Brute-forcing the future: LLLLLLLLLL .com’s
Six or seven years ago, I saw a market for short, easy to memorize .com domains. Short, as in 3 characters in length, including one or more numbers; because the LLL .com namespace was long gone.
I wrote a Perl script that would go through all the permutations of 000 to ZZZ - all 46,656 of them (26 letters plus 10 digits, to the 3rd power) and it’d look up the .com of that generated string. This technique is called “brute-forcing”. To my surprise, hundreds of them were available.
Back then, domain registrations were finally cheap. GoDaddy was one of the first affordable new era registrars, and I believe that I was paying $12 for each registration. Later on, I got a reseller account with Stargate and the cost dropped to less than $7.
It was a non-brainer. I registered dozens of 3-character .com domains, then I became picky: I’d only select the LLN or the LNN flavor, simply because it’s easier to remember KP3.com or T11.com instead of 8SP.com or 7V4.com
Many of them were sold on eBay at $50 a pop, others reached triple digit status there or on various domain forums. Others, were sold in private through various inquiries. Companies offering parking pages were non-existent back then; I simply forwarded each domain to an inquiry form. There were so many of them available on a given day, that I started giving away free lists of available domains.
Time passed by and things have changed - there are no more 3-char .com’s that ever make it into the wild, not even for a day. The proliferation of after-market auction houses such as Sedo and Afternic and the sneaky entry of registrars into the game, made it impossible for such a thing to continue happening.
Eventually, entrepreneurs and domain speculators moved onto the next thing: LLLL .com domains. That is, four letters (A to Z) regardless of letter quality. It made sense that somehow, these longer but still short domains would be valuable in the future. Not too long ago, all LLLL .com combinations were registered. All 456,976 of them (26 letters to the 4th power).
The fact is, hundreds if not thousands of these domains were registered en masse by speculators, attempting to capitalize on this apparent “craze” of LLLL mania. The fact is, several good letter LLLL .com’s drop daily and are offered via auction houses and drop-catching services. The fact is, one day not too long from now, thousands of LLLL .com domains will drop within a few days of each-other.
Artificial bubbles do burst eventually.
There is a trend in the domain market - much like in the stock market - to facilitate sales via the spreading of rumors. The difference is, the pump and dump techniques of the stock market are punishable by law. So what is the current rumor in the realm of domain speculators? That 5-Letter (LLLLL) .com’s is the next big thing.
Give me a break.
OK, so I might own a few myself. One that pops to mind is Glute.com and it’s a valid dictionary word. It’s that big muscle that forms my butt-cheek. There is a difference between being an ass and making oneself an ass in public. And LLLLL .com’s being the next best thing since sliced bread, is exactly a manifestation of that.
No, I won’t be going through 11,881,376 permutations of LLLLL .com’s (26 letters to the 5th power) in order to find the ones that are available. I can simply select the few valid, dictionary words of 5 letters and look them up for availability - or not! Because most valid dictionary words are already gone, folks.
You won’t be seeing me in the LLLLLLLLLLLL .com arena, a couple of years from now. I have better things to do than be a lemming of wishful things that never happened in my time.