OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Like every month I go through my domains to see what to renew and what not to. This month I dropped the most domains I have ever dropped. I dropped 193 domains out of the 807 I had expiring in June. I don’t count the few (less than 5%) domains I have in Moniker because that is a mess and I had renewed those well ahead of the new system just to be sure.
So in June I dropped 193 out of 807 domains or 23.9%.
Here are the domains I dropped by extension:
| .com | 9 |
| .net | 8 |
| .org | 13 |
| .info | 2 |
| .biz | 50 |
| .us | 111 |
Yes, I dropped a lot of .us and .biz: 161 domains in total. More on that below.
These are the domains I renewed in June:
| .com | 254 |
| .net | 4 |
| .org | 82 |
| .info | 26 |
| .biz | 151 |
| .us | 96 |
And here are the percentage of total domains that I dropped by extension:
| .com | 3.4% |
| .net | 66.6% |
| .org | 13.7% |
| .info | 7.1% |
| .biz | 24.9% |
| .us | 53.6% |
.Net has a small sample but I never was a big fan of .net. I have very few .net domains.
And that is why I don’t especially like .web. I know it is going to do well and I will buy a few but it reminds me too much of .net.
These numbers are not representative of my portfolio. It happens that a lot of .biz and .us domains expire in June. Most were caught over the years as most .biz and .us expire in March and April each year and drop a couple of months later. I have more .com, .org and .info, then .biz and .us and then all the others including New gTLDs.
I estimate that I saved about $1750 in June from renewals. That is money I can spend to buy a couple of quality .com domains such as: WorldVideo.com, ResearchBlog.com and IslandHouses.com. And a few New gTLDs if I can find any lately…
It may seem that I have too many .biz and .us and maybe I do compared to other domainers but my portfolio includes what I think are good domains such as:
summer.us
greece.biz
defence.us
scotland.biz
startup.biz
parallel.us
used.biz
comics.biz
group.biz
imagine.us
So what did I drop? I dropped:
- weak 2 word .biz and .us domains: translationservices.biz, hometheatre.us
- average or bad letter 3-letter .us domains: qqg.us, qql.us
- domains for which I own the .com version: dvdrip.us
- unsellable domains with no traffic: areacodes.biz (I think Rick owns areacodes.info and areacodes.us so I am curious of what he does), blackhair.us (Mike Berkens owns the .com), ellada.biz (Means Greece in Greek but I kept the much better Greece.biz), gousgounis.com (I dare you to google it and see a photo)
- domains for obsolete tech: vcdforum.com
- .org domains with suffixes: ebasket.org, mytraffic.org
And I dropped many other weak domains I have been carrying for way too long such as 7tv.info. I am dropping most of my defensive registrations (to my .com) as they don’t make much sense now with all these New gTLDs coming out.
Some of these 193 domains may have some value of maybe $50 but I can’t spend my time on these. It will cost me more to sell them than drop them.
So why am I dropping all these domains?
First of all I have been dropping about 5% of my portfolio for years now. Sometimes I find that I registered an alternative spelling or a UK spelling with a .us that doesn’t make sense. In most of the months I am at about 10%. June was at a remarkable 23.9%. I always reevaluate, keeping the best domains and dropping the worst. I am really proud that I was able to let go.
Now with the New gTLDs I expect that the value of 3 letter domains, especially bad letter combinations, will drop to reg fee. FMA dropped about 7,500 of .info and .biz domains in the past couple of months. Some of these .biz are now free. I dropped about 80 bad 3-letter .us domains this month.
Also I think that the value of the New gTLDs is in 1-word.newgtld domains that make sense as a combination. So I am applying this to the old gTLDs as well. I dropped about 40 2-word .biz domains and a few keywords that are not connected to business.
In terms of sales, .com and .org have produced solid 5-figure sales in 2013 and are still going strong in 2014.
thanks for the peak into a real world scenario many of us go thru, appreciated, good content.
I have very few .biz but I did just put in renewal/transfers for 3 of them, I am not really sure why as I NEVER get any offers on .biz but I just couldn’t let them go yet, next year probably lol…
I think that sold 1 word .biz still have value. Maybe you don’t get offers on .biz because you have so little… 🙂
What are those 3 you have? Just curious.
Maybe I don’t get offers because they are not so good lol, FiberOptic.biz, MailOrder.biz and Navigate.biz, I also have Trending.biz that I just can’t let go…
You should keep the one word domains… 😉
Nice breakdown for each TLDs.
Brave decision to drop the poor quality domains.
And someone just told me that defence is spelled defense in the US.
This is what I said: “Sometimes I find that I registered an alternative spelling or a UK spelling with a .us that doesn’t make sense. ”
The US Department of Defense owns defense.us.
You should drop every single name you already dropped, all the names listed up there, and all non .Com in your portfolio, including all your new gTLDs, Especially your 75 or so dot domains, cancel them now even before renewal time for them.
I’m saying this because you’re my friend, Zournas.
No, thanks. I might drop 10% next year.
Did you visit that last link with my 5 figure sales?
Did you see this?
“2 .org and I made a multi-domain 5 figure sale for a set of 1-2 word .biz domains.”
@Zournas
The opinion of dropping all dot biz, dot us, dot mobi, dot new gTLD is a self evident advise; it is not based on outliers.
It’s like this, if you got to Vegas to gamble, and you play a slot machine that paid a Jackpot a couple of years ago, and has the potential to pay another in the future, you’d be dumb to sit there day after day, trying to hit that jackpot.
Drop the machine, and get on the Black Jack table!
Actually you said I should drop everything except .com.
Now I should keep .net and .org?
This is not about luck. It’s about profit. If my .biz domains are making a profit (sales – renewals) then I am keeping them.
Smart move. I have had to shed about 10% in defensive registrations and especially .nets too after reading your post way back on your drop strategy. I am probably going to dump a lot of my .la domains (I jumped onto that wagon and I have quite a list of keywords) because i am not going to pay $30 for renewals. I am also going to start moving (offering for sale NOT dropping) my significant collection of last name(s) domains (Jewish, German, Italian, Nordic, English) as i have been stubborn and resistant to any ideas selling those no matter the price.
Kosta, nice clean up indeed!, actually we don’t have any .biz, .info or us, just a few .net which I think are quite good 🙂
But our portfolio at the moment is much smaller than yours, and we are extremely selective in adding new names.
I’m not so negative on .net, IMHO it depends on the keyword quality, but I haven’t added any recently, because so far I haven’t found names with a good price/quality ratio.
Forgot to say that at the moment we also own a few .org and cctld (big countries, not “exotic”), but the vast majority are .com 😉
Nice work giving broad categories to use in evaluating domains. Your discussion of international spellings has hit on something that I noticed with these new gTLDs. In the US, usually an adjective or adverb precedes the noun or verb it modifies, respectively. But in other languages, such as Spanish and French, the modifier often follows its object. If one takes a US-centered approach to these domains, which I believe is a smart strategy, then domains that are adjectives or adverbs are considerably less valuable than those that are nouns (I can’t think of any verb domains).
Using actual domains as examples, I would take mobile.marketing over marketing.mobile, free.tickets over tickets.free, or luxury.diamonds over diamonds.luxury (sorry Monica, oh wait you got both) any day. Now domains that are adjectives or adverbs do work better when the second-level domain is verb. The ridiculously high-priced fly.cheap, for example, would be one. But the quantity of such combinations that are also valued keywords are much fewer in number than those that can be created with noun domains. Even with the introduction of Hummingbird, the search traffic for “cheap flights” is going to be much greater than that for “fly cheap.” I cannot think of one domain I have registered in which the top-level domain is not a noun.
I fail to see, therefore, how domains such as .black, .blue, .red, and .pink got registered much less have the insane prices they want to charge. Pink.porn is much better than porn.pink, black.hiphop makes sense whereas hiphop.black does not. I think that with a good site the search engines will find both, but the one that is like actual English will enjoy better SEO performance and longer staying power than the other, presuming a relevant site of decent quality is up. Without such a site, then SEO performance might actually degrade as the EMD (Exact Match Domain) penalty will kick in for the keyword contained in the domain.
I am too following the US-centered approach registering new gtlds.
As far as .blue, .red, and .pink is concerned I did register just a few like:
club.red
team.pink
wear.blue
Take a look at this:
Yes, it does appear you have quite a few .biz, .us and .info domains which with all the new TLDs could be a challenge to sell. When I started in domaining for some reason I found myself regging quite a few .biz domains. I believe I only have two remaining .biz, zero .us and maybe about ten .info. My .net portfolio is about a third of what it was several years ago when I had many defensive .Nets. Of course many of those .net drops got picked up by someone. You probably know I am heavily invested in .TV but am focusing more on those where video makes sense with the keyword rather than it merely being some search phrase with .TV slapped on the end. The new TLDs create too much competition for .Nets and other alternative TLDs which are multi-word. At some point I might dip my toes in the water on some geo or real estate TLDs but I don’t see the rush. Selling non-.COM domains for four figures is difficult so you can’t spend too much money on a TLD with a questionable end user market.
It seems that most domains I drop get picked up as well. I don’t think they are making a fortune… 🙂
I’ve seen people sit on Slot Machines, losing thousands of dollars because they are concerned that someone else will take the slot machine if they left, and hit a jackpot. Let the slot machine go for the next sucker.
I always hear people say only buy .com but when these same people let us take a look inside their portfolio it is filled with tons of alternate extensions.
Since we now have a breakdown of what you dropped can you give us a breakdown of what you have sold based on extension.
Thanks for this info.
I had a breakdown of 5-figure sales here:
I should do a 4-figure post now…
I can also tell you that I have sold about 1000 .biz domains in 2 bulk deala for 6-figures in the past 2+ years.
Nice of you to share a peak into your portfolio. However, you should take your own advice and drop all of the .biz. If you truly believe that “there is no such thing as a premium .xyz domain”, then you are simply fooling yourself on the .biz names because you already own them. Completely worthless garbage, no matter what the keyword. Same with two word .us or .info for that matter. They will only drop in value as they are on par with new gTLDs saturating the market.
I have very little 2-word .biz .info .us and .org.
Some .biz have value. There are very very few greece.tld domains that make sense. 4 maybe? New gtlds don’t allow countries. .Info is reserved as well.
Domains that go well with business I am keeping.
thanks a lot for that content +++
Garbage of someone maybe gem to another ..who knows ?
Thanks for sharing.
I’m new in Domain investing.
Currently I’m holding around 200 domain name, 50% .com, rest are new gtld.
Do you see any value in entertainment.watch ?
Should I keep it or sell it ?
Regards
Yan
If you can, sell.
Thanks for the advice, I found your blog very useful