November: 827 Domain Name Renewals And 119 Drops (12.6%)

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 because of the holidays and NamesCon.

So, in November I renewed 827 domains and dropped 119 of them. So I dropped about 12.6% of the total 946 domain names that I had expiring.

In October I had 476 domains in total to renew so you can see that my renewals fluctuate a lot from month to month.

These are the domains I renewed in November for a total of 946:

.com	232
.net	2
.org	38
.info	428
.biz	114
.us	5
.xxx	1
.gr	7

Here are the domains I dropped in November by extension for a total of 119:

.com	11
.net	0
.org	4
.info	41
.biz	41
.us	11
.xxx	0
.gr	11

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

.com	4.5%
.net	0%
.org	9.5%
.info	8.7%
.biz	26.5%
.us	68.8%
.xxx	0%
.gr	61%

Drop percentage for .com is 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.

.Biz, .US and .Info are taking the biggest hit in the past year or more.

Once again .Net and .Us have a small sample but I never was a big fan of .net and November is not a .us  month. I have very few .net domains. Maybe about 50.

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 was more representative. I have more .com, .org and .info, then .biz and .us and then a few .net and  New gTLDs, very few .xxx and of course some .gr domains that I just started listing this month. November, just like September and October, is a .info month as this is the month that the original .info (from the September 2001) are dropping. Most were dropping in November as you can see above.

I estimate that I saved about $1,200 in October from renewals. That is not a lot but I always look at x10: $12,000 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 FeetCare.com. And a few New gTLDs if I can find any lately.

What did I renew? Here is a small sample:

• .com: Spooler.com, d-d.com, LolndonPortal.com, GreekTragedy.com, TVvideo.com, Angiology.com, LongFlight.com, Uninstaller.com, RobotRepair.com, etc.
• .net:-
• .org: happening.org, igloo.org, saturday.org, 444.org, refresh.org
• .info: evil.info, PROTEINS.INFO, cloud.info, recover.info, christopher.info, eshop.info, pepper.info, pixels.info, forbidden.info
• .biz: Colors.biz, Die.biz, Ico.biz
• .us: Champagnes.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, .org .info, .biz and .us domains: onlinesoftware.org, valetparking.info etc.
• average or bad letter 3-letter .us or .biz or .info domains: eqx.info, qct.info, axy.biz, gsz.us
• domains for which I own the .com version
• unsellable domains with no traffic: tactics.us, nickels.info
• domains with suffixes or prefixes: theparty.biz
• non-com domains that end with -ing and -ed
• niche products that don’t sell well online
• plurals that don’t work well
• words that don’t make sense on their own
• long 2 word niche domains
• domains that don’t make sense in .gr: filesharing.gr
• old tech related domains: greekdvd.com

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 119 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 119 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.

For example I dropped a .biz that I had a $100 offer on it some time in the past.

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.

In October I dropped 49 domains (9.3%) and renewed 476 domain names. Click here to see what domains I renewed and dropped in October 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 buying a domain name 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 was 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 700 domains in the past 6 months. I really tried to make it above 15% in September. October was a month revisited so 9.3% was good. November is at 12.6% so this is even better.

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 150+ bad 3-letter .us, .biz and .info domains in the past 6 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 125 2-word .us, .info and .biz domains. If the domain name doesn’t make sense with .biz, .info 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 did very good in 2014 too.

Here are all my .info sales from 2003 up to 2013 and all my .net sales.

Coming soon: a guide explaining step by step how to determine what domains to drop and what domains to renew.