As my portfolio has grown in the last several years, so, too, have my renewal fees. I’ve spent more time and money buying domain names I can add to my portfolio to sell as inventory. I think I’ve done well enough picking out enough quality names that sell that it’s been worthwhile.
A great deal of these inventory quality domain names were either hand registered or bought via the DropCatch domain discount club, where the price is just above the registration fee. I have been more willing to take fliers on these names to build my inventory that I can sell for anywhere from ~$1,000 – $5,000. Preventing portfolio bloat is something I’ve been actively doing as my domain portfolio has grown.
As these inventory-quality domain names come up for renewal, deciding what to keep becomes a challenge. Oftentimes, I find myself thinking a name looks less good when it’s time to renew than when I bought it. Perhaps there were more TLDs registered when I bought it or there were some other attributes that caught my attention. Maybe I was coming off a string of sales of similar domain names.
When I buy these inventory types of domain names at auction, I am hoping enough of them will be wanted by buyers to cover my costs and profit margin based on STR. There is a great deal of speculation on these, and I can only hope some of the prospective buyers I imagine will end up making a purchase. However, I can’t really anticipate the demand until I actually own the domain name and list it for sale.
One of the tools I use to determine whether or not to renew a domain name is the number of searches it receives. Afternic offers this data, and I believe Spaceship does as well.
If I see a domain name receives a handful of searches a year, it’s probably worth renewing the domain name for another year, hoping one of those searches pulls the trigger in the future. Perhaps it’s worth dropping the price to induce a sale, but that search insight is a sign of some level of value for a domain name.
If an inventory-quality domain name I bought for $20 doesn’t look as good to me when it’s time to renew, the search volume can mean the difference between renewing for another year and letting the domain name expire.
in 2022 Elliot had a thread suggesting StatCounter.com which i use to keep ACCURATE (Human Organic) traffic stats – not including the SEO / Search Engine traffic…..and junk traffic – much of that coming from china and russia.
Because I host my own domains and have built my own webpages I just insert the HTML snippit from StatCounter.
That has become a very good tool for renewals as well as which IPs to block on my IIS server.
I’ve been using my own landers (with StatCounter) on my top names I would never consider dropping.
The difference between StatCounter and Afternic stats are that StatCounter counts visits to the landing page. Someone visiting EventPlanner.com (for example) may be looking for an event planner not for the domain name.
Afternic searches are people searching that particular domain name at GoDaddy. These people are looking to buy the domain name, This is more important to me than visits for these inventory domain names I hope to sell.
very interesting.
i guess you cannot have both worlds.
i guess since i am more in the business of building my brands statcount works better for me.
and to your point:
if someone searches eventplanner.com at GD even if they do not contact you, you are aware that someone specifically searched that domain ?
Here’s what the searches mean, according to Afternic:
https://domaininvesting.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-08-at-1.12.23-PM.png