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.
When the shift first happened, the bid deadline on DropCatch.com was 7:30 am for me. I was quickly looking at the pending delete lists for domain names deleting that day and scrambling to place backorders before the bid deadline. This wasn’t a huge deal because we are fairly early risers. It wasn’t ideal, but I made the pending deletes the first priority so I wouldn’t miss the deadline.
The issue was exacerbated a bit by the end of Daylight Savings time change. With the time change, the bid deadline is now 6:30am for me, which isn’t really doable for me in a productive way. Considering I’ve had many high margin sales from domain names I grabbed on the drop uncontested, it’s an important source of inventory for me and not an afterthought.
The first couple of days haven’t been ideal, so I am changing up how I do things. Instead of scrambling to review pending delete lists before everything else, I am saving those for last and looking at the next day’s inventory. Unfortunately, this means the daily Dropping.pro emails with pending delete domain names arrives a day late, but in theory, the best of those highlighted domain names should have been able to be spotted with the other tools the day before.
I am still trying to figure out the best solution for me to be sure I backorder what I want, but this seems to be working so far. I am sure it will work great until I miss out on a big domain name I overlooked! If that happens, hopefully it’s caught by a platform that has open participation.
