Just dropped 198 New gTLD domains and saved $45,000

Just saved about $45,000 of future renewals by dropping 200+ domains, including 198 New gTLDs.

This is the review of my domain name renewals and drops in the months of March and April 2017.

I had about 1,568 domains in many different extensions expiring in the months March and April. These are busier months than usual.

DROPS

I had 276 New gTLD domains expiring for a total renewal cost of $7,255. Most of my New gTLDs are in Donuts extensions.

I decided to drop 198 of them that had a $4,508 total yearly renewal cost. The average renewal price of these dropped domains was about $23. I dropped about 72% of my New gTLDs.

So these domains were not too expensive in average but were a lot of them and in extensions that don’t sell. 125 of them were .photos (photographers don’t pay anything for domains) and .domains. I guess you all know about domainers and their love/hate relationship with New gTLDs and also how they are not paying much money to fellow domainers.

I am not only dropping New gTLDs. I also dropped 19 other domains: 5 .com, 2 .net, 1 .org,  6 .info, 1 .biz and 4 .us. But that is a very low percentage compared to the New gTLDs.

Here are a few of the domains I dropped:

friend.photos
star.photos
england.domains
revenue.domains
gay.holiday
england.marketing
select.photo
redcarpet.photo
freelance.photo
grey.photo
greek.photo
infrared.photo
extreme.agency
glamour.agency
carribean.us
internetbusiness.biz
bistrot.us
adultshow.org
distill.info
greektv.net
tissues.info
fiestas.info
excaliber.info
humiliation.info
manipulation.info

and here are some more domains I dropped:

remote.training
unlimited.training
blog.systems
open.training
custom.training
broadway.agency
architecture.agency
europe.agency
adult.agency
hollywood.agency
logistics.link
revenue.domains
list.domains
branding.domains
country.domains
blackandwhite.photos
restore.photos
agency.photos
company.photos
website.photos
original.photos
platinum.photos
quality.photos

RENEWALS

I renewed 78 of my New gTLDs for a total of $2,747. The average renewal price was about $35 so you see that is not always about price but it is a combination of price and quality.

I follow my 10 rules and decide firstly based on quality and potential and then on renewal price.

I renewed New gTLDs domains such as:
sold.domains
e.repair
sport.marketing
sports.marketing
weed.farm
print.green
o.domains
t.domains
q.domains
r.domains
usa.repair
like.photos

There are 14 domains out of 78 with a renewal price of over $40. These bring up the average renewal.

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. I have already dropped 223 New gTLDs in the 1st 4 months of 2017. I don’t expect that many drops in the coming months.

I renewed about 1,273 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.

DISCUSSION

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 very rarely flip domains.

So by dropping 198 New gTLD domains I actually saved $45,000 in renewals from these drops as I consider all domains as at least a 10 year investment.

These renewals and drops were decided before the Uniregistry wholesale price increase and the Uniregistry retail price increase. And I had started dropping New gTLDs in January and February.

This has not changed 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 February.

(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 in the long run as you can see.

But New gTLDs were fresh out of the market in 2014 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.

I mostly made the mistake of rushing in and not following my own rules. I have a few rules on deciding what domains to drop and what to renew and I follow them when deciding what to buy too.

But something good came out of these drops. I actually made some money. First of all I tried to sell some of my New gTLDs. I sold one for $600. I was probably going to drop that one.

I also found a matching .com to my New gTLD for $365 and bought it. I then decided to renew this New gTLD although I was dropping it initially.

2 months later and I now have a deal to sell this .com domain and the money is in escrow. But that is another story.