Business decision

Ive dropped / am dropping 75% of my domains. The ones I renewed, I will probably drop next time (Im a sucker for a good name!).

Ive been told my names are ok, but not amazing. I have the drops at sale for $10 (I sell a couple, maybe about 10-20% of my drops, the rest of them for sale at $99, and only one has ever sold through afternic, I have never sold anything on brandpa, or squadhelp and I have bodis landers, and the amount I make parking doesnt cover the renewals.

This, for me, isnt a self sustaining hobby, let alone profitable. I did the maths and it just doesnt work for me https://www.namepros.com/threads/can-i-make-a-full-time-living-from-selling-domains.1281944/

Have you considered buying/investing to develop? That's what I do.

That’s what they were originally bought for as I am a website designer, but I realised that I can’t develop 260 domains!! So I have dropped about 160 so far, I have about 100.

Hi

when i started 20 years ago, reg fee was $6.95 for .com and today it's $10.25
the increase over time for .com has only gone up $4, while in your case for those names, twice as much.

so, i'd say the initial decision to register them was riskier than .com, not only because of the extension, but also for the uncertainly of stable renewal costs.

still, every domainer who been in the game for a while, has probably dropped or let a name expire, either to reduce overhead or lack of interest in the name, plans change, etc.

imo...

I wish I could be that disciplined!

I have an 'incubation' account with about 300 ISH at one registrar.

250 odd at the one I've been with for years including the domains in 'operation'.

And a dozen at GoDaddy from recent purchases.

I've developed a handful from last year's hand-regs 'Sirenians/com' 'Perfumists/com'

Cheesemongery/com (complete with products, blog, forum), Fishmongery/com Fruitmongery/com & Shipwrighting/com.

My strategy was to put a handful on basic e-commerce platforms, make enquiries with suppliers and go hell-for-leather with what appeared to be resonating best at the time.

I'm been invited down to the Welsh Government to discuss their cheeses next week, and though not pushing them have had a company reach out to potentially partner on the beauty domains.

Putting the presentation to essentially a string of letters can be so powerful in drawing in that interest to do business.

I certainly have; imo I feel it's a natural course as a domainer to 'refine' the portfolio as time goes on.

After 12+ years and probably hundreds of domains dropped, I think I half-regret dropping one and that's it; to hold on would have only been for experimentation purposes as a .org.uk anyway.

I really shouldn't be talking as i'm a newb.

But since 2016, I'm in the net positive (of very little). But this is considering I've been reg'ing junk the first couple of years like "Marinecatalo/g.com"

I believe, if you THINK / KNOW your domains are good, but not selling, just hodl. Domaining is investing, and it's a long game. Of course, it can be a short flip too!

But, like, I'm seeing people drop good domains because they can't afford it and their sales are down. It doesn't make sense to me.

All it takes is one or two years where you sell xx,xxx a couple of times, and that will pay for all your renewals from years prior... and also acquisition costs. But, again, you have to make it to those ROI years.

Only one of my domains is registered as an LLC. Out of the 23 domains I had intentions on forming 2 more LLC's, because they were hyphenated, I decided against it. I have a single word dot com that has potential sale value, but the more I look at it I probably should keep it and form an LLC around it.

The bottom line is, I understand where you're coming from when you mention wanting to develop your domains but don't have the time.

My early domaining mistake is registering hyphenated domain names.

These are the TLD's that priced me out of renewal.
.space
.info
.site
.blog
.cloud

Dot cloud and dot space were free. I paid for (info, blog, site).

Do these domains have a low 4k appraisal value? Yes
My domains get clicks not bids. So is it worth it to renew?
I know I have that whole 60 days after expiration to renew.

If I want to renew my dot site it will cost $60.
Dot info will cost $40
Dot blog $30.

So the answer is I can't afford it. These domains were listed on afternic, sedo, and dan. No potential buyer interest.

If you're a potential buyer why didn't you purchase the name when you first saw it? Why do I need to renew for 5-10 years before you show serious interest?

Your web sites are very pretty. But, whenever I go on a website like yours, I am immediately annoyed. When I go to a web site it is because I am looking for something and I don't want to shovel my way thru a lot of fluff. Also, your domain names are awful. Who is going to remember the name sirenians, or even be able to spell it, if they want to find it again?

I have a group of domain names that I call perfume names as they would be good names for a perfume web site. Not that I have any interest designing a perfume web site. Perfume domain names can use used on many types of web sites. But they are dot us. Names such as cruel, soul, witch, powder, lydia and tart. All better than sirenians.
And the web sites that I design have no fluff. I want the user to easily find what they want.

https://fiction.us

https://jpeg.us

And they and my other web sites are names that you can remember and easily spell. I am not a professional web designer and my web pages are full of errors, but they look fine and do what they are supposed to.

Going by your portfolio count, you have discipline and a business game plan.

Registry will be identified soon. Domain.com

As it stands I'm willing to let all 23 domains drop. The renewal is price is unreasonable.

Perception is a wonderful thing,

Why don't you sit back and watch, maybe you'll learn something new?

I used to go for new gTLD because they appeared fun, but the renewal rates are always not worth it, so I decided to stick to .com only, although I'm occasionally tempted to go with other TLDs, haha!
Registrars sometimes lose money when you first register a domain with them in an attempt to get you to sign up with them, so when renewal is up they take a huge fee, gotta recover their loss. They usually list their renewal price so you can assess ahead of time whether it's worth it to register with them in the first place.
Also, some registry are very expensive, I've put Identity Digital on my blacklist, their prices are just abusive, and unfortunately they manage many TLD. And Verisign—who manages the .com—is far from perfect too.

I recommend checking tld-list.com before any purchase of a TLD you're not familiar with, and sort by the renewal price instead of the registration price.

I've been renewing my only llc name ..bitcoins,llc for few year now... even this mega name gets no offer. llc is a shit tld. u as newbie should not touch anything but com..even then learn first then invest... domains take years to master.. no quick cash here. that's truth. of course every newbie deny this. we all did too. I domain 10yrs now... with all the shit I regged in beginning I was negative profit for maybe 3 first years... then slowly climbed up. if u cant sleep unless u own ngtld then play around with xyz for 1 or 2 bucks. just reg dont renew. xyz good 2word sometime sell. 1word all gone 90percent to one person and those left are all shit. all other tld u list are shit. have fun

Thanks for the info.

Domain.com

domain privacy - not included
ssl certificate - not included
icaan tax - out the blue
domain protection - out the blue

My renewal prices skyrocketed after domain.com upgraded their site. They also buried the renewal prices. They did the opposite of how porkbun.com made their site very user friendly.

domainscom netfirms etc is all big shit. ui shit.. prices shit.. I dealt with em yrs back when they had them 1usd com transfer promos... the old ui was actually way better than this shit now.... either way they rank low among domainers and their is good reason why dynadot or sav are mentioned on np 10 times a day and domaincom is mentioned once a year. use dyna or sav. skip the rest.

Everyone has to pay the ICANN for their domains, it's $0.18 per domain per year, it funds their work, and they're very important because they allow the whole internet to keep working, they're a multi-stakeholder non-profit.
It doesn't mean they're free of criticism, but gotta focus on what's legitimate criticism, and avoid complaining for the sake of complaining.

Registrars are free to list their prices including or excluding the ICANN fee, just like they can list their prices excluding taxes and/or payment processing fees, but in the end you'll always pay the ICANN fee, regardless of your registrar of choice, what changes is whether or not the fee is included in the listed price.

I name you Sjpals

I might have missed something, but I am a little confused.

Did you mean to say at 8 registrars, or do you indeed mean names from 8 different registries?

Also, were the price increases the difference between a registration only deep discount and the standard renewal rate, or is it that the renewal rate increased significantly during the year that you held the names?

On the core issue of business decisions and renewing or not, I realize we don't have a precise estimate for the numbers, but for each renewal I consider the following:

Is Net Price if Sells x Estimated STR (sell-through rate) >< Renewal Cost

For example, if I think a name would sell gross at $2000, net at $1700 and the STR for this particular name I would estimate at 0.5% (0.005), then $1700 * 0.005 = $8.50 so it made sense to try it a year at the discounted price, but not renew if the price is $20 (unless I think the value or STR will increase sharply in near future, like a term in an upwardly trending niche).

-Bob

I use TLD-List all the time too. There are also 3 other sites that will show you pricing at different registrars.

I covered them in the article How to Save Money on Domains.

-Bob

I would advise you to check here:

https://tldes.com/cheapest-domains

The prices you mentioned are double from what you could find in the market.

Maybe this way you could keep more domains.

But no one is able tell you what to renew, without knowing the names.

@Bob Hawkes
You got me by 3 minutes!

Let me clarify. I formed an L.L.C registered with the state, with one of my domain names. I didn't mean the TLD (.LLC).