Yesterday, I posted about the fact that in the absence of end user new gTLD adoption and of course sales, domainers will not keep renewing inventory.
An interesting comment to that post is worth reflecting on however:
I think domainers tend to renew for several years before dropping. It is emotionally easier to pay a renewal than let a domain drop. Could be quite a few years before new tlds see a big domainer tail off in renewals.
This is a pretty important topic and I’m the first to admit I’ve kept renewing my share of domains despite the fact that I had more than enough reasons to drop them.
For example: no end user interest whatsoever (not even a lowball inquiry), zero reseller market demand and so on.
Yet despite the fact that the writing was on the wall, I kept renewing. I’m sure most of you can relate to the situation I just described and an important question arises: for how many years are you willing to keep renewing?
I think a decent starting point would be having a strategy right from day one. Something along the lines of “I will drop these domains if there are no end user inquiries after x years and if there’s no reseller market demand either” or quite frankly, anything that even mildly resembles a strategy.
That way, you at least have the strategy in question as a point of reference.
I’m not saying it’s the ideal approach but it sure sounds better than simply making emotional “well, I guess I could keep this one for another year”-ish decisions whenever renewal time comes 🙂
August 20th, 2014 at 12:50 am
I’ve had domains with no action for years get a good offer out of the blue. If you think the name has potential value keep renewing it. 10 yrs of renewal = ~$100, if you think the domain could sell for much more, renew it if you can.
August 20th, 2014 at 1:43 am
I had a domain name for years and years reg every year and it started to gain and gain popularity and just i just sold it and settled for $88,000 so you never know what a name would be worth i like hologram domain names that is my punt for the future keep up great work shane
August 20th, 2014 at 2:12 am
.COM domains constitute roughly 50% of all aftermarket domain sales while all the CCTLDs and other GTLDs share the remainder. Renewing one premium .COM domain for ten years which makes some money in parking is not a problem. Renewing 100 .Net domains which don’t earn any parking revenue can be more challenging if sales don’t offset renewals. At least with .Net renewwals are around $8/year and there is a limited aftermarket – though one needs to be more careful to set realistic pricing. The problem with the new TLDs is that renewals can quickly burn a hole in one’s pocket – take .Condos as an example at $69/year. Merely ten .Condos domains after only a few years start adding up to real money. If end users continue to reject the idea of paying anyone other than a registrar for a domain it becomes nearly impossible for such investments to work out well. In theory given the money that condos can rent out for (my wife knows a property manager who rents out beach condos for $200/day; I know of a modest-sized home in West Palm Beach which rents out for $500/day) $69 renewals should be no big deal but when you actually have real estate .COM domains and still have difficulty convincing realtors to pay even low $xxxx for them, you question the logic of premium renewals on .CONDOS or other real estate TLDs.
August 20th, 2014 at 9:56 am
I see no value to gtlds whatsoever. Not this year, next year or ever.
As Britt said above, the gtld fees start to add up to “real money” quickly and, for significantly less (both upfront and annually), one can simply buy a traffic-generating .com which will be self-sufficient via ppc and offer a reasonable resale value. Also, the confusion factor would not be a concern. Still laughing over 50 Cent’s screw up.
I predict that for gtlds, the end is .near
August 21st, 2014 at 12:27 pm
@shane redmond – I have a batch of hologram*/holograph* domains too, all 2 word .com. I reckon they will come good and worth holding. I have some nano* domains too, another of my future tech favourites.
However I will admit I probably do have some other domains where I fall into the trap of renewing when maybe I should drop…having said that I have dropped as many as I currently own over the years, so I have at least done some trimming to keep it to a manageable overall number that I can afford each year.