OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Like every month I go through my domains to see what to renew and what not to. I am a bit late on this report. So, in October I renewed 476 domains and dropped 49 of them. So I dropped about 9.3% of the total 525 domain names that I had expiring.
In September I had 757 domains in total to renew so you can see that my renewals fluctuate month to month.
These are the domains I renewed in October for a total of 476:
| .com | 236 |
| .net | 3 |
| .org | 38 |
| .info | 184 |
| .biz | 5 |
| .us | 10 |
Here are the domains I dropped in October by extension for a total of 49:
| .com | 3 |
| .net | 3 |
| .org | 1 |
| .info | 37 |
| .biz | 4 |
| .us | 1 |
And here is the percentage of total domains that I dropped by extension:
| .com | 1.3% |
| .net | 50% |
| .org | 2.6% |
| .info | 16.7% |
| .biz | 44.4% |
| .us | 9.1% |
Drop percentages for .com and .org are very low. I started doing these aggressive drops in October 2013 so I reached a month where I have dropped pretty much what I should have dropped. .Com and .org and selling very good and also have traffic so I am keeping them.
.Info is taking the biggest hit but I do own a lot and the drop percentage is almost the same as last month (16.5%).
Once again .Net, .Us and .Biz have a small sample but I never was a big fan of .net and October is not a .us or .biz month. I have very few .net domains and that why I am not too keen on getting any .web next year.
I don’t have as many .biz as I used to mainly because I have sold over 1000 .biz in the past few years to a single .biz domain investor. Can you guess who that is? 🙂
These monthly numbers are not exactly representative of my portfolio. August more representative. I have more .com, .org and .info, then .biz and .us and then a few .net and New gTLDs and of course some .gr domains that I don’t list here. October, just like September, is a .info month as this is the month that the original .info (from the September 2001) start dropping. Most drop in November so I have even more in November.
I estimate that I saved about $450 in October from renewals. That is not a lot but I always look at x10: $4500 saved over the next 10 years. When I buy domains I intent to keep them for at least 10 years.
This is money I can spend to buy a couple of quality .com domains that are cheap such as Federations.com and PopClub.com. And a few New gTLDs if I can find any lately such as greek.city.
What did I renew? Here is a small sample:
- .com: Programmable.com, TwilightSky.com, InternetEvents.com, WorldVideo.com, KeySecurity.com)
- .net: –
- .org: Odyssey.org, Couriers.org
- .info: Portfolio.info, Conferences.info, Hallo.info
- .biz: Hellenic.biz
- .us: Master.us
Why? Because I think that these domains are good. Some may have traffic and/or have received offers in the past.
So what did I drop? I dropped:
- weak 2 word .net .info, .biz and .us domains: TicketExpress.net
- average or bad letter 3-letter .us or .biz or .info domains: flj.info, khj.info, yfa.biz, rzm.biz
- domains for which I own the .com version: OnlineDomains.info, OnlineDomain.us, Functionality.biz
- unsellable domains with no traffic
- domains with suffixes or prefixes
- non-com domains that end with -ing and -ed: Knowing.info
- niche products that don’t sell well online: WildCherry.info
- plurals that don’t work well
- words that don’t make sense on their own
- long 2 word niche domains
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 OnlineDomains.com so OnlineDomains.info is pretty much useless to me. And I own Functionality.com so I dropped Functionality.biz.
Some of these 49 dropped 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. And selling 49 domains individually can be a nightmare. And most will not even sell so I would probably be wasting my time. And 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 (23.9%) and renewed 614 domains. Click here to see what domains I dropped in June and why.
In July I dropped 130 (11.5%) and renewed 996 domains. Click here to see what domains I renewed and dropped in July and why.
In August I dropped 67 (10.5%) and renewed 571 domains. Click here to see what domains I renewed and dropped in August and why.
In September I dropped 118 domains (15.6%) and renewed 639 domain names. Click here to see what domains I renewed and dropped in September 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. I explained what I am dropping and why above. I also drop domains for new technology ideas that I registered for example back in 2003 but never panned out and never will. Some I keep with uncertain future. In October 2013 I increased my threshold at 10%. The average so far has been even higher than that.
In most of the months I am dropping about more than 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 and increase portfolio quality at the same time.
I have been more aggressive lately and I am trying to drop some of the domains that I am more of a collector than an investor. I stop and think on each domain: who would ever buy this domain and why?. If I can’t think of anyone then I drop it. I search google to find other people using the words on businesses and if I can’t find any then I drop the domain.
July was at 11.5% while June was at a remarkable 23.9%. September is at 15.6%. I always reevaluate, keeping the best domains and dropping the worst. I am really proud that I was able to let go more than 500 domains in the past 4 months. I really tried to make it above 15% in September. As I said October is a month revisited so 9.3% is good.
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 125+ bad 3-letter .us, .biz and .info domains in the past 5 months. I try to follow the following consensus from 3character.com as to determine what 3 letter domains to drop:
“General concensus states that the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T are considered premium letters. Other lesser high quality letters include: J, K, U, V, W. Lower quality letters include: Q, X, Y, Z.”
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 100 2-word .us and .biz domains. If the domain name doesn’t make sense with .biz or .us I drop it. e.g Adult domains are really bad with .biz.
In terms of sales, .com and .org have produced solid 5-figure sales in 2013 and are still going strong in 2014.
Coming soon: all my .info sales from 2003 up to 2013 and a guide explaining step by step how to determine what domains to drop and what domains to renew.
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Konstantinos,
“To drop or not to drop” is the hard decision every domainer faces from time to time. sometimes i check if my drops are taken by an enduser. hopefully never seen such a thing.:)
You shouldn’t let yourself be afraid of that, honestly. I’ve lost track of the number of domains I’ve dropped that are now owned by end users — frequently in use as developed websites.
Remember, just because an end user buys the domain doesn’t mean that they would have bought it from you at an acceptable asking price. Many a website is built on a $10 domain — even a good name. Yet it doesn’t follow from that that the person would have chosen to buy that same domain for $100. Instead they might have picked something else at the minimum price.
It is worth dropping 1 domain you might have sold for $100 if you’re really dropping 10+ domains, 9 of which nobody would have bought.
You are right. And I don’t ever sell at $100. Not even $500 these days unless payment is through paypal and I was going to drop the domain name anyway.
Wire transfer related fees are very big here in Greece and paperwork for each sale is enormous. It doesn’t make sense to me to sell at $100.
Many of my domains are taken by domainers and some from end-users. I always laugh when I see a domainer get my domain because I know it’s worthless, with no traffic and no buyers! 🙂
😀
Some domainers may be interested in your sloppy seconds. Maybe next month create a post listing the 49 (or so) domains you will drop and sell them all as a bulk/lot deal for $500 with Paypal as only option?
Maybe they will be.
I have thought about it but I am not sure I want to do it.
I like when you write that you save money by dropping.
But lets face it you would really save money if you never registered those weak domains.
Some people have trouble letting go.
I think that recognizing a mistake will help you avoid future mistakes.
And 2003-2004 was a different landscape, anyway.
PS Unfortunately most of us sometimes register what we should not
Konstantinos – love this section, as it makes me REALLY think hard about what i want to keep.
I am constantly stuck on rather meaningless and low quality character 4 letter .coms (mainly CVVV, VCVV, etc). Any suggestions on what to do with those?
Thanks Oren.
I usually consider a lot of things. Traffic, keyword searches, past offers, other extensions registered etc.
Already considered. Aside from some matching cctlds of non-businesses, there isn’t much of anything. Would you dump them?
If you got none of these then probably yes.
But I can’t say for sure unless I see them so be careful with my advice. 🙂
Want to see them?! How can i get 5 minutes of your time to pick your brain?? 🙂
Sure. Send them over.