August: My Domain Name Renewals (571) And Drops (67)

Like every month I go through my domains to see what to renew and what not to. This month I renewed 571 domains and dropped 67 of them. So I dropped about 10.5% of the total 638 domain names that I had expiring in August.

These are the domains I renewed in August for a total of 571:

.com	293
.net	5
.org	67
.info	154
.biz	11
.us	41

Here are the domains I dropped in August by extension for a total of 67:

.com	20
.net	3
.org	7
.info	22
.biz	2
.us	13

And here is the percentage of total domains that I dropped by extension:

.com	6.4%
.net	37.5%
.org	9.5%
.info	12.5%
.biz	15.4%
.us	24.1%

Once again .Net and .Biz have a small sample but I never was a big fan of .net and August is not a “.biz” month. I have very few .net domains.

These monthly numbers are more or less representative of my portfolio. Al lot more than July. I have more .com, .org and .info, then .biz and .us and then a few .net and some New gTLDs and of course some .gr domains that I don’t list here.

I estimate that I saved about $650 in August from renewals. That is money I can spend to buy a couple of quality .com domains that are cheap such as IntelligentBaby.com. And a few New gTLDs if I can find any lately such as wood.furniture.

What did I renew? Here is a small sample:

• .com: Subsequently.com, CelebrityMag.com, GlassAquarium.com, WatchMyDog.com
• .biz: pal.biz, ntm.biz
• .org: CoventGarden.org, Still.org, Worms.org
• .info: MVP.info, Charity.info, Room.info, Advise.info
• .us: Hellenic.us, Linear.us, Siesta.us

Why? Because I liked these domains above. 🙂 Do you?

So what did I drop? I dropped:

• weak 2 word .info, .biz and .us domains: atwork.info
• average or bad letter 3-letter .us or .biz or .info domains: wjt.us, qbc.us
• domains for which I own the .com version: dvdrip.biz
• unsellable domains with no traffic
• domains with suffixes

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. I own dvdrip.com so dvdrip.biz is pretty much useless.

Some of these 67 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. I have to do my taxes every month here in Greece and the tax office isn’t making it easy to do them either.

In June I dropped 193 out of 807 domains or 23.9%. Click here to see what domains I dropped in July and why.

In July I dropped 130 (11.5%) and renewed 996 domains. Click here to see what domains I renewed and dropped in August and why.

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. I also drop domains for new technology ideas that I registered for example back in 2003 but never panned out and never will.

In most of the months I am dropping about 10%. I am trying to keep up with the registry renewal increases and since I am always buying domains I need to drop at least 10% of my domains. That is to keep the renewal costs stable.

July was at 11.5% while June was at a remarkable 23.9%. August is at 10.5%. I always reevaluate, keeping the best domains and dropping the worst. I am really proud that I was able to let go more than 350 domains in the past 3 months.

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 few months. Some of these .biz are now free. I dropped about 100 bad 3-letter .us, .biz and .info domains in the past 3 months.

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 have dropped more than 80 2-word .us and .biz domains.

In terms of sales, .com and .org have produced solid 5-figure sales in 2013 and are still going strong in 2014. I will soon start publishing sales reports as I have many requests from readers.