The biggest problem of having a portfolio of over 3,000 domains is of course the renewals, but not only the decision what to renew and what to drop is tricky, but the most annoying part is the constant renewal emails.   Some registrars like to send multiple emails for each domain which creates huge amounts of emails in my inbox. I’m getting these on a weekly basis and usually tend to ignore.

Every month or so I login to my main registrar accounts and renew the domains which are to expire. Not a well organized process yet, but I don’t like to use auto-renewals and I usually renew the top domains for a couple years upfront.

There is software like dnzoom that helps automate this stuff, which is sensible for large portfolios, however giving all your registrar passwords to one site seems a little too much for me, besides it’s not really something you can’t manage manually.

Naturally sometimes I forget to renew good names and lose them..

How do you manage renewals?

Since I’ve started developing my US city domains I’ve been positively surprised by the adsense clicks.

In general my average adsense clicks are between $0.20-0.30 through out my sites, but the US city names had many clicks in the $0.5-$1 range. The traffic is as targeted as you can get and it’s easy to understand why advertisers would be willing to spend more, but these are relatively small cities, so the number of advertisers is quite limited.

These clicks are definitely nothing compared to what one could earn by attracting direct advertisers. I just read on dnjournal that PalmSprings.com earns over a million dollars a year only from the homepage! This definitely shows the potential in geo domains and pretty clear plan: get a top city domain, make some site and make it rank well in google, find advertisers to purchase banners for some annual fee. (more…)

I’m finally getting more into developing my domains and at first I’m planning to build a few small adsense sites on the city names and generics.

Here is one I did this week BethelPark.com - Bethel Park is a city of 33.5k people in Pennsylvania.

This one is a small site with 10 content pages. I’m currently testing different templates to see what gives the best ctr, but I think this one should do good. The trick is to make ads blend in and fit the theme. (more…)

The most popular thread on dnforum currently is this one: Domainers are Losers

As usually the dumbest threads get the highest exposure, but naturally there are also a couple good points raised in the thread. The OP intended that most people joining the industry don’t succeed that well, and this is probably right, same way as in any other business. Many domainers mentioned their successes as well in the posts.

Some interesting posts worth mentioning: (more…)

DNForum Adds New Category for dropping soon domains, for a fixed price of $20.

I think it’s a great idea and I just listed a few of mines there to try it out.

Domainers deal with renewals on a weekly basis and it’s frequently a hard decision to either renew or let it go. It can be quite disturbing to see a domain you forgot to renew end up selling for 4 figures on an expired auction, but these things happen.

Here is a little something I picked up in the Prague airport.

Must be one of the most ridiculous domains I’ve seen in a while, but hey if it works for them.

Click on the image to enlarge it: Be-free-of-maybe.eu, UniCredit Group

An interesting series of posts by Rick here:

What makes a domain sellable?
What makes a domain sellable part 2
What makes a domain sellable, part 3
What makes a domain sellable, part 4

Some good tips there and I can agree with most. Domains with clear and obvious use are much easier to sell. They are however harder to find at good prices.

Short domains may have less possible development ideas, but they are a great collectible item which value will only go up.

Here is the fifth monthly Recent LLLL.com Sales compilation. LLLL.com’s are the most frequently traded domaining commodity on all forums and auctions and it’s thus crucial to be up to date with the quickly changing prices.

The list includes last 3-5 days of sales on different venues based on TDVR database and NP sales thread.

CVCV.com’s and 3 letter repeating LLLL.com’s remain the most wanted among 4L’s.  Minimum price for  quad premiums is about $325, while without  F and H they usually go up to $350-400 and more.

SnapNames

aavp.com $184
gdcv.com $79
GGXG.com $254
vvnv.com $214
xtwe.com $33
yfqp.com $33
yqcu.com $33
yzve.com $33
ayiu.com $81
bonm.com $365
bskm.com $85
cxbu.com $31
Hily.com $1,050
jifa.com $3,200
lzxp.com $40
mzdk.com $40
oyxt.com $36
rurw.com $84
sivy.com $60 (more…)

NASA successful landing on Mars should draw more attention to the Red Planet and it’s a good time to grab some decent Mars related domains if you haven’t yet..

Despite the success of NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity missions, directors remained anxious Sunday over the first-ever landing of a probe near Mars’ north pole to find signs of life.

“I do not feel confident. But in my heart I’m an optimist, and I think this is going to be a very successful mission,” said principal investigator Peter Smith, an optical scientist with the University of Arizona. “The thrill of victory is so much more exciting than the agony of defeat.”

The Mars Phoenix Lander was wrapping up its 296-day, 422 million-mile journey Sunday, with about a 50-50 chance of a successful touchdown on the arctic plains of the Red Planet, NASA officials said. (more…)

Don’t sell quad premium 4l.com’s and quad premium 4l.com’s with 3 repeating letters on Sedo! Strangely enough the prices on sedo no reserve auctions for these don’t reach near the levels that people  are ready to pay for them on domaining forums.

That said, it’s true sedo has some good deals lately, if you’re planning to grab a few good LLLL.com’s go buy some there.

A quick comparison: DDDB.com is now taking offers on DNF, as of now the highest offer is $1500, a few similar and even domains ended considerably lower on sedo:

(more…)