I've got so many ideas about business ventures that I'd like to try, there is no way I will get to them all. It's challenging enough to manage the few things that I do. To get some of these things off my mind and help me focus, I'd like to offer them up to anyone who would like to take them... or leave them. This is the first idea I'll be sharing this year, but I expect to unload several others. My goal here is to provide something of value, inspire additional thinking, and potentially to put ideas in the hands of people that will execute on them.
A while back, I registered 69Dollars.com when I had a thought about a development idea. We've all let domains drop in the past and often times these domains are scooped up again. Companies like Namejet, Pool, and Snapnames typically start the bidding for these names at $69. Sometimes $69 might be the highest bid while other times it ramps up into the thousands of dollars. As a result, the prior owner gets zero.
My thought was to offer domainers a place to list their domains that they are not planning to renew. All domains would be listed at a flat fee of $69. Maybe a buck or two from each sale would go to the house. There would be some rules set up such as how close to the expiration date the domains need to be listed as well as other rules. I just haven't thought it through that far. My idea is to keep it simple, fair, and not turn it into anything too complex.
The main idea is to put an opportunity in front of the drop process. This would save buys some money and the prior domain owner could make a few bucks on the drop as well. Now there are some registrars such as Fabulous (and Fabulous may be the only one) that will share some of the revenue with the prior owner of the domain, but most do not.
If you're interested in picking up this idea, I'll push the domain to you for free at Moniker. If you like the idea and not the domain, then take the idea. Don't like either? That's fine too.