Internet Business with Pat Doyle

As I mentioned in my recent post on Twitter, I don’t really like being known as “Pat Doyle”. I much prefer just “Pat Doyle”. But when I went to purchase my domain name, patdoyle.com was taken. So I decided to brand myself as Pat Doyle instead.

It has always bothered me a little, though, and a couple of months ago, I noticed that patdoyle.org was available. I purchased it, thinking that using .org was better than having to stick with the “b” in my domain name.

Checked Into Buying Patdoyle.com

At the same time, I checked again for patdoyle.com, and to my surprise, it was almost ready to expire! I decided to try to get it - then I would have not only my preferred name, but it would be the .com version.

I hope that writing about what I went through to get this domain might help you to avoid some of the pitfalls I ran into.

I am really a newbie when it comes to buying domains that are already owned by someone. It’s not really something I have educated myself on. As you will see, from all the stumbling around I did before I got my domain.

Backordered Domain at GoDaddy

I backordered the domain at GoDaddy.com. They listed an option where you could backorder the domain and they would try to grab it as soon as it becomes available. I thought that was a good idea, although I was not really sure of the details of how they were going to do this.

Domain Expired and Went Up for Auction

So, I waited for the name to expire, which it did. Then, after a waiting period, it went up for auction at tdnam.com. Since I had backordered the domain at GoDaddy, they made the initial bid of $10 for me at tdnam.com. So I guess that’s what I got for the $18.99 that I paid to GoDaddy to do the backorder.

But who knows, they might have had to do more if the domain had not gone to tdnam.com.

I have bought pre-owned domains at tdnam.com before, but I had only purchased “closeouts”, which are domains that no one has bid on. These closeouts can be purchased for $15 ($5 for purchasing the domain and $10 to register it).

One of my big mistakes was not really understanding how the domain auctions worked at tdnam.com. I still don’t fully understand it.

So, I had a bid for $10, which was the starting bid. No one else bid against me right away. Then I had to wait a number of days until the auction ended. I checked it every day, and it was still at $10 and I was the high bidder. They said they would send you an email if someone outbid you.

Unfortunately, I forgot that I would not be at home on the morning when the auction ended, to check on it. In fact, I got so busy, that I forgot to check on it at all that morning.

Lost the Auction!

I checked in the afternoon, and I had been outbid - someone got it for $50! I was so disappointed.

I should have put in a higher bid, like for $200, which I was willing to pay. But I didn’t want to pay $200 when I could get it for $10. I wish they would have had a system like eBay does, where you can put in your maximum bid, but it will just bid the smaller amount for you, unless someone outbids you. I looked for something like this on tdnam, but did not see it. This is where my ignorance really hurt me. If any of you know more about this, please leave a comment with the information so we can all learn from it! Update: See end of post for more info on this.

Checked On the Winner

I checked Whois to see who bought the domain. I use DomainTools to check Whois. They have a lot of other nice tools that I use. I saw that it had been purchased by someone in the Netherlands who owns over 4,000 other domains. And his name was not Pat Doyle!

So I figured he bought it to sell. The actual domain just went to a parked page at GoDaddy. There was no link for purchasing it, so I gave up. I thought if I contacted him, he would know I really wanted it and would jack up the price. I resigned myself to using patdoyle.org instead.

Decided to Purchase from Auction Winner

Last weekend I was getting ready to start transferring this blog over to patdoyle.org, when I decided to check on patdoyle.com one more time.

This time, the domain was parked at Sedo.com, and there was a link saying “this domain is available for purchase”, or something like that. So I followed that link and it was for sale for $1,000.

I could not afford $1,000 right now, but the minimum bid was $200, so I bid $200. Later that day, I got an email that the owner had counter-offered at $700. Still too much, so I bid $250 and sent a message that this was my final bid. I truly could not afford more at this time, since I had just made some other major purchases and my bank account was pretty low.

I got a message back that my bid was accepted! So now I am just waiting for everything to be completed, and I will own patdoyle.com! I am very happy now.

Sedo will take care of all the details. I paid into Sedo’s escrow account, and they will work with both of us to get the transfer done.

Lessons Learned

I guess what this person has done is another way to make money online. Purchase domains that others have bid on, and then sell them to that person for 5 times what you paid for it. Of course, it is risky because I may have decided not to buy it at all, and maybe no other Pat Doyle would have come by for a while to purchase it.

I’m not upset that I paid this guy 5 times what he paid. He won the auction legitimately. And I am just glad to get my domain at a reasonable price.

Still, I hope you can learn from my experience, and maybe do a better job of bidding on your domain. Or maybe I should have contacted the original owner before it expired. What do you think?

Anyway, once I get the domain patdoyle.com into my own hands, I will start the process of transferring this blog over there. It could take a while to get everything done. And don’t worry, I will let you know when it happens.

Update: I wrote this post last Sunday, and now (Tuesday evening), I have the domain patdoyle.com in my account!

As I said, if you have some domain buying tips, please leave them in the comments. I would love to hear how others have gone about it.

Update: Received Email from GoDaddy

Update from GoDaddy/Tdnam:

Today (9/12) I received an email from Alon at Office of the President, GoDaddy, which said, in part:

I recently came across your blog post about purchasing PATDOYLE.COM.

In it, you mentioned wanting a proxy bidding system so you could enter the maximum you’d like to bid while not actually bidding that amount in the auction. I wanted to let you know that the TDNAM auction system does, in fact, offer this service as a default. Note the following wording posted in the Bid area:

“Enter the maximum bid you are willing to place on this domain name. Our Proxy Bidding Service automatically raises your bid by $5 anytime you’re outbid by someone else — up to your maximum bid amount.”

I apologize if you weren’t aware of this option while bidding in the original auction. Of course, it’s good to know that you did eventually get the domain name because it’s clear that it means a lot to you.

I hope this information proves helpful to you if you participate in any TDNAM auctions in the future.

Note that GoDaddy owns TDNAM; that is why they sent this email. So I’m happy to know that it is possible to enter a maximum bid at tdnam.com.

I don’t know how I missed this - I did look around for it. But hopefully this will help others who might want to bid on domains there. I might just have occasion to bid for a domain at tdnam again too - you never know.

I appreciate that Alon took the time to send me this email.

- Pat Doyle

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