Opinions

My domain name renewals and drops in January and February 2017

This is the review of the my domain name renewals and drops in the months of January and February 2017.

I don’t liquidate my domains by selling them for $5 or $10. That takes too much time for me that simply it is not worth my time. I just drop them. But that is just me.

I had about 1,000 domains in many different extensions expiring in the months January and February.

DROPS

I had 37 New gTLD domains expiring for a total renewal cost of $1,824. Most of my New gTLDs are in Donuts extensions.

I decided to drop 25 of them that had a $1,144 cost. The average renewal price of the dropped domains was about $46.

I only had 3 domains costing over $40 but all 3 were at $220 per year:
o.gallery
x.gallery
buy.guru

I am not only dropping New gTLDs. I also dropped 4 .com, 1 .info, 1 .biz and 1 of my very few remaining .xxx. I have decided to get out of .xxx domains.

RENEWALS

I renewed 12 of my New gTLDs for a total of $680. The average renewal price was about $56 so you see that is not always about price but it is a combination of price and quality.

I renewed domains such as:
e.estate
health.directory
law.directory
website.directory
movie.world

There are 4 domains out of 12 with a renewal price of over $40. One is $220 per year, 2 are $109 per year and e.estate is $72,60 per year.

My average on the 550+ New gTLDs I had at the end of 2016 was at about $40. I see this average coming down to about $35-$36 when 2017 is over even though this was not the case with this first report.

I renewed about 950 domains in .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us in these 2 months. So the percentage of dropped domains in these extensions is very low compared to the New gTLD percentage. Here are a few examples of what I renewed:
intimidation.com
3Dmuseum.com
2tv.com
d-d.com
casting.info
standup.info
xsg.org
conquest.org

DISCUSSION

Please keep in mind that these renewals and drops were decided before the Uniregistry wholesale price increase and the Uniregistry retail price increase. Not that this will change much about my New gTLD strategy except maybe it will make me drop more of the (very few) domains in the Uniregitry extensions that I have. I am just telling you this to not think that Frank’s decisions affected my decisions. I had done this review in December. Just like I have already decided on the March and April drops and renewals.

(If you want to read more about my New gTLD investment you can read here and here.)

This is not something new. I am always reevaluating and dropping domain names. I had decided to cut down on my New gTLD renewals and I should have done it last year. But last year I was very busy making money selling to the Chinese! I didn’t have time to do proper reevaluation. This takes time but also it also saves a lot of money.

But New gTLDs were fresh out of the market and I did some mistakes. The most important mistake was buying domains in extensions that people don’t want to pay any money for (like .photos or .gallery) or buying domains that weren’t taken in many other extensions.

The other mistake I did was buying a lot of domains where the .com equivalent was for sale at a very low price. No one will pay $1,500 (and have a $40 renewal) if the .com costs just $2,000.

Sold.Domains

About Konstantinos Zournas

I studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London, UK and I am now living in Athens, Greece. I went online in 1995, started coding in 1996 and began buying domain names and creating websites in 2000. I started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

24 comments

  1. I’m surprised you haven’t sold

    o.gallery
    x.gallery
    buy.guru

    As you friend K, stay out of the high renewal new gtlds.

    There’s a second round coming from ICANN, when that’s announced it will be a stampeded.

    • Nobody knows about single letter GTLD domains. If you go thru the sales, very few have sold.

      If you think the 2nd round of ICANN will be easy, it will not be, ICANN has been paying attention to the $25M contention sets, and so on. It is going to clampdown on this bogus open price contract, and probably have a lot more wording to close out these insider loopholes.

      I sincerely hope they make applicants pay thru the nose, because most lied on their intention, and execution.

      No more favors!

      • I wouldn’t describe them as “single letter domains”, I’m counting 8 letters, they are confusing as hell with a huge renewal fees. Nothing special about those.

        I’d be trying to sell and then drop all of these types of domains, e.estate is just going to be another one that gets dropped a couple of years later as well. Save $220 today.

  2. Thanks for sharing in detail. Always interesting to read and understand what and how successful domainers operate.
    At one point I remember you had 10K domains but according to recent WHOIS lookup it seems you’re having around 7K. Quite a number of drops.

    Good luck for the future and keep sharing.

    • I have about 8k plus 500 .gr. I sold more than 500 domains to the Chinese last year.

      • Got it, I remember now. So it was sale to Chinese than too many drops. Good!

      • I want to do more drops. I think I have more junk to get rid of. I pressure myself to drop domains.

        But you can learn from your drops. As long as you are making money overall then it is ok to try a few stuff but you need to learn from your mistakes.

      • Sometimes I’ve dropped 95% of a portfolio, usually the more the better. For ntlds people would be best off just dropping the lot, it is easy to keep the one with a $70 renewal if others are $200, but the $70 name will just get dropped 12 months later. People seem to hang on for year and years sometimes.

        With people waking up on ntlds there will be a lot of sore heads. But don’t worry there is an even bigger screwing to come, .web. Don’t worry folks it will be different this time!

  3. if rosener reviewed a domainer submitted list (e.estate list below) I will break it down like a dumb Sherpa show ugh hum… clears throat “rosener what do you like on the list and why. I would drop every thing . I don’t like any of these domains.
    if rosener owned these domains. ugh hum clears throat “rosener its the end of the show do you have anything you would like to promote?” sure I own and have listed these gtlds for $150,000 each (the plant selling guy with hat interrupts “WOW, THOSE ARE TRIPLE PREMIUM GTLDS… WOW ROSENER HOW DID YOU GET THEM WOW MOM WOW . ROSENER STEPS back in “yeah you know I know my stuff asking $150,000 for each domain and here is the list
    e.estate
    health.directory
    law.directory
    website.directory
    movie.world

    • Those guys are so twisted… I watched a few times, oh what a great domain, I would ask $40-50K, Cyger… would you like to make them an offer… ahhh sure I will offer them $500

      I find that really hilarious. I can’t believe domain shane was so busy registering .ws, that he missed the entire chinese pump & dump cycle.

      All I can say, not all that glitters, is gold!

  4. Thanks for sharing your drops. I did the same. Droping most of my gTLD’s.

    Have you ever shared your domain sales like AbdulBarsit Makrani do?

  5. no movie.world for me this year 😉

  6. If the registries are listening going into year 4, people are dropping those large premiums, and nobody is bothering to re register them.

    Sell them for a higher upfront price, and keep the renewal low, is the only way.

  7. Yep, the tough decisions have to be made sometimes

  8. konsta, do you mind to share till date how many new gtlds sold and total sum ?

  9. Thank you Konstantinos for sharing, I like the transparency and your honesty, keep up the good work !

  10. Stick with .com this has been said for years and it will always be the case. Honestly, e.estate is not that great, even if it was dropped, it might take a while to find a buyer.

  11. Thank you for sharing with us Konstantinos.

    Below is a list with a few domains that I’m planning to drop in the next 7-10 days.

    Please share your Thoughts 🙂

    VRDISPATCH.COM – 28/03/2017

    GIRLSPROBLEMS.COM – 31/03/2017

    CHEEZBURGER.NET – 01/04/2017

    EMPOWERWEBINAR.COM – 02/04/2017

    PIRATEREVENGE.COM – 02/04/2017

    ITRY.EU – 05/04/2017

    GXJ.INFO – 07/04/2017

    MARKETINGISRAEL.COM – 07/04/2017

    HOTELSBORNEO.COM – 08/04/2017

    VRAM.EU – 10/04/2017

    VRAW.ME – 10/04/2017

    DRESSBG.COM – 12/04/2017

    8AD.UK – 16/04/2017

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