I don’t hand register all that many domain names each year. I would say the number is somewhere around 50 +/- and that figure varies each year. When it comes time to renew my hand registered domain names, I sometimes struggle to decide what gets renewed and what gets dropped.
I look at various factors including traffic and inquiries, with the inquiries and offers being more important than the (generally) negligible traffic figures. When I have owned a hand registered name for a couple of years and there are no signs of life, I start to wonder whether it is worth renewing. Yes, it is short money, but paying even $1k/year can add up after several years. If I renew 100 hand registered names for around $1,000/year, that $5,000 after 5 years could have been better spent if none of the names are sold. If that holds true, perhaps I should re-evaluate my hand registration skills, too!
It would be interesting to know how much time readers give their hand registered domain names before opting to drop them. You are invited to share additional thoughts in the comment section.
Yesterday’s poll question: How much is Mouth.com worth?
Until it sells. Unless its a fad thing that passes or i look at it at renewal time and wonder what the hell i was thinking.
As both an end user, even just for forwarding traffic sometimes, and one who sometimes sells and is happy to sell some, I’ve gone through phases where I register far too many for my liking. Then it’s time to trim the flock. Then I let a lot go. I must be selecting good ones, however, because I have the “honor” of HugeDomains catching a lot of them afterwards, and sometimes other folks. Then I regret a few of those. Sometimes I recover a few of the regrets. One time recently I even bought back from someone else one of the big regrets, an excellent sports betting domain, right before the big SCOTUS change that just occurred and while a lot of people were probably still doubting anything would really change. Gotta like that, ay? I had only let it go myself a while back when my own confidence about sports betting started failing for a while too, hence the earlier regret.
Some I keep and let go after only one or two years, in fact probably most of the ones I discard. Some, however, I have kept for years, even many years, but then finally let them go although I had earlier thought I would probably never let them go. Did that recently for some original 2002 .US regs for instance. People would surely think they were very good ones for .US, but after almost 17 years sometimes you just want to cast off some that are not the best of the best, at least me. Needless to say, others certainly felt they were good because there was no delay that I saw in others grabbing them. Most of what I have and discard is .com, however.
Great topic…would love to hear others input on this so here’s mine:
A year ago in 2017 I decided against ALL crypto currencies and decided to invest more in .com names.
In the past seems like HugeDomains and others grabbed all domains that I was dropping, so I decided to go with a “0 DROP Policy”
I renew ALL my domains since 2017 and plan to renew them for 5-8 years into the future.
So HugeDomains etc can wait a little longer to grab my names ๐