My Portfolio by Acquisition Date

One question I am asked quite a bit is about how long it takes me to sell my domain names. This isn’t something I really track, so I usually respond by saying that it can be a week or 10 years – it can be a crapshoot and come down to how motivated I am to sell a particular domain name.

For those who are curious about how long I’ve held names in my portfolio, I did a quick analysis of my inventory this morning to give an idea. Interestingly perhaps, all of the domain names I owned in 2007 and prior aren’t domain names I would sell. For instance, I bought TopNotchDomains.com in 2006 and that isn’t for sale because I am using it for my corporate website.

Here’s an approximate breakdown of domain names in my portfolio by acquisition year:

2006: 3
2007: 11
2008: 9
2009: 4
2010: 9
2011: 12
2012: 8
2013: 16
2014: 21
2015: 26
2016: 62
2017: ~100
2018: ~200
2019: ~200
2020: ~300
2021: ~350
2022: ~300
2023: ~150

I started increasing the size of my portfolio in 2017 and beyond. Instead of focusing on names I could sell for high 4 and 5 figures, I started buying more marginal names I could sell in the $5k and below range. The margins are great, but those individual sales don’t move the needle much.

At one point, I had the desire to grow my portfolio by 10x+, but I did not want to put in the time to make that happen. I also think it would be very difficult to ramp up my portfolio to 20,000 or 50,000 without exposing myself to more legal (UDRP / TM) risk and simply more financial risk having to continue buying quality domain names.

Over the last couple of years, I have been doing a better job of letting domain names expire if I have lost hope for them. A domain name I acquired in 2010, for example, that has no traffic and hasn’t received a single inquiry, may be easy to let go instead of renewing it forever. There are many considerations I make – like the number of TLDs registered in the keyword – before I let a name expire.

I am content with the size and makeup of my portfolio right now. I am always buying and selling, but I suspect my portfolio will grow moderately over the next year.