ForHow Long Will A Domainer Keep A Name?

[RedBar]

It seems to me that some people must have lots of money to invest with the sheer hope of eventually selling a name.

In 2005 I released a selection of widget names I no longer required and a domainer picked-up all 12 immediaely. These names all varied between 17-22 letters long and are .coms.

15 years later all of them are still for sale at ridiculous prices.

Why do people retain these names when even 4 letter .coms are available at normal registration fees?

[Dimitri]

This is a business model for some.

Among their portfolio, once in a while, they sell a domain for hundreds or thousands of dollars, which is covering lot of their expenses on parked domain names.

10 years ago, i released several domains I owned, because i had no project for them and thought it was time to do some clean up,... they were not really keyword based,... but they get immediately bought and proposed for sale. They are still.

[jmccormac]

Did some calculations on renewals and reregistrations in COM/NET/ORG for the Domnomics book I published in December on Amazon. About 35.76% of the November 2019 .COM zone were reregistrations. The domain name market in 2005 was beginning to ramp up with Domain Tasting so what may have happened is that some of the early tasters picked up the drops based on their type-in traffic. They may have continually made more from PPC over a year than the $7 or so that it would have cost to renew each of them. Descriptive domain names might match exact phrases that people type into their browser's address bar so that kind of traffic was easily monetised. Some of these players operate their own registrars so they got the wholesale rate from ICANN rather than the retail rate.

Most of the sales sites also monetise the parked domain names with PPC so they can make money from PPC while waiting to be sold.Most of the available four letter .COM domain names were registered (again) a few years ago in the middle of the Chinese bubble of 2015-2017 when they were being traded for silly money. Naturally, the Chinese bubble burst within a year or so but many of the 4Ls were reregistered when they dropped.

Regards...jmcc

[lucy24]

Most of the sales sites also monetise the parked domain names with PPC so they can make money from PPC while waiting to be sold.

Wouldn't that have to mean that every year, year in and year out, enough humans have to interact with each and every one of these nonexistent/type-in domains to cover the ongoing registration fees? I mean, in order to get a ppc there has to be a c, right?

[jmccormac]

Wouldn't that have to mean that every year, year in and year out, enough humans have to interact with each and every one of these nonexistent/type-in domains to cover the ongoing registration fees? I mean, in order to get a ppc there has to be a c, right?

Yep. Some parking pages might get a handful of clicks per year and the revenue from those clicks is enough to cover the renewal and then some. What happened with Domain Tasting was that over a billion (1,000,000,000) .COM domain names alone were tasted between 2005 and 2008. Basically, the ones that made money and could be sold were filtered out and kept. Domain Tasting abused a feature that ICANN had created to prevent registrars being billed for mistakes. A domain name could be registered and then deleted without charge within five days. So these guys registered domain names and if they got enough clicks in that five days they were kept. If not, they were dropped. For some registrars, it was around 1 in 300 or so domain names being kept. The actual numbers are in the free to read chapters on Amazon. I had to check and recheck that it really was a billion .COM domain names as it was the first time that anyone had ever bothered crunching the stats. Frank Schilling was one of the early tasters and he amassed quite a collection of domain names. His aim was monetisation and sales. His business recently sold that portfolio of domain names to Godaddy. [domainnamewire.com...]

Regards...jmcc

[RedBar]

His business recently sold that portfolio of domain names to Godaddy.

Yep, trying to corner a market with BS!

GD's UK TV ads are unreal, BS supported by even more BS.

I bet you can guess my feelings about GD:-)

[jmccormac]

Godaddy is very much the pre-Internet AOL of domain name registrars. It is the largest gTLD registrar on the net. Its development as a business is an amazing story but what a lot of people don't realise is that it is one of the biggest online advertising players on the net due to its parking operation for undeveloped domain names.At least it isn't Google. :)

Regards...jmcc

[engine]

For those with a business model they'll hang on to the domains, making the odd sale helping the profits. There isn't much else to do unkess they want to.
I cleared out a good number of speculative domains quite a while back because it wasn't a core business, and in any case, the domains were speculative for me and various projects.
For me I wouldn't say there was a specific time for holding onto them; It was a realisation I wasnt going to do anything.

[RedBar]

Whilst I have released 90+% of my names over the last few years I have retained some really nice ones which I would like to use but with Google's in-built bias towards com/net/org, I have been reluctant to use them to see IF they would rank as well.

It's annoying since they are .asia names and the products I make are principally sourced from several Asian countries. I did use a .asia a few years ago and it ranked very well however whether it would now, I have trepidation therefore do I use or let them die?

BTW, they're not financially worth anything, they're not vanity names, quite simply businesskeywordproduct asia and companyname . asia

[tangor]

People dream, and sometimes scheme,
that this domain is the next big thing ...
and attach a price, usually quite nice,
and sit on it for freakin' ever.

You hang onto to domains (speculative or not) for as long as you need them, want them, or can justify the expense.

That said, there's a group of folks out there that snap up every domain that is let go simply because the web continues to grow and at some point domain names, if nothing by length (number of letters) will have a finite number and they will THEN HAVE THE ONLY THING LEFT and hope to make a killing.

Sadly, domain names just aren't worth that much, particularly since adding one more letter, punctuation, numeral will make THAT gold ...

Reality is a domain is what you make of it, how you market it, and how easy it is for the users to remember. In that regard most of what these hoarders hang on to just does not qualify... and they keep the registrars rich and their own pockets a bit more poor.

Hang onto it if is means something to YOU, else, get the heck out of Dodge!

[Dimitri]

Domain names will be like gold, when domain names shortage will happen...

[tangor]

Are we anywhere near that? As in the same number as in IPv4 numbers? 4,294,967,296 (2³²)

There will ALWAYS be another domain name out there, regardless of what is hoarded ...

OR ... the hoarders are forced to hoard even more AT THEIR EXPENSE in hopes of making a killing.

Yet ... some of that won't work since other laws are in effect and all that hoarding is for naught when a judge says: "Turn it over!"

For ordinary purposes you hold what makes sense to you.

Speculate if you have a clear path and don't anticipate legal issues.

The majority of the really valuable domains have already been settled, but there's still gold in those hills for the second best. That's why the question was asked:

Answer is: As long as you can afford it, want it, have a potential future need.

[Dimitri]

[en.wikipedia.org...]

[tangor]

Heh!

Pretty short list. :)

The good ones have been settled. But there are OTHERS out there that might be worth a buck or two. Which is the reason for hoarding, and hawking and ... selling!

All for it, myself. Just don't have the bucks to play the game long term ... as most of these are very long term.

There's a boatload of 2 character possibles out there that have yet to be exploited.

[lucy24]

:: business with calculator ::

26^4 = 456976.

I think it is safe to say all of them belong to someone; you wouldn't be able to claim xkcd today. But add a few more letters--a few more powers of 26, or probably powers of 37 if you throw in hyphens and numerals--and you’re outside of any viable business model. 37^7 throws my calculator into exponent mode: 9.something x 10^10. There exist people who have that much money, but they're not spending it on domain name speculation.

[jmccormac]

Ran a 150K domain web usage survey on the .ORG gTLD on the 11th. Anyone care to guess what percentage of domain names were on sale or at auction? :)

Regards...jmcc

[edited by: jmccormac at 9:05 am (utc) on Mar 14, 2020]

[tangor]

:)

The speculators keep the registrars in business. Gotta love it!

(easy money?)
(cash honeypot?)
(someexamplestuffdreamsrmadeof with a dot and some tld?)

Play the game if it makes sense---and the wherewithal exists to play.

Pretty sure the serious money has already been spent on the most desirable---or have been resolved via legal means---and the bits and pieces left to be sold off might not get anywhere near the top dollars of the past which fuels the speculation.

[jmccormac]

It isn't the speculators who keep the registrars and registries in business. Some of the business models for the new gTLDs did not survive contact with reality but the numbers of domain names deleted and registered in the legacy gTLDs each month is in the millions. With .COM alone, only about 57% of new registrations are renewed on their first renewal. Some of the NGTs have first year renewal rates below 10%. The ccTLDs tend to be stickier with first year renewals around 70%.

Regards...jmcc

[RedBar]

Anyone care to guess what percentage of domain names were on sale or at auction? :)

I'll bite and guess 90%

After 27+ years of The Net as we know it, surely established, and new, companies already have their future potential requirements, tha's precisely why I've given up so many names, they were no longer required for "potential / possible" new ventures..

There is another reason for giving up names in that 20 years ago you could have 100 sites driving traffic to your various potential sales sites however the way that Google especially, plus most other search engines operate, this is no longer necessary since having one or a couple of really good sites is much more productive and efficient.

Brand awareness has been one of the successful marketing keys for decades no matter if it is retail, wholesale, import / export or manufacturing, since 2008 it has been very evident that loads of corporate vanity sites and domain names are completely and utterly unnecessary, IMHO!

[jmccormac]

Way off. :) It was just under 3%. Most registrars now park undeveloped domain names on PPC. So when people land on an undeveloped domain name, they often assume that it is a speculative registration. The .COM and the .ccTLDs are the main development TLDs but what often happens with new businesses is that they register their domain name in COM/NET/ORG/ccTLD. Only one of these domain names is developed as the primary brand website and the other domain names will be pointed to it or left undeveloped.

Regards...jmcc