Is my little tool doomed to obscurity?
webwright: Short answer... yes.You have no built-in marketing, and no high-profit-per-user monetization to justify any expense to acquire visitors.You could built a big SEO-net with themed lists of expiring domain names and go with a snapnames sort of model ("pay is $10 to monitor this domain name and we'll register it FOR FREE if it comes available")...  That'd get you $10 and you could resell for a cheap registrar and make a nice margin if the names came available.  You could even send them other names via email ("You're watching technology.com - here are 20 other similar domain names you might want to monitor/snatch up").Still, commodity biz with little innovation ops, IMO.