Yesterday, I released the first issue of my newsletter. I'm not planning to repost those editions because I want them to feel earned. Something for people who care enough about this industry to subscribe and actually read. I'm also making a real effort not to repackage headlines you already saw on X, NamePros, or the usual feeds. My goal is perspective. I want you thinking. Agreeing. Disagreeing. Re-evaluating assumptions. If a piece does that, it worked.
That said, there's one thing from Issue #1 that I do want to share publicly.
A tool.
NotRenewing.com is now live.
This project has been sitting in my notebook for years. I've written about the idea in passing. I've mentioned it in conversations. I even brought it up once during an X Spaces discussion about expired inventory and aftermarket inefficiencies. The problem always felt obvious, but the execution took time to get right.
Here's the gap.
Every day, domain investors make renewal decisions quietly. Names fall off portfolios for all kinds of reasons. Cash flow. Strategy shifts. Portfolio cleanup. Opportunity cost. Some of those names still have real utility and real buyers. But the path between "I'm not renewing this" and "someone else can use it" is messy.
The drop cycle is slow. The visibility is low. And most of the time, potentially useful domains disappear into the expiration pipeline without ever being seen by the people who might actually want them.
NotRenewing.com is built to sit in that space.
It's a simple concept. If you know you're not renewing a domain, list it. Buyers get a clear, time-sensitive marketplace of names that are about to become available. Sellers get one last chance to extract value from assets they've already decided to let go. No auctions. No long holding periods. No pretending a name is premium when your renewal decision already says otherwise.
I also want to be very clear about something.
This is not a money maker for me.
There's no premium tier. No upsells. No listing fees. It's free to list. Every name is priced at $99. If a domain sells, the platform keeps $2 to cover basic operating costs. That's it. This isn't a jackpot business model or some hidden-margin marketplace play. It's a utility. A tool I wanted to exist because the workflow didn't make sense.
Sometimes something should exist simply because it's useful.
Now, it's important to acknowledge that I'm not the only one thinking about this stage of the lifecycle. Atom has a program where sellers earn a percentage when names listed on their platform eventually drop and get registered again. That's a smart system. It recognizes that expiration still has value and it shares upside with the original holder.
But the models are fundamentally different.
Atom's approach monetizes the backend of the lifecycle. The name drops, someone else registers it, and revenue gets shared after the fact. It's passive and platform-centric.
NotRenewing is proactive and market-driven.
Instead of waiting for deletion and re-registration, this creates visibility before the drop. It turns a silent exit into an active marketplace moment. Buyers see what's coming. Sellers signal intent. Transactions can happen while control still exists, not after the asset resets.
This is not a replacement for premium marketplaces. It's not an auction house. It's not trying to be another lander platform. It's a pressure valve for portfolio churn.
If you've ever dropped a name and later wondered who picked it up, you know the friction I'm talking about. If you've ever scanned expired lists hoping to catch something useful before it disappears into backorder systems, you've felt the inefficiency.
I don't know how much traction it gets. I don't know if the domain community will use it the way I'm imagining. But I kept running into this problem, and building the thing felt better than complaining about it. So here it is. Go list something. Tell your friends.