I’m going to admit, up front, that this article is inspired by Morgan’s recent post “Do any Domain Investors renew names for longer than one year.” I came across it in my Twitter feed and it sparked a new question in my mind. Do any Domain Investors Renew Hand Regs After a Year? Let me explain.
I once had a conversation with Shane Cultra about one of his colleagues who had a knack for registering dozens of hand regs under the newer TLDs that sold well. He would let the non-sellers fall out and not renew them. While I have been involved in the purchases and sales of several premium domains, I’ve actually sold more hand reg’d dot coms than any premium aftermarket domains.
Then I came across Morgan’s article. It made me think… Do any Domain Investors Renew Hand Regs After a Year, or do they let them drop. My question is more around renewing vs. dropping than manually renewing or renewing for multiple years. Sticking to Morgan’s rules with his own post, I will provide my answer. While I typically renew my domain names on auto-renew each year, I’d say I renew about 95% of my hand reg’d domains. Why? Because I think I can either develop them or sell them.
I made a decision a while back to get the hell out of my head and only hand reg domains that I would be willing to develop. That has served me well and has saved me money. I no longer hand reg domain names that I think would be good for other industries or companies, but I ask myself, “Would I run a business on this domain name?” Taking it a bit further, ” Given the time and resources, am I willing to develop this name into a business?”
If the answer its YES, then I’ll reg that bitch. If not, then I let it slide. Early on in my domaining career I went completely mad hand reg’ing names. I ended up dropping most of them. I learned my lesson and dialed it back. There is still huge opportunity in buying after market names and making a profit, but there is nothing like the feeling of spend $8 – $12 on a domain and flipping for a few thousand dollars.
Do you renew your hand registered domain names after the first year or do you give up on them and let them expire?
