Spring Cleaning of your Domain Inventory

At any given time, many of us have domain names we have purchased with all the right intent, but never got around to fully developing. Essentially… they were an investment of $8, or whatever amount you paid for them at that time. Kim and I go through our domain inventory on a monthly basis and review the intent for the names. 98% of the time, we end up keeping the names in our inventory for future use, but there are many times that we have to think hard about whether to renew or cut our loss and try to get some or all of that $8 back! This post is part of our Spring Cleaning of your Niche Store Empire series.

Spring Cleaning your Domain Inventory

There are only a few guidelines I try to follow, when it come to dealing with domains:

1. NEVER leave it parked at the Registrar, unless you get some of the revenue the site will earn!
   When you register a domain name, it goes right onto one of the registrars own servers and is immediately populated with adverts! If you do nothing but let the domain sit there, they will earn 100% of the revenue that the domain may bring. Since I use GoDaddy for my own domain management, I am enrolled in their CashParking system. ($10/mo) Every time I register a domain… if I do not immediately change the DNS to point to one of my own hosting accounts and get something up and running on the site, I add it to my CashParking account and assign keywords to it. Any clicks the domain may now receive, are split with me. There are 2 plans to choose from, $3.99/mo = 60% of the revenue, or $9.99/mo = 80% of the revenue.If you have more than 10 unused domains… it’s worth looking into!
2. NEVER wait until the last 10 Days to try and sell it!
   If you get the “domain is about to expire in 90 days” notice from your registrar, it’s time to make a choice on the domain name! The closer you get to the expiration date, the less likely you are going to try and sell it! It’s very easy to put it off due to the 90 day mark giving you plenty of time to act!! Don’t do it… make the choice now! Decide to either sell it it, or develop it and put it to work for you. If you decide to keep it, you now have 60-90 days to see if it is worth keeping!
3. Evaluate your Domain Name from an outsiders perspective!
   I wish I had a nickel for every domain I registered and thought it was just the top-shelf name, everyone would love and people would line up to buy! 99% of the time… nope, its just me who likes it! Be very realistic with yourself on this, it’s not always easy… but will save you some pain down the road when your million dollar domain, sells for $35.

Dealing with Domains that Used to Have a Website on Them

In the Spring Cleaning of your Hosting Account post yesterday, Jeff from Senjo Marketing asked what he should do with the sites that he was removing from his account. If you have already made the choice to remove a website from your host, AND it already has even a trickle of traffic coming into it, that traffic will not stop right away and can be monetized in a few different ways! If you have properly built inbound links to your site, maybe written a few articles and posted them out there for others to market, you will always get a trickle of traffic from them!

1. Sign up for a parking solution from your registrar! In October of last year, I removed one site from my host, changed the DNS back to GoDaddy, and that single domain has earned more than the $10/month CashParking costs me for ALL accounts every month since, based on the trickle of 70-80 visitors that come in every month! The traffic is just a residual from the links I had built and the content that was previously indexed (and scraped) on other websites.
2. Find the Perfect Offer for the visitors who were coming, and display a 1-page website, with only a few outbound links to that offer! If you have a site that deals with Golf Equipment, write a single page about golf equipment deals, explain that you entered a relationship with your offer site and that is now where all the deals are to be found. You may be surprised at how many click over!
3. If your site is getting traffic from your article and link marketing, but it is already dropped from a search index, you have nothing to lose at this point… put up a meta-refresh redirect, set at 0 seconds, and forward all your traffic to your offer’s website with your affiliate code. This is not going to benefit your site at all… and if it is still indexed, it will get it removed quickly!

Selling your Domains

Fortunately, there is always a market for aged domains that are not deindexed! You may be able to sell it off for at least the amount it cost you to register it. Going back to the evaluation of your domain… be honest with yourself here, nobody is going to drop even $10 on a domain name full of hyphens or oddball characters! They might however spend a bit of money on that same domain if it comes with a website, already indexed in search. The best thing you can do at this point is identify who your target buyers may be and list your site for sale at the appropriate place!

1. If you have a short and brandable domain, check with your registrar! Most of them offer an option to list and sell your domain! Even if you plan on one day building of the site, you can list it for sale during thedowntime. You never know, someone may want it more than you do!
2. Join one of the Domaining forums like Sitepoint or DNForum, list your domain or website for sale there. Buyers tend to look for domains with traffic, or domains that are brandable or semi-generic, so can flip them for profit with minimal development.
3. eBay is a great place to sell less than desirable domain names (It works for good ones too!)
4. Ask a Friend if they may be interested in your domain name, and sell it for the cost of the domain! Heck, at least you got your money back… which is better than just letting t expire!

If you have tried selling the domain and its just not going anywhere, build a minisite on it and sell the entire thing on eBay for as much or little as you can get! By minisite, I mean… take your “still indexed” domain and put up 5-10 pages of content with NO ADS on the site. Sell the entire site with the content… and supply the buyer with the static pages of the site. If you decide to use WordPress to create your minisite, just dump the theme and database as part of the transaction. Start your auction price at a low price that will get some traffic flowing to it… and just cut the strings and let it go!
If all else fails and the domain is going to expire regardless of what you have tried… get in touch with others in your network and just give it away! Make sure the recipient knows that they will have to pay the registrar the registration fee to keep the domain active. I have done this several times with my own domains that are close to expiring… after all, if it was just going to expire anyway, why not give forward and let someone else have a go at it?!

Keeping Domains that you Think Have a Future

As you weed through your domains… you are bound to find many that you fully intend to develop. Believe it or not, they cost you more than you know due to that emotional attachment you have with them! From the cost of the domain to the time you have wasted researching it, all the way down to the time you waste every month deciding what to do with it… it is nothing but a drain on resources!

If you make the choice to develop a domain – Do it! Set a plan in place on what to build, when to build it and how to gauge its success! Even if you have 50 domains that you plan to develop, write them all down somewhere and create a timeline for action! You don’t have to do them all at once, but setting a goal of building 5 every month, you have a working document that you can easily refer to every month to review your plans, goals and most importantly, your progression!

How else do you manage your own domain inventory?

Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:

• Spring Cleaning of your Hosting Account
• Spring Cleaning Week at The Niche Store Builder!
• Spring Cleaning your ePN Campaign Account List

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