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As of today, I'm no longer going to be involved in drop catching. It took me several months to make this tough choice, and there are a number of reasons that collectively contributed to the decision. I've summarised that side of things at length on a blog post so I won't repeat myself here...
http://www.webmastering.co.uk/domain-names/why-im-giving-up-on-domain-drop-catching/
Firstly, I'd like to thank all the drop catchers I've worked with over the years, both the current partners and those that have since "moved on" to other aspects of the industry - I won't embarrass you by naming you all individually... Simply put, without your help, Memorable Domains would not be in the shape it is today! Thank you, sincerely.
Secondly, I wanted to share a few tips that might perhaps help somebody. In the last year, we managed to pick up just shy of 50% of the drops we went after, in the cases where the domains actually dropped, so clearly something was "working".
A) You can never work with too many drop catchers!
At times we worked with up to 15 companies in parallel. The only things they all had in common were that payment was success-based, they were willing to accommodate billing periodically in arrears (once or twice a month) and that they were able to let us book names well in advance of drops (typically several weeks or even a couple of months, but I also booked names with catchers that worked a week ahead)
B) Paying invoices promptly on time, every time, is probably the single best thing you can do to build confidence in a working relationship
If I was at my desk, I usually tried to pay invoices within a couple of hours of receiving them, and 95%+ of the time we were able to get the funds out within 24 hours. That in turn meant that a number of catchers extended a more "bespoke" service than they might otherwise have offered since they knew without a shadow of a doubt that they wouldn't get "messed around".
C) Build your own drop lists
I've posted many times in the past about how we ended up developing our own drop lists (now about 120,000 terms strong - please note that we have no plans to sell these) by working methodically niche by niche and industry by industry to proactively identify "commercially meaningful" words and phrases. That let us get well ahead in the bookings, up to 2 months or more - which in turn meant that we were able to secure a monopoly of slots across the board (i.e. with ALL public catchers) for many names. While that doesn't guarantee success - far from it - it at least makes it more "probable".
Good luck, everyone!
http://www.webmastering.co.uk/domain-names/why-im-giving-up-on-domain-drop-catching/
Firstly, I'd like to thank all the drop catchers I've worked with over the years, both the current partners and those that have since "moved on" to other aspects of the industry - I won't embarrass you by naming you all individually... Simply put, without your help, Memorable Domains would not be in the shape it is today! Thank you, sincerely.
Secondly, I wanted to share a few tips that might perhaps help somebody. In the last year, we managed to pick up just shy of 50% of the drops we went after, in the cases where the domains actually dropped, so clearly something was "working".
A) You can never work with too many drop catchers!
At times we worked with up to 15 companies in parallel. The only things they all had in common were that payment was success-based, they were willing to accommodate billing periodically in arrears (once or twice a month) and that they were able to let us book names well in advance of drops (typically several weeks or even a couple of months, but I also booked names with catchers that worked a week ahead)
B) Paying invoices promptly on time, every time, is probably the single best thing you can do to build confidence in a working relationship
If I was at my desk, I usually tried to pay invoices within a couple of hours of receiving them, and 95%+ of the time we were able to get the funds out within 24 hours. That in turn meant that a number of catchers extended a more "bespoke" service than they might otherwise have offered since they knew without a shadow of a doubt that they wouldn't get "messed around".
C) Build your own drop lists
I've posted many times in the past about how we ended up developing our own drop lists (now about 120,000 terms strong - please note that we have no plans to sell these) by working methodically niche by niche and industry by industry to proactively identify "commercially meaningful" words and phrases. That let us get well ahead in the bookings, up to 2 months or more - which in turn meant that we were able to secure a monopoly of slots across the board (i.e. with ALL public catchers) for many names. While that doesn't guarantee success - far from it - it at least makes it more "probable".
Good luck, everyone!
. Enjoy your break.
