Catching the impossible

[ian]

Ian

There are probably 50 catchers out there - maybe a dozen with really top systems. 50 x £10 k is £0.5 million - I very much doubt if any name is worth that much and certainly none that many of us could realistically hope to catch.

Stephen.

Ah right, I was working on the impression of ~£9k "no win no fee"!

 

[bensd]

Ah right, I was working on the impression of ~£9k "no win no fee"!

Why would a private catcher do this for a five/six figure domain?

They might as well just load it for themselves

 

[ian]

Why would a private catcher do this for a five/six figure domain?

They might as well just load it for themselves

Erm, that is why I asked the question because it didn't make sense to me

 

[DaveP]

Erm, that is why I asked the question because it didn't make sense to me

Again you could find couple private catchers who would be willing to let you use their DAC allowance for a big fee, me being one of them. If you got deep pockets of course lol. See we would be hoping we don't catch it then.. lol

 

[Skinner]

If you could find 3-4 private catchers and "lease" their dac for the day catch or not, you could have them poll at 60ms/16.6x in 7 hour blocks, or all of them at 5x per second, giving you 15-20x per second.

This is guaranteed money for the catcher, where as going for a name themselves is a 50:1 long shot at best, this is why they would take a "lease" fee.

 

[ian]

If you could find 3-4 private catchers and "lease" their dac for the day catch or not, you could have them poll at 60ms/16.6x in 7 hour blocks, or all of them at 5x per second, giving you 15-20x per second.

This is guaranteed money for the catcher, where as going for a name themselves is a 50:1 long shot at best, this is why they would take a "lease" fee.

Fair enough and would stand a good chance, but ultimately still a massive gamble when catchers would be asking those kind of costs just to try. Can understand why, but I can't see it being a viable proposition for anyone.

 

[Edwin]

I would have thought many private catchers might be willing to hand over a day's polling for say £500 up front, based on "expected return". After all, if they have a 5% chance to catch a £10k name and a 95% chance of getting nothing (their entire system that day is dedicated to the monster name) then £500 represents the likely return anyway - in other words, would you trade £500 cash in hand for a 5% shot at £10K?

Given that, it might take a lot of negotiation and hassle, but in theory one could have up to a couple of dozen catchers all working "for you" for a name for a total outlay of £10k.

(the danger of course is they might collectively still miss it - all you're doing is stacking the odds strongly in your favour)

 

[ian]

Agreed, but unless you have script from the Denys and Grants of this world on board, the risk remains too high.

 

[ian]

Just to re-iterate, I don't have money to gamble, which is what I'd class this as, so any suggestion of taking a DAC allocation on the basis of payment regardless of whether the domain is caught or not isn't something I'd be interested in, as I cannot afford to risk company money. I'm not in for calculated risks; if that was the case, I'd do as suggested and sign up for a Nominet membership and try to obtain the current best script.

I realise that I have next to zero chance of catching the domain as things stand, so I'm trying to negotiate a deal with them directly even if it risks the domain being renewed.

 

[WaftyCrank]

To be honest I think you've had all the best options. If it was me I'd be going down the DAC hire route. Reward follows risk.

 

[SF]

Agreed, but unless you have script from the Denys and Grants of this world on board, the risk remains too high.

Why dont you just email Denys or Grant and offer them 10k?

 

[ian]

Why dont you just email Denys or Grant and offer them 10k?

Because it might be worth a lot more and they'll be going for it themselves at the time no doubt

Anyway, for this particular case, I've decided that the only way I'm going to get it is via direct negotiation which is ongoing. If that fails, and it does indeed go through the suspension process, I'll look to taking out a DAC myself and throwing all I can at it, to at least give me a better (but still next to impossible) chance that public catching.

(just to add, £10k was a hypothetical price I used as an example on the first page; and doesn't relate to the domain itself)

 

[SF]

Ok so can we now close the thread

 

[ian]

Please do, it has gone ever so slightly off topic, but the original question I guess didn't need 4 pages