discuss Should I renew these domains or let them drop?

garptrader · Apr 8, 2019

As newbies it is common to register a number of worthless domains that one will eventually drop - the sooner the better. Renewing bad domains becomes very costly because mistakes mushroom the cost of holding an inventory with low turnover. On the other hand, a dropped domain which someone else acquires means they see something in that domain as well. If the acquirer is an investor, they may be mistaken that the domain will eventually find a buyer. If an end user develops on that domain one can question the drop decision.

As I look back at most dropped domains from my newbie years I ask what the heck was I thinking? However, I decided to do a test of dropped domains over the years to see if they were picked up by investors, became developed websites or if no one cared - the decision to drop was prudent as years later no one was willing to pay for the domain. I selected 25 dropped domains at three-year intervals from 2009 to 2018 to see what happened.

2009
- 1 domain held by an investor - 1 .Com
- 3 developed sites (StockWebinars.com, Rentaloya.com, Trabajamos.net)

2012
- 4 domains held by investors - 2 .Net, 1 .TV, 1 .Com
-2 developed sites (Domingo.TV & Pantalla.tv)
-1 domain that links to a streaming site which I am afraid to open - possibly spam

2015
- 9 domains held by investors - 2 .TV, .1 .Net, 6 .Com( Huge Domains has two)
- 2 developed sites/redirects (Jaco.TV & Morena.tv)

2018
- 7 domains held by investors - 2 .net & 5 .com (Huge Domains has two)
- 1 developed redirect AnunciosInternet.com

While I do not see strong aftermarket demand for .TV domains, it does appear a fair percentage of .TV drops are getting snapped up.

Hypersot · Apr 8, 2019

Since 2013 (when I started in domaining) I have registered and dropped quite a few domains.
Recently I checked which of the dropped ones were registered (roughly around 3k domains) and it totally surprised me when I found out that more than 60% where being owned by investors or even being developed into legitimate websites (ie. no parking).

As you very correctly said, our very first domains were -I'm being very kind here- pretty bad (at least mine were).. still, a lot of those got snapped up for some reason.

Skyvisum · Apr 8, 2019

Adjust the bin price a bit lower and I learnt to hold some for atleast 5 years.Not just any domain but the ones that I have gut feelings for and expect to sell for 4 figures after commission i.e if it sells through a marketplace.One I dropped got picked by lifelock but it was missing a c so I guess adjusting the price makes it sell as most type in errors domains get redirected also.

I noticed also ,some names are tracked by buyers waiting on the corner.Just wait for 5 years and in between adjust your prices and set a bin.

topdom · Apr 8, 2019

Even if you know your domains would be registered by others it may still make sense to drop them. Let's say you have 100 domains, and one of them may sell for 1K, but others won't, and you don't know which one will sell, and although many could be sold for 50-100 easily, you can't reach those buyers, and whenever someone offers in that range you don't sell, because you know it may sell for 1K one day. You renew all, sell one of them for 1K, and there is no profit. And because of exhaustion you may accept 100 for that 1K domain, and the result would be 0,9 K loss... Liquid domains have the same problem. You buy 3 letter .com for 25 K, renewal is not a problem, but you may have to wait 10 years before it gets a higher offer. Also what happens if suddenly .com becomes less popular, say, because China makes a decision, like , we will use, .top, or Germany says, we will use .gmbh.

Recons.Com · Apr 8, 2019

I am not sure why you guys are surprised.

"Bad names" are not necessarily "bad", they are not just investment grade. Meaning, if they are available for hand reg, someone will take it for the project, but no one will pay $xxxx that investors require.

And the ones snapped by investors: remember those guys that do this at loss? That is 50%+ of investors. If you add those that barely break even or make very small profit (working at McD would be more profitable factoring in time spent). So, it would take 1 of those, or HugeDomains with so many really bad names, for all the names you dropped to be picked up.

Gube · Apr 8, 2019

Domingo is a French (twitch) streamer that has a relatively big audience (He's now working on NRJ one night a week, a national radio)
With this information, you should have kept the name

garptrader · Apr 8, 2019

Noting that some 2012 and 2015 .TV drops had turned into developed sites, I decided to run another sample but only .TV drops 2014 to 2017 (excluding one's previously considered). I did not drop many .TV domains in 2018 so there were not enough names to include in the sample. I sampled 65 dropped names and found five developed sites. Nine domains had been picked up by investors. The developed sites are...

Artes.TV
Divers.TV
Embarazada.TV
Mejico.TV
Mercadeo.TV (redirect)

So for this sample I have roughly 50 .TV domain renewals that no one cared about even for a backorder. At $30/year that is roughly $1500 annually saved. Regarding those picked up by investors, it is likely the investors despite their current list prices (saw one listed at $25k) would not have paid much more than maybe $200 each but would have cost an additional ~$270/year to keep. Even end users often have contempt for domain investors and will refuse to pay more than a nominal fee for a domain. I guess theoretically if one knew in advance which domains might garner interest at lower pricing, one could at least hold on to those domains. But it is also possible the budget of the acquirers was $50.

But this why I have avoided the newer extensions. Investors will often get excited about reports of a domain sale with some similar characteristic to their domain (extension, keyword, length), but your domain renewals do not get paid by someone else's domain sales.

Jv1999 · Apr 8, 2019

discuss Should I renew these domains or let them drop?

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garptrader

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