As usual, I was tooling around on domize.com and stumbled across a niche domain name that had recently expired. I immediately checked the whois at GoDaddy and verified the domain expired 67 days ago and was currently in a redemption period.
I setup an alert in my phone a few minutes later to remind me to check up on the status of the expiring domain name on a daily basis. A few minutes after that I realized how bad I wanted this particular domain and decided this “hunt and peck” strategy just wasn’t going to cut it.
A quick Google search led me to this 4 year old post that discusses the journey of one man’s frugal attempt to secure a domain name using GoDaddy’s backordering service. Long story short and nearly $400 later, he got the domain name but not through GoDaddy. Although he later sold the site to Microsoft (cha-ching), the initial failed backorder wasn’t very encouraging.
Nevertheless, I perused the 700 or so comments from his original post and read several other reviews of the GoDaddy service elsewhere on the web. The consensus suggest that if the domain name you are trying to snag is currently registered through GoDaddy, using their own backordering service gives you a “one up” on all of the other drop catch services out there. Besides that, it’s also one of the cheapest.
Considering the official domain name drop is just around the corner, I decided to pony up the $19 and give the GoDaddy backordering service a shot. I’ll soon find out whether or not that was a Derek Fisher game 4 shot or rather no shot in hell 
.
Stay tuned… I’ll keep you posted.
UPDATE #1: I received an email yesterday (7/24) from GoDaddy indicating the status of the domain I’m chasing changed from redemption period to pending delete. According to most sources on the web, the 5 day countdown to the domain drop is on! Fingers crossed.
UPDATE #2: Today (7/30) was the drop. GoDaddy failed. Lesson learned. Backorder domain names using multiple services instead. SnapNames, NameJet, and Pool.com just to name a few.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Did you have any luck? I am trying the same thing. I backordered an expired name on Godaddy.
Not yet anyways. The domain is still in the redemption period but should drop any day now. It’s a little nerve-racking to say the least.
Let me get this straight: a domain registered with godaddy.com was expiring. You backordered it and godaddy didn’t hold onto the name for you to purchase.
I thought registrars could just automatically transfer the name to whomever they wanted rather than letting them drop??
Hi Grant. Those were my thoughts exactly until I was proven otherwise. Apparently, some of the other domain name drop services are quicker to the punch even if the domain you are trying to grab is backordered through the existing registrar.