poll I am at 27,000 now, how many domains in your "keeper" portfolio?

[Recons.Com]

I crossed 27000 domain milestone today. I meant to start the sequel of my "5000" thread when I was at 20k, then at 25k, but never got around.

I am curious how things have changed for all of us since mid 2020 when I had the first poll.

My portfolio is 5.4 times larger than 2.8 years ago, so growing probably around 80% a year. Not quite doubling, but still a decent rate.

Almost all my names are with Godaddy save for hundred or so with Dyna. This helps with reducing admin load.

 

[Lakshan]

One also needs to learn from others. NP members have been an awesome resource sharing their experiences and best practices.

Oh, and it is very important to keep distractions away. All those hypes, fads, trendy shiny things are not systematic and reliable for long term. And, for most investors, by the time they pick up it is too late, so they will be left holding a bag no one wants.

Congrats @Recons.Com

Its must be not easy to manage a portfolio that size. Even being in domaining for 15 years, I havent crossed 1000 at my best level. I'm always triming down due to increased $ cost when exchanged to my local currency and also hard to manage with my main job. It must be very hard to look after 27k domains for their renewals, managing offfers, setting prices and so on.

Anyway. Congrats on your achievement. Hope you will pass 30k within next couple of months and I hope good offers will flow on and on.

 

[Recons.Com]

Hey just some quick feedback on this. I very much agree with your opinion on parking. But last year one of the domains in my portfolio went viral due to a tiktok influencer misstating the name of a web site. I pulled the domain from sales channels and enabled parking where it started generating 3-5k/MTH in revenue. It showed me the importance of monitoring traffic on domains. If I see a spike I always try out parking on those names.

Yeah, I agree that there is a potential there that should be monitored. I am sure I am missing on many of those opportunities with 27k+ names. But, I need to choose what to focus on and it is on the to-do list for the future. Even if not for parking purpose, traffic can be used in other ways. E.g. redirecting to one of my own sites.

 

[Recons.Com]

Super impressive!!! 27,000 domains is just, wow! Anyone that cracks 10k is an absolute legend in my books.

Thank you! Yeah, 10k is quite a threshold in itself. If I am not mistaken you have a large portfolio yourself. Are you still growing it or keeping as is?

 

[Recons.Com]

You're basically running a marketplace, RightBrand, like BrandBucket & others. Difference is, you only sell your own inventory.

Is it a one-man show in terms of management?

Will you ever start selling our domains? Curious..

Good luck

Rightbrand is not being built as a marketplace for third party sellers. That would require different functionality, that, of course, can be added.

But, I believe there are inherent conflict of interests that eventually leads to the decline of those. E.g. BB focusing on its own inventory for the main searches and visibility, SH showing completely different results for different sellers and also having its own inventory.

If I ever come up with a formula that is a win-win for all, then I will launch a project on a separate URL.

 

[Recons.Com]

yes, u just like a king with your name army, do u review your troops every day? really impressive achievement...wow...thanks for sharing this here...

Lol ))

Actually, just looking through 27000+ names could take a good portion of a day ) So, no, I don't regularly review them. Most partial reviews occur when renewing and when looking through the inventory for a name for a client or a project.

 

[Recons.Com]

That's great, 27k domains most be a lot of hard work and lot's of initial investment. You were saying about 260k in renewals and some profit, but did you counted the initial investment and in how many months/years you will recover your investment? I mean, most of your domains were not hand regs, so even at $50 on average, from 5k domains to 27k you would have invested 1 million dollars in 2 years, that's a big amount. Counting the renewals, I can guess that you didn't recovered your investment. Do you have an idea, when you will be on pure profit, counting acquisition cost, renewals, commissions and your time? As the saying, you need money to make money.

I don't think I ever have been in red with domains. If I were to build similar portfolio today within a year, I might need to spend $900k to $1MM. However, it has been build mostly over the past 7 years and costed me under 700k$. But most of that is reinvested profit, so real out of pocket could be around $100k and not all upfront. I probably subsidized the growth here and there during slower sales times.

 

[Recons.Com]

That's a nice looking site. Was just going thru my Wordpress theme folder, getting it organized.

So is that a custom WP theme and it looks like sometimes it passes thru Dan and sometimes you handle it yourself, WooCommerce?

Side note, your privacy-policy and terms page are showing up blank for me.

Thank you! Still a lot of work to be done. Once that is complete and the site converts better than third party landers, I will start redirecting more and more domains there.

The current set up is using woocommerce and own payment gateway for bin and dan for installment. But I'll need to change that as well, since it was making sense with 9%, but not with 25% fee. Not sure I want to even keep installment option, as haven't seen any particular boost with it and any benefit is cancelled out via interrupted deals.

 

[Recons.Com]

Manslaughter is still my favorite.
Remember me when you’re famous, @Recons.Com

Yeah, it is a great name for a law firm, but they all lack any understanding of internet marketing. It is a widely searched term as lots of people research if their case can qualify for it instead of, e.g., murder. So they either could redirect or put an info website together explaining options, differences across the states. A non-lawyer could also use it to put together a directory of lawyers specializing in it and the info site.

 

[Recons.Com]

A real killer domain

Depends how you look at it. Could be used as a brandable name for a fun project: Man's Laughter ))

 

[Recons.Com]

What an army,you must be the Caesar in the domain name industry.

The Caesar is probably HD and no one near it. They must have around 9 million names by now. That is like 40% of all names listed for sale currently. I am probably in top 100 of the portfolios by size. And there are thousands of smaller portfolios with higher value, of course.

 

[Recons.Com]

congrats on reaching 27000. Just a question... Is 27000 your whole portfolio or keeper portfolio? If your whole portfolio, what percentage do you have that you will never sell?

For me, I have about 200 domains. I am about to drop about 30 of them over the next year. The rest, I plan to develop / sell. My actual keepers (that I will never sell) are only about 10 domains. So in percentage terms currently 5%

Thank you!!! 27k+ is the keeper portfolio, since I don't drop more than 1% of my names. I might have just a handful names that are not for sale. If I like the name a lot or have a potential personal or business use for it, I just price it higher, so that I can buy a replacement and still make a profit.

 

[Recons.Com]

Congrats @Recons.Com on this milestone. I am amazed, not a long ago when we spoke you had around 24k names and you managed to add a "few" more in no time. Still cannot understand how you can analyze, filter,spotcheck and buy 1k+ names a month... I am happy for your success, everyone sees the glory moments usually but they forget to take into account the hard work behind the scenes.

I know this is not an AMA, but I hope you don´t mind I am asking two things that might help others also here.

- having the financial backround : how do you keep track of such a huge portfolio? Do you do balance sheets each month via Excel?
- how do you normally proportion sales money when it comes to scaling such a high pace? reinvest+renewal 60%, 20% taxes, 20% to keep it for yourself? Is it a fair assumption? Has this changed now with the recent market situation?

Thank you, my friend!

You are right, it does involve a lot of work. I'd estimate that each bought name involves around 10 minutes time spent (including making lists, weeding through, analyzing). So 27k names means almost 5000 hours of work or almost 3 years of full time work. I probably can still get away with manual processes for another year or two, but for the further growth I'd need to automate some of my algorithms.

keeping track: here is the thing. Once you make a conscious decision that you are collecting only keeper portfolio, then there is not much admin work to be done beyond the initial work of pricing and listing. I do manually renew for now just to weed off around 1% of the names that seemed like a good idea at the time, but not any more. But that can be also switched to auto-renew any time. So, in short, if I stop growing, I could spend less than an hour a week and that would be mostly replying to some offers or providing auth code/push for manual sales.

Proceeds: post commission, about 45%-50% goes towards renewals. The rest is used for own expenses, taxes and growth. This is post market situation. Probably, renewals were around 35%-40% before that.

 

[boker]

I don't think I ever have been in red with domains. If I were to build similar portfolio today within a year, I might need to spend $900k to $1MM. However, it has been build mostly over the past 7 years and costed me under 700k$. But most of that is reinvested profit, so real out of pocket could be around $100k and not all upfront. I probably subsidized the growth here and there during slower sales times.

Thanks. I could be wrong, but you weren't at 5k domains around 2 years ago? So most of them, around 22k were bought in the last 2-3 years or so, no? With the average industry rate STR or even double that, you would need a lot of upfront investment and would be a hard to reach growth year by year even in 7 years. I'm just trying to understand how things are going at your level.

 

[Recons.Com]

Thanks. I could be wrong, but you weren't at 5k domains around 2 years ago? So most of them, around 22k were bought in the last 2-3 years or so, no? With the average industry rate STR or even double that, you would need a lot of upfront investment and would be a hard to reach growth year by year even in 7 years. I'm just trying to understand how things are going at your level.

I was at 5k mid 2020. That is 2.75 years ago. So I have added 22k names since. When added gradually, the bought names start contributing to cash flow quite fast. So, yes, if the IRR is in 60% to 100% range, it is doable. My STR was probably around 1.2% before 2022, and around 1% since. And my first 5k names had more of the auction wins, private acquisitions etc., so average sale price from that batch was also higher.

 

[boker]

I was at 5k mid 2020. That is 2.75 years ago. So I have added 22k names since. When added gradually, the bought names start contributing to cash flow quite fast. So, yes, if the IRR is in 60% to 100% range, it is doable. My STR was probably around 1.2% before 2022, and around 1% since. And my first 5k names had more of the auction wins, private acquisitions etc., so average sale price from that batch was also higher.

I was just going thru your postings from 2-3 years ago and I notice that the first few k domains were higher value domains and in the last 2-3 years you are hunting more recent drops brandables. So, the conclusion should be that quantity brand centric domains would do better than quality higher value domains?

 

[Recons.Com]

I was just going thru your postings from 2-3 years ago and I notice that the first few k domains were higher value domains and in the last 2-3 years you are hunting more recent drops brandables. So, the conclusion should be that quantity brand centric domains would do better than quality higher value domains?

Not necessarily. There are few considerations here:

a) yes, I am more focused on the size growth, because I want more regular cash flow. The same money spend on less names means higher price per name, but way less regularity.

b) the higher priced names are also more sensitive to the market situation, fin market, startup landscape situation etc. So you might experience higher volatility.

c) profitability-wise, they might be similar or designed to be similar. It is just above considerations that have shifted my focus. I will probably start acquiring higher value names in larger quantities in couple of years.

d) also higher quality names require way more time spent per name. E.g., you have to monitor the auction live and go through some idiot sitting and extending the session by another 5 minutes in the last second indefinitely. I don't like setting max bids as well for various reasons, so still has to be done manually for me.

So, in other words, if I have 15k-20k budget a month to spend, I'd rather spend it on 1000 names than on 1 name currently. But when I have 50k budget, I might spend 30k on 2000 names and 20k on 1 to 20 high value names.

 

[Sjpals]

Thank you! Still a lot of work to be done. Once that is complete and the site converts better than third party landers, I will start redirecting more and more domains there.

The current set up is using woocommerce and own payment gateway for bin and dan for installment. But I'll need to change that as well, since it was making sense with 9%, but not with 25% fee. Not sure I want to even keep installment option, as haven't seen any particular boost with it and any benefit is cancelled out via interrupted deals.

Mine is set up with woo commerce and the escrow payment gateway. My plan was to put all my domains on my site, but it’s stalled due to time. I’m also unhappy with the design. I hope to get there someday.

 

[clarkemarketing]

Thank you! Yeah, 10k is quite a threshold in itself. If I am not mistaken you have a large portfolio yourself. Are you still growing it or keeping as is?

My portfolio is currently close to 4K. I’ve been aggressively acquiring names non-stop for the last few years but the size of my portfolio isn’t growing anymore as I’ve been selling off / dropping names at a similar pace. The value of my portfolio is going up tho as the names I’m buying are much better than the ones I’m dropping.

 

[Recons.Com]

My portfolio is currently close to 4K. I’ve been aggressively acquiring names non-stop for the last few years but the size of my portfolio isn’t growing anymore as I’ve been selling off / dropping names at a similar pace. The value of my portfolio is going up tho as the names I’m buying are much better than the ones I’m dropping.

If you don't mind me asking, why are you dropping?

I know most don't think about it that way, but for .coms if the name batch you are dropping is providing you with 0.5% STR at $2k average sale price post commission, you are pretty much at breakeven and anything above is profit. This logic is one of the reasons, I rarely drop names.

 

[clarkemarketing]

If you don't mind me asking, why are you dropping?

I know most don't think about it that way, but for .coms if the name batch you are dropping is providing you with 0.5% STR at $2k average sale price post commission, you are pretty much at breakeven and anything above is profit. This logic is one of the reasons, I rarely drop names.

I'm mostly dropping hand-registered two word .net .org and .co domains. For example: I had a bunch of TokenKeyword .org BitcoinKeyword .net CryptoKeyword .co types names that I registered in 2018, that I'm not convinced are profitable to keep renewing. I'm also dropping some three word .com's I hand-registered in 2020 because they're geo and have a very low STR. DebtConsolidationJacksonville .com DenverMortgageAgents .com that sort of thing. I'm replacing them with much higher quality .com domains... today I acquired GreenDolphin dot com which is a great brandable.

 

[jim h]

The Caesar is probably HD and no one near it. They must have around 9 million names by now. That is like 40% of all names listed for sale currently. I am probably in top 100 of the portfolios by size. And there are thousands of smaller portfolios with higher value, of course.

Hope the sales market can resume growth this year, best regards.

 

[Haroon Basha]

CONGRATULATIONS FOR HAVING A HUGE PORTFOLIO OF 27, 000 NAMES. With these names' Sale proceeds, definitely, you can feed your coming 7 generations.

 

[Andreas B.]

Hi,

may I ask how MUCH you pay in renewal costs?!

Is godaddy good for such a big portfolio; does it offer any incentive / attractive discounts?!

(or dynadot).

Thanks

 

[marijuanadomain]

Go for 100000
Go big or go home
Good for the industry

 

[ksusha64]

I crossed 27000 domain milestone today. I meant to start the sequel of my "5000" thread when I was at 20k, then at 25k, but never got around.

I am curious how things have changed for all of us since mid 2020 when I had the first poll.

My portfolio is 5.4 times larger than 2.8 years ago, so growing probably around 80% a year. Not quite doubling, but still a decent rate.

Almost all my names are with Godaddy save for hundred or so with Dyna. This helps with reducing admin load.



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Great names! Congrats!