This section of the forum is for discussing the business and finance issues of the t-shirt industry. Which business structure to use (sole proprietor, LLC, S Corp, etc), how to handle billing, where to register your business and get the proper licensing, etc.
The last couple of weeks I've been tinkering with possible names for my new websites. I use godaddy.com for my other names, so that's where I check the availability of domain names. I came up with about 6 or 7 really good names. So, I typed them in to see if they're available and they all were FOR 1 DAY.
Every single domain name that I checked for availability was available to purchase the day I checked it for the standard price. I thought that was great; I can check around and see what my friends think of these possible names and go from there.
So, the next day I typed in the domain name I had picked and it was still available through godaddy.com, but as a "Premium Domain". Instead of the price being the standard $9.99, it's now $1,588.00!!! I checked the other names I had typed in the day before and every name but one was turned into a premium domain for different prices ranging from $800 to $1,600!!!
I think that godaddy moniters what domain names people are typing in to there system, flags the good names people are coming up with, and if the names aren't purchased right away, they up the price to see how badly the domain is wanted.
I just thought I'd share this experience with everyone so you're aware that if you come up with a good domain name to check on godaddy, it might be wise to purchase it right away before it's no longer buyable.
-Travis
Lesson is use a non-registrar to look up names and only go to godaddy when you are ready to buy. At $10, it's worth it to buy them all up and then decide which one you want to use.
Network solutions did the same thing. Turns out, they only held it for around 5 days. Then they released it. They said it was to help the customer by making sure no one else took the name they were considering.
Some folks said they were able to call NetSol and have them release it earlier. I don't know about Godaddy as that did not happen to me when I searched names on their site, but things change all the time.
If Godaddy is doing it like NetSol did, you only have to wait a certain amount of time until they are released.
There are many recommendations to use Whois lookup, and not sites like these for looking for available names.
Here are some threads on the NetSol problems, alot of this is explained in detail in those threads: T-Shirt Forums Search Results
I think most registrars do this. It happened to me several times with Yahoo as well. Although mine was available one minute, then literally 10 mins later when I go to buy it, all 5 of them were unavailable. Now I just manually search google, and etc and then go look for it on yahoo to buy it.
Yup, happened to me too. They wanted me to pay for a middle man to negotiate the price for purchase. When I went to see the site it was a dummy advertisement site. Bull**** if you ask me.
I tried searching for the same domain name twice and it comes back as available and at the same price. So far so good... Maybe it's just a poor name.. lol.
I think this is something they just started doing. We use to use them all the time for domain names, butt the last couple of time by the time we discuss it as a company and go back to purchase it this same thing happens. Was never a problem in the past butt it has happened at least the last 4 times we have tried. I guess don't search it until you are ready to buy it.
__________________ Daniel Slatkin TroopFuel we support our troops.
Well, don't search it on a site that sells domain names. If you use an independant "who is" site, this should be easy to avoid. Someone gave links above to a safer place to check. =)
1and1 did this to me. I finally got one that I was happy with and quickly bought it but the next day they had snatched up my site name with all the others extensions like .net, .biz,.us...etc.
Godaddy's working against you 
Daniel Slatkin 
