Should We Sell Or Keep Our Domains?	1.5/5.0 (2 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
Stephen Douglas November 12, 2008

I’ve pondered a few things lately regarding the status of the almost 4000 domains I own. I’ve whittled this list down over 10 years, so I don’t have any crap domains. At least, that’s my professional opinion, but what do I know other than what Adam Strong and Andrew Allemann tell me?

I want to go on a domain-selling rampage because I have about 1500 domains that are outside my main interest niches. Or, should I protect my domains and sit on them? I believe that if you’re a domain investor with a limited amount of capital, you should buy domains that cover all variables of your niche categories. Any domains outside those categories, sell.

However, I’m seeing something very prophetic lately, and maybe you have too. That “message” written in tea leaves (or in the bulk search registration window of your registrar) is “Sorry, all the domains you thought were available, no matter how nichey and unusual, are TAKEN!”

That’s right. I have run about five straight searches on prodserv domains totaling about 50 potential buys and I keep getting “domain not available”. WHAT!?? I pride myself on snatching OOTB domains!  Are domainers now following my strategy I started five years ago, which is buying domains matching futuristic trendy prodserv news articles?

I’m freaking out. I can’t find any domains that I normally would have nabbed without question even a year ago. I just saw a new product out that’s like a flesh colored stocking worn as a long sleeve shirt that covers up “full sleeve tattoos”. It’s a needed product for law enforcement, public workers, waiters, etc. So I searched up about five different ways to describe this product, some of my names were a little esoteric, probably not really good for typeins. BUT ALL OF THE DOMAINS WERE TAKEN!  Even the ones I wasn’t sure I’d actually register. This has been happening more and more lately, regardless of how unusual the phrasing.

This tells me one thing:  MORE GENERIC DOMAINS ARE BEING PURCHASED NOW THAN EVER

This means, regardless of how the domain sales pricing is going at auction and elsewhere, that fewer domains are actually available even with “FUTURE TREND” prodserv phrases. Further analysis and advice?

HOLD ON TO YOUR DOMAINS AND DON’T SELL THEM UNTIL YOU GET AN END USER!!

Screw it. In three years, you got maybe $30 invested in a domain you KNOW will sell for a minimum of $100 or much much more. If I was a domainer, I’d raise my reserve prices, force the domain auction producers to try to reach end users to sell the domains. If all domain investors followed this “embargo”, the domain auction producers wouldn’t have domains to sell other than their own. I think we domainers should just go on a moratorium for a year and decide NOT to sell our domains to another domainer unless they want to pay the price we think our domain is worth to an end user.

I dare end users to go to their registrar, and type in every variation of their prodserv they can think of, and see if it’s available OOTB. I’m pretty confident they’re going to come up with a big NOT AVAILABLE.

So, we domainers who own all these great generic prodserv domains can hold on to them and make the end users, the domain auction producers, and other domainers who want to pick off our domains cheap, start sweating like old men in a Greek steambath by just refusing to sell cheap!

I will lead the charge! Just let me off a few of my domains for cheap that don’t fall into my niche categories… oh crud… here we go again!  

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