discuss Renewing domains in advance to increase sales?

[nomen]

So probably like the most of you guys and girls I've always been renewing my domains at the very last minute and in many cases transferring them out to reduce costs if possible. But just recently I've been starting to renew domains that I like much and tend to keep at least for a few yars way in advance.

My reasoning is that if there would be an end user looking for a domain for an upcoming product or service and he/she sees that the domain is about expire in, say, ~ one month, he/she might just want to see if the domain simply comes available (given that he/she is not that familar with the domain exp. process). It's not like he/she doesn't have a lot of other things to do.

This is all theory at the moment but based on traffic, inquiries, offer views (though pretty useless metric IMO), WhoIs counts and just plain old gut feeling, I renew selected domains even for a couple years. And as said, I just employed this tactic just recently and really don't know if there's anything to it yet.

Opinions? Thoughts?

 

[hxp]

I completely agree with this strategy.

I've actually thought about it for a while, and there multiple pros, with pretty much just 1 con.

Pros & Cons (Considering .com names @ $10/year for 10 years):

- You can negotiate/do business, stress-free. There's no pressure to make deals, and you're not constantly watching your back.
- You have 10 years to make the sale. Who knows how many offers you might see during that time?
- You think twice, even thrice, about the names you invest in. Thus, improving the quality of your names.
- As you mentioned, it encourages the buyer to make an offer, instead of waiting/hoping for a drop.
- It offers the buyer value. Your price includes registration for a full 10 years! Great point to bring up during negotiations.

- $100 per domain, upfront. Could be a dud...?

If I could go back in time, I'd totally invest my first $100 on 1 name, instead of 10...

 

[nomen]

And to add to my point, it's often times better to use that $10 to renew a good domain (that you intend to renew anyway) than to buy some of those impulse buys/regs (that we all do).

EDIT: Or at least this is the strategy that I'm going to test for a while.

 

[RJ]

Good observation. Based on my own experience I would agree with it. I think if it is close to expiration, some buyers will wait before making contact.

 

[Silentptnr]

Also, by renewing your favorites for more than one year, you get the current renewal price. No guarantee the renewal prices won't increase. I just got an email today that .org increased.

 

[hugegrowth]

If you have many domains it ties up a lot of cash to renew many years in advance. Might show people you are serious about holding the name or give it some importance. But I don't think it matters much for sales, if someone wants it they want it.

 

[TampaDomains]

I think you should register all your domains for 10 years so people will be much more motivated to buy them from you.

 

[campout]

Wow - I was just thinking about this the past couple days and here you have posted a thread on the exact theory.

Obviously, the downside is in the tying up of capital -- and that certainly is a downside to anyone (like me) who occasionally runs up against capital constraints (ie getting close to $0).

I think what we can pretty definitively say is that a name which expires further out in the future will be more likely to elicit an offer over a large sample size. I think the plan of adding some years to your best names is smart.

Last point: it's unlikely any of us will ever be able to know for sure if this is or isn't working, unless a buyer were to make a comment like, "I saw that this was renewed out through 2020, so I knew I had to approach you directly."

But I think the logic is good on higher value names.

 

[ulasbbtr]

Renewing for 10 years will significantly reduce your ROI. Instead of spending 10, you will be spending 100 and paying renewal dues of the buyer in advance.

 

[iAchilles]

The longest I've gone to date is 2024 on one name.I suspect you might be right with potential buyers monitoring names. I recently got a series of price requests on Afternic right after I transferred/renewed a batch which I found very interesting.

My long haul names I renew for 2-3 years in advance. I didn't do it all in one lump sum though, each time I make a sale I reinvest a little into renewals of my existing portfolio.

 

[korganian]

The other advantage of multiple year renewals is for estate planning. How many of us have someone who would have the funds to renew and know how to manage our domain portfolio if we died today? They would need at least a year to learn what's going on in the domain industry.

 

[maxtorz]

I have seen my previous "unwanted" domains that I let drop sell in the thousands like a few months just after I let them drop....
I have learned that is best to have a smaller portfolio and renew ALL names instead of keep acquiring 100s of new names in hopes to sell them within a year.
AeroWiper dot com was an example...it was a reg fee name that I keep for 3 years with no inbound offers. I let it drop then Dynadot auctioned it on their expired lists, and I was like wow it's not a bad name really so I paid $12.99 on it and bought it back....2-3 weeks latter I had 1 inquiry for the name and sold it for over 3k.
I am sure it was not a coincidence...the buyer waited for the name to simply expire and become available for reg fee.
This has happened to me so many times now, that I rarely let my names drop anymore...

 

[GoKaizen]

I had a sale recently and put the money into renewals for valuable domains and built websites.

You have to know what's worth renewing though. You don't always know what the future holds.

 

[doubleU]

For whatever reasons people always seem to want what they can't have, domains with a expiration date over one year can cancel out any hope that the buyer has of acquiring the domain form expiration or deletion. It can change the mindset of some buyers and even make them want it more, leading to more bids and inquires.

I have two lists of domains I wish to acquire, one list for domains I think have a good chance of expiring and another list for domains that have expiration date far into the future.

You can guess which list I get my domains cheaper.

 

[briguy]

If it within my budget, I will renew a domain for multiple years. Simple reasons, I don't remember paying less for renewal than the previous year and the exchange rate between my currency and USA's always fluctuates.
Note I prefer to sticking to the same registrar rather than transferring out to save a few dollars.

 

[DomainVP]

I think that it's clever to add renewal years to your more premium domains.

From observing acquisitions of .COM domains, if an acquisition is not an urgent necessity companies they tend to wait 3-5 years to 'feel you out' to see if you will drop the domain.

If you add 5-6 years registration onto a name, it removes all question about your intentions on keeping the domain.

I have done this with a few DN's... sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.

 

[Nile Patel]

I guess renewing for 10 year not help much but may be 3 to 4 extra year will help , but not sure.

I recently started buying end user kind of names which focus only on businesses and might be not for other domain investors, and parked all of them with parkingcrew.com , already started getting inquiry for some of the name what i notice is all of that inquiry came from parkingcrew.com buy now tab form.

After seeing all my buy request i feel end user businesses or their marketing guy has not looked in my domain whois email but prefer to contact me through parkingcrew.com buy now link, that mean either they don't care about expire date and who own or may be easy to feel forms rather then researching about owner.

The bad for me is some of them have offered me under $100 because i kept zero for minimum offer but now i raise that to certain level so will see if that stop some law ball offers.

When i want to buy a premium name i will always check who own and i will never waste my time if owned by big boys because you will never get cheap deal but if buying from other domain owner i will never wait for expire date if the name is premium the expire name auction or drop auction will get really high bids may be some time better then sellers sales price.

So i feel advance renewal is only safe if you know your future financial situation which can turn up or down depends on your portfolio size and also socked me when i see very good domain get dropped and receive high bid at expire auction.

I m still wondering all this big portfolio(above 20k name) owner renew every year or pay in advance, is any one has any idea about them?

 

[campout]

I m still wondering all this big portfolio(above 20k name) owner renew every year or pay in advance, is any one has any idea about them?

I just checked a few Huge Domains names, including some they are asking ~$20,000 for, and none have even one extra year renewed.

 

[ResoluteDomains]

I will renew whenever I get a serious offer on a domain. Serious meaning I have communicated with the prospect, and not necessarily just decent offers. If its a low-ball offer and I have been in contact with the potential buyer but we disagree - I still renew it. So long as I can confirm a real human on the other end.

Its resulted in a sale, within 60 days, about 1/3 of the time.

 

[Fancy.domains]

This is actually a good advice. At least for names with low renewal costs...

Personally, I will renew my hundred best domains, with a renewal fee of no more than $15, for two years.

Just two thousand bucks and you don't have to think about them for some time.

 

[campout]

And more time they have to think about it, more likely they come up with some not so great hand reg.

Exactly. If they see that your domain is expiring in 2 months, they may say to themselves, "I will check back in 2 months to see if he renews it," and then they go off and lose the impulse to buy.

 

[AuctionBio]

So probably like the most of you guys and girls I've always been renewing my domains at the very last minute and in many cases transferring them out to reduce costs if possible. But just recently I've been starting to renew domains that I like much and tend to keep at least for a few yars way in advance.

My reasoning is that if there would be an end user looking for a domain for an upcoming product or service and he/she sees that the domain is about expire in, say, ~ one month, he/she might just want to see if the domain simply comes available (given that he/she is not that familar with the domain exp. process). It's not like he/she doesn't have a lot of other things to do.

This is all theory at the moment but based on traffic, inquiries, offer views (though pretty useless metric IMO), WhoIs counts and just plain old gut feeling, I renew selected domains even for a couple years. And as said, I just employed this tactic just recently and really don't know if there's anything to it yet.

Opinions? Thoughts?

Good points you discussed here. Yiu are right that end user can think of expiring the domins with in some months. So here I agree with you renewing good domains in advance, as it's also my habit to renew at the very last manure.

 

[jamesosix]

I guess its the same with domainers. Nobody wants to buy a domain with a month or two left, and they will just wait for it to drop (which it rarely does).

 

[DomainAgents]

I don't know if it's worth it to renew it for 10 years, but I think it's definitely worth it to renew in advance and not wait until the last minute. There are definitely buyers who wait to see if a domain will expire before reaching out, especially those that haven't bought a domain on the secondary market before. They tend to think that they'll just be able to buy it expiration day +1 because they don't know about the grace period and drop catchers.

 

[Name Trader]

I think it's a good strategy, if your cash flow can afford it. Which is usually the binding constraint. But, I think you need to choose the domains you renew wisely. ie, that you expect to sell in the next 3 years. That also is quite a difficult call.

If you could do all that. Then you know which domains you should be dropping