say this: if you have ANY reason to think you may need to register your real name for something in the future, just do it. Don’t wait. Don’t let someone snag it from under you. There are Godaddy.com codes above you can use to lessen the price if you want (disclaimer: this is not an ad for Godaddy.com. People that know me know how much trouble I went through to get this).
Now, if someone can get me starman.com, that would be great. I’ve been trying for at least 6 years. I called, and he won’t sell 
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Comments
To get rickwolff.com I spent about $28 with GoDaddy to stand ready as my agent and grab it the minute it expired, which it did the day it said it did, without a grace period. I can’t picture how Terminal would have helped, but then, I think I’ve used Terminal once, and have a healthy respect (i.e., fear) for it.
Once, when I was shopping for an already-held domain name, I went to the stated site, which invited me to make a bid greater than $10. So I bid $12. Then it asked for a bid greater than, I think, $90. I declined. Is “hagglebot” a word?
Mynames.com, .net, and .org aren’t vanity plates anymore – they’re crucial marketing strategies. It’s the difference between advertising yourself on Main Street or on MailStop B5983-Z.