barney

I came very close to losing a pair of treasured domain names this week. I’ve been sitting on (not squatting, mind you) these two domains for a few years. Boy was I shocked when I logged into my favorite cheap domain registrar to find the two domain names missing from my control list. While the domains expired back in April, I never received advance notice. Fearing the worst, I quickly checked WHOIS…
Seeing that the two domains were marked "Pending Delete," I quickly sent an email to my registrar to find out what happened and if it was indeed possible to hold onto the domains before they were released to the wild.
A kind support rep at the registrar quickly responded to my note, with the frightening news...

Since the domains are now in PendingDelete, they can no longer be redeemed and renewed. They should be released for public registration within 24 hours, at which point you can register them as new domains.

Being new to the world of expired domains, I scrambled for information. I found Mike Davidson's article How to Snatch an Expiring Domain to be quite helpful and decided to roll the dice with Enom's "Club Drop" service.
To make a long story short, Enom's Club Drop allowed me to grab the domains as soon as they expired. While the registration on each domain cost me more than double the price at my favorite registrar, I was not hesitant to fork over an extra thirty bucks or so in order to hold onto the domains.
It didn't take me long to figure out why I failed to receive notice about the expiring domains. I'll point the blame squarely on my service provider's notoriously overzealous spam filters. Time to whitelist my registrar.
Now I'm not a domain name speculator, by any means, but I will cop to holding a handful of cards. I'll get to develop this pair of aces - one of these days. After all, it's not too often you get the chance to play a hand a second time.