For many years, I’ve had a pretty standard morning routine for my business. I take time first thing in the morning to review upcoming auctions at the expiry and drop catching platforms. I use tools like Dropping.pro and ExpiredDomains.net to identify targets of interest before placing bids or backorders. When I’m at home, I take my time and this can go for an hour or two, but I can speed it up when necessary.

Last month, the bidding deadline for pending delete domain names was changed from 18:00 UTC to 12:00 UTC. This six hour time difference has posed a bit of a challenge for me, and it has changed my morning routine in some ways.

Right of the Dot (ROTD) will be holding the domain name auction at the NamesCon conference next month. The live auction will take place on November 11 at 4pm (eastern) at Ice Palace Studios in Miami. Auction bidders will be able to participate in person at the venue or they can place their bidding online.

The auction pre-bidding is now open at bid.rotd.com, and ROTD is continuing to add domain names to the auction inventory. At the moment, there are more than 300 domain names listed for sale. Some of the highlighted domain names include Borrow.com, Fare.com, Beg.com, HomeService.com, Edinburgh.com, and CapeTown.com. I understand that early bidding activity will help ROTD determine which domain names are selected for the live portion of the auction.

The time has changed for placing backorders on pending delete .com and .net domain names. If you’re accustomed to placing backorders in the morning, the deadline is now earlier than it was. The change went into effect today at backorder platforms.

DropCatch posted an article about the update a few weeks ago with full details. NameJet also has information about the time change on its website. Each platform may have its own backorder deadline, but the changes were dictated by a change at Verisign, the registry for .com and .net domain names.

In short, the backorder deadline for deleting .com and .net domain names is earlier than it was by a few hours, and if you didn’t note the change before, you probably missed the backorder deadline today.

I was recently going back and forth in a competitive domain name auction. My initial research that morning had given me an amount I felt the domain name was worth. This intel helped me bracket an amount I was comfortable spending.

I received a couple of outbid emails, and the high bid was close to the maximum amount I felt comfortable spending. Instead of bidding once more, I did some cursory research to see what companies existed in that brand space. I opened several websites that appeared to be different companies operating on a similar brand name. One thing stuck out to me – all had the same unique favicon. I stopped bidding and lost the auction.