« Outsourcing Smarts | Main | Those Older Sites of Mine »
Letting Go of Domain Names
May 18, 2007
This has truly been a year of paring down my domain names. Has anyone else been doing this?
I have let about fifteen names lapse this year. One of them, in hindsight, I probably should have hung onto and sold on Sedo, but oh well - I'll keep it in mind the next time I let a good one go. I hardly ever go for "keyword-rich domain names" so mine tend to be more the "brandable" type - not really valuable until after the branding's done.
My goal is to go from having a huge bunch of domains, to having only ones that I'm actually using.
I used to get an idea, then head out to Namecheap (well, it used to be Godaddy, but now it's Namecheap) to buy something suitable. Then the domain would sit there, until I eventually got around to putting up a site for it. Or not.
At one point, I would buy a domain, and put up a site right away - just a one pager. Then I'd link to it from somewhere, and get that one page indexed, so everything would be ready for when it came time to develop the site.
(I still think this is a good thing to do, actually.)
It does feel good, though, to be getting rid of the domain names I'm not using.
Not to mention the savings.
Bookmark this: BlinkList | del.icio.us | Digg it | Furl | reddit | Yahoo MyWeb
Posted by BJ at 03:22 PM in Web Publisher's Life | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341e372b53ef00d83579d2cf69e2
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Letting Go of Domain Names:
Comments
I looked carefully over my list of domains this past week and decided to let 15 of them go. It was quite a moment for me. Then, I topped that off and did something I'd actually never done before.. I _canceled_ them.
About a minute later I was on the phone with GoDaddy.. *laughs*.. I saw the cancelation list and my stomach sank, one little domain for a project of my mother's had snuck its way into the list.
I called up my "customer apprecation" rep at GoDaddy and Isaac ran across the building to the tech department and they brought it back for me. Awesome guys.
Now I'm doing to a paltry 96 domains and, unlike you (excellent habit, by the way) I'm still a bit behind on getting up the landing pages.
It was awesome to get rid of those few, though. I have most of my domains set to renew on my birthday and its nice when the lump sum isn't quite so high ;).
Keep up the awesome work BJ! :)
-Jonathan
Posted by: Jonathan | May 18, 2007 3:46:43 PM
That's pretty smart, Jonathan, to have them all set to renew on one day. I'm not so sure I'd pick my birthday, though - that's the day I like to RECEIVE stuff, not pay out. :)
I have all mine set up on a spreadsheet. Since I have my domain name purchases spread out across three registrars - Namecheap, GoDaddy, and Yahoo!, it helps to be able to see at a glance where to go to renew what.
Posted by: BJ | May 18, 2007 4:03:10 PM
Hi BJ,
After talking to James Martell last month, I decided to drop many of my domains as well...even the ones I've put many hours of work into. Although most of them were white hat sites, I didn't focus on creating high quality content for them.
Your idea of "brandable domain names" is a great idea. It aligns with my authority site ideas and building sites for the long term.
Posted by: Charles Amith | May 31, 2007 1:14:32 PM
