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Revisiting the CIRA’s TBR lists
If you had a very good “.ca” domain name, chances are you’d never let it go but life being what it is, stuff happens and as such, very good domain names pop up here and there in the CIRA’s wildly popular TBR list, every Wednesday.
TBR means “to be released” so when you spot a domain name in that list, you’re more than welcome to watch it be returned to the “available” domains on Wednesday, from 3 PM up to around 9 PM.
The trouble is, you may not be the only one looking to get your hands on the best domains, namely the shortest, those why match generic terms and those with special contextual value. Those “superstar domains” are being heavily fought over so you’re chance of registering it “manually” when it becomes available is non-existent — unless you can query the name every 1/60th of a second for hours on end.
So how do you get those “soon to be available” domain names with significant street value? You bid on them, just like everybody else. Bare Metal offers an excellent TBR monitoring service which will work for you to get the domain names you want. You only pay if they get the name on your behalf so pretty much anybody can “play the TBR game”, with Bare Metal.
Of course, if Bare Metal scores your domain name and more than one potential registrant has requested it (at Bare Metal, specifically), then if goes into an auction that can quickly bump up the price for a domain name in the tens of thousands.
As such, CIRA has allowed for Canadian registrars to offer the names they “catch” through auctions and although this system makes sense for the richer domainers, it’s a total nonsense for the average Canadian attemting to buy a relatively good “.ca” domain name — this is becoming a real problem as most of the very good names are being concentrated in the same hands, creating huge portfolios of “parked” names.
So while the CIRA presents the TBR lists as a fair way for Canadians to grab domains which aren’t required anymore by their previous owners, the reality of the TBR is more a matter of money than fairness.
If you intend to win at the TBR monitoring game (and it can happen, from time to time), you better keep in mind that the system is being predated by rich domainers who will likely have an unfair advantage of you, the average Canadian looking for a good name.
To make matters even trickier, a handful of very rich domainers also own their registrar licence so they can buy up a domain, try it for seven (7) days and if it performs well, they can keep it and if it doesn’t, they just file for a full refund and return it to be “released” again. Since these domainers (who also happen to be registrars) are free to check the performance of as many domains as they want, with this scheme, almost all good TBRed names are likely to be grabbed before the average Canadian even has a chance to get to them.
So the Canadian TBR system isn’t fair.
It’s a nice try but it’s profoundly broken in the sense that money will almost always win over “a fair chance for everyone”. But that shouldn’t stop you from monitoring TBR names, especially if you’re seasoned in a specialty niche, because even rich domainers may miss “niched names”, once in a while.
For instance, on this very day, the following names are scheduled to be released:
Several more quality names, out the thousands being released, might turn out being excellent buys. You have to look at the list by yourself to locate those which relate with your areas of interest.
Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to grab the hottest domains because sometimes, a niche portfolio will do just fine to bring you that much closer to financial freedom.
Tags: cira, tbr, to be released, soon to be made available, domain names, domains, domainers, registrars, canada, dot ca, ca, dropped domains, expiring domain names, expired domains
One Response to “Revisiting the CIRA’s TBR lists”
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This is a very informative post, and I agree with you completely. I found this post by typing “tbr .ca unfair” into Google, because that was exactly what I was thinking and I wanted to know if anyone else thought the same.
Well, I am really interested in purchasing a domain name when it gets released tomorrow, but after hearing that it will be made available to higher privileged people for one whole hour before it gets released to the public, I started to think that maybe I should just forget about it. This is a domain I thought of myself a few months ago, and when I tried to register it, I saw that it was about to expire, so I kept waiting for it. Now I’m pretty sure the TBR list is going to completely screw up my chances.
Anyway, what a nuissance it is. The TBR system is nothing but a free-for-all money grab for the higher ups. Welcome to Canada.