End of Year Recommendations

It’s getting close to the end of the year, and although things appear to be quiet, I think there are a lot of people focused on internal things right now, like closing out their books.

With the year coming to an end, here are a few things you might want to do with regards to your domain business. As always, consult with an accountant and/or attorney for tax and legal matters, since I have no experience in either category.

• Go through financial records now rather than April to make sure you’ve accounted for everything
• Take a look at your domain holdings and ensure auto-renew is enabled on the names you want to keep, and disable it on the names you want to drop
• Be sure all of your parked domain names are resolving and showing relevant ads.
• Compare revenue, CTR, and RPC across parked domain names and websites with Adsense.
• Optimize your domain names and websites that need it
• Ensure that all of your websites are resolving and don’t have error messages on them
• Upgrade your WordPress websites if needed
• Back up your websites
• Back you up your data and financial records
• Determine if you need new business supplies, computers, or office equipment, and order them before the year ends to expense them in 2010.
• Book 2011 travel and hotels in advance to expense what you can.
• Seek out the people who made offers to you this past year to see if you can close any last minute deals. Some people need to deplete budgets and buying domain names could be beneficial.
• Reach out to domain owners who may not have been willing to sell domain names in the past. Maybe something has changed.
• Renew domain names you plan to keep for as many years as is feasible.
• Make sure your credit cards on file are still valid and didn’t expire yet.
• Pay your trusted designer/programmer in advance for upcoming projects.
• Reach out to advertisers and get commitments for the next year.
• Thank the people who have advertised this year whether they plan to continue or not.