HL2.com: LLN and LNN domain availability lists

Two decades ago I was busy hand-registering domains from droplists provided by DomainsBot, an excellent daily email service.

The rush for daily drops was competitive among those targeting dictionary words but the market was wide open for seemingly “random” combinations of letter/letter/number and letter/number/number domains. I focused on these two ranges as they were the easiest to remember, unlike other combinations such as LNL or NLN.

I developed my own domain lookup scripts to go through the full permutation range in a matter of a few minutes. At the time, WHOIS lookup gateways would not block such scripts from performing too many queries too often, and the dropcatch market was at its infancy.

I produced domain availability lists for these LLN and LNN ranges, opting to sell the lists instead of the domains. There were way too many available domains, in my view at the time, and I did register dozens of them before I decided to begin selling the domain availability lists instead. In the open market, such domains performed very well, as domain sales data from NameBio shows.

In the years that followed, all such combinations were picked up by end users and speculators alike; there’s simply no point in looking up the range for available .com, .net or .org domains, so it’s surprising to see that HL2.com has dropped. Before dropping, the domain was held for 20 years, as a 2001 registration. It changed hands several times, according to DomainTools.

The domain was promptly picked up by DropCatch where it’s in auction currently. HL2 is a shorthand for Half-Life 2, a classic FPS/adventure combo game and I foresee that HL2.com will sell for a pretty penny because of that connection.

In retrospect, I should have registered as many of these LLN .com, .net, and .org domains as I could but after selling dozens of them on eBay, domain forums, and directly, I felt that my earnings to cost ratio was substantial.

Good luck to the bidders in the HL2.com auction!