I’m a garbage miner. Everyday, I go to the garbage dump of expiring domains to try to find one tiny nugget of ‘gold’. While this is fun, I can’t do it without tools. Recently, I was given a complimentary membership to try a tool called dotDB. So, today I’ll talk about my experience in using it to research domains.
For a start, I just enter the name of an expiring domain and press the Search button, then dotDB spits out all related domains it can find. The first row displays domains with exactly the same name but on different extensions, and the remaining rows list domains with similar names on .com as well as other extensions.
Since the names are clickable, I can use a browser add-on called Snap Links to select and open their websites all in one shot. By looking at their website contents, I can determine if they are potential buyers for the expiring domain. My reasoning is that if I own the .com domain, owners of similar domains may want to upgrade to mine some time in the future.
dotDB supports a large number of extensions, and three of them are of particular interest: .io, .ai, and .cn. The .io and .ai extensions are popular with startups, particularly those in the tech and AI areas. The recent upgrade from Close.io to Close.com is a good example showing these extensions are candidates for upgrade to .com. Also, I am interested in .cn because I want to explore the China market.
The “exclude” option is useful when you see many unrelated results in your search. For example, when I was evaluating the domain OneCosy.com, dotDB showed 106 domains. I was excited. But then I found out many were related to eco system. After I entered “ecosys” in Exclude, only one match showed up, giving me a better picture about the potential of this domain.
As I look at some 5,000 expiring domains everyday, I need automation. dotDB provides an API for those who can program. Although I have not explored this feature, I do have a simple program in Access database to display dotDB search results in my browser automatically to save time.
In conclusion, dotDB is a simple yet powerful domain research tool, and it has become one of the tools I use everyday.
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Vito says
June 12, 2019 at 11:44 amThis is a great tool.
Thank you for sharing this Kassey.