I bet many on HN will have the domain buying fetish. i.e) You think of a side project and immediately buy the domain for it. There is also the practice of simply buying a domain just because you thought it was cool. I am one of those people and my reasoning is that if i spend some money and buy the domain, i will have the motivation to get started on the project and it has worked at times.<p>On the other hand, i have accumulated many domains which seem pretty useless now! I do renew some domains hoping that i will work on it some day. How do you tackle this?
It's funny I had this exact conversation with a coworker just this morning. The company we work for has a portfolio of nearly 1 million domain names, and most of them point to simple placeholder pages with ads.<p>I personally own about 50 domain names...most that I bought with the intention of using for a specific project that never materialized. With a handful of them I paid a writer in the Philippines to write a dozen articles for each, and I threw together simple wordpress sites with RSS autoposting and they make about $10/mo each, which pays for the renewal fees for all of the other domains.<p>I suppose in theory I could register 1000 domain names and repeat the process of paying for content, setting up wordpress RSS autoposting, and possibly make $10,000 a month, but I never seem to get around to it, and there's the possibility that it won't be as profitable as I think.
I must say, when I was doing some domain research, I though to myself more than once : "this is, this is criminal".<p>These were domains dealings with quite serious subjects and just seeing them sitting there full of ads, making it so very much difficult for me to acquire, absolute gorgeous domain names, just felt not only immoral but purely and simply criminal.<p>Of course I got over it and moved onto domains which were available and suitable and just as good, but, and this is not to you personally but companies who buy such domains names en mass hopping to profit, simply, find a way to make money which allows you to get sleep at night.
i have a personal domain (jcs.org) and i just create a subdomain for a new project. it lets me put it online quickly and it also means i'm not tied to the name if i want to change it.<p>sometimes i finish a project and it never moves (<a href="http://metra.jcs.org/" rel="nofollow">http://metra.jcs.org/</a>) because i can't find an appropriate domain name.<p>though as someone else suggested, try <a href="http://hntrades.com/" rel="nofollow">http://hntrades.com/</a> to buy/sell/trade unused domain names.
I think the important thing is to have some measure of self-control; if you buy a domain for a project, promise yourself that you won't buy another until you've either: (a) built the project, or (b) sold/traded the domain or otherwise used it in some gainful way.<p>Disclaimer: I've got a bunch of domains that I purchased for personal projects and never got around to. But at some point, I realized I was just wasting money and promised myself not to buy any more until I finished at least one of the projects.
I am totally guilty of buying domains for side projects and then not following through.<p>I own 17 domains, 5 of which are currently actively hosting meaningful content or webapps. I went through a scrub of the ones that are unused, and realized that I need to let some go.<p>Here's a list of ones I'm letting expire. If you have a meaningful project idea for one of them let me know.<p>concoctail.com
geogames.org
gpsrpg.com
istherewind.com
jamhunt.com
runubc.com
I've encountered this same problem multiple times.<p>The fix: don't buy the domain until you are ready to launch the project. This allows you to build without having to adapt your project to a domain name. It's much easier to find a domain that describes your project after it has been completed. It also saves you money if you never carry out your grand ideas.
I'm going to be a little contrary and say you should register as many as you can when u can.<p>I have over 300 domains, but the value in a good domain is well worth the cost over the years. TouchArcade.com is one I picked up before I had a solid plan for its use. Now it's annual revenue dwarfs the "wasted" money on domains.
I don't really consider it a negative for my years-old untapped ideas to cost me a token amount of money per annum. If my unused twitter accounts did the same, I'd probably have a few more active projects, or a few fewer dormant ones.
I recently evaluated all the domains I had accrued, took a critical look at all the apps I wanted to built for them and at what state they were in (if at all) and decided to ditch 50% of them.<p>It felt ...liberating. :)
I've stopped myself from buying domains for projects. I also force myself to let a domain expire if I don't use it within a year. It's extra motivation to shit or get off the pot.
I never start by buying the domain. Instead I spend a bit of time to write down the concept, see if it sticks.<p>It's only later that I look for a name for the project itself, and I buy the domain at the same time (it's a kind of whois brainstorming).
I've managed to accumulate about 150 domains, almost all of them were bought with an idea in mind (quite a lot are duplicates/complements/variants to the main idea).<p>This year I listed all of the ones that didn't have websites yet on sedo, and set all of them to a couple of hundred pounds each buy-it-now. The idea is that either I focus on building an idea quickly, or risk that someone who thinks he has a better idea than me snaps the domain name up in the meantime.<p>Hasn't worked. But, so far three of those domains have been sold, so that essentially covers all my domain name renewal fees this year.<p>Perhaps I should drop the prices to increase the pressure on myself.
You post a large update in a place where you value your integrity stating that the goal you were going to achieve will be accomplished by a certain date (that appears reasonable).<p>In my case, it was to tweet that we'd be selling our latest discs (<a href="http://twitter.com/Thisoneisonus/status/27176693962" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/Thisoneisonus/status/27176693962</a>) on a certain date, and then coding through the night a couple of days before because I didn't want to look like an idiot to our 5,000 obsessive Twitter followers :D
I'm just like you. But I've started winding down my portfolio of ones I know I'll never get around to building. The interesting thing for me has been to see some businesses spring up with the same concepts for which my domain names were bought. That's happened with more than a few of my domain names.<p>I've also been fortunate to have a couple of my domains result in unsolicited bids ... generating enough profit to cover the carrying costs for the 20 still in my portfolio. Just got a completely unexpected offer for one last night.
For every three domains I buy, I probably keep one longer htan a year. And only half of those stay longer than two years (1/6). But those that last longer than two years are generally gonna stay around for a while--I bought them because I like the name, not because of a project sitting in my mind. Eg, AffinityScore.com just has a nice ring to it and would make a nice social ranking product or services business. (If you google "Affinity score" it's most often used by people describing EdgeRank...)
I'm shaking my head right now. Literally 5 seconds before checking out the HN home page right now, I just finished the checkout process for yet another sideproject domain :)
Someone just released this last week: <a href="http://hntrades.com" rel="nofollow">http://hntrades.com</a> Post your domains there and get something for them.
I used to buy tons of domains for all the ideas I have or planned to do in the future. The problem is ... most of the time, I could never get around to work on it. Either because one idea took up more time then expected, etc. Now I will just register domain once I'm almost ready to launch.<p>Looking at the rate startup fail, I guess it's quite alright to not get the domain I want. If things do work out, I can always rebrand it later.
I'm the same, currently just have 3 though - om.gd - we.gd and whi.im - things planned for all of them, but am also interested in getting something going with them sooner than latter. Very interesting the money some people are making from links and basic content... hum...<p>Tempted to work up some decent ideas into ebooks, and have sites specific to each - just making sure they don't look spammy/rubbish. No point if they do.
I only buy .coms, which means I have to be very creative in thinking up names. This on its own is a good throttle on buying names. Lately, I've been toying with the idea of using subdomains from <a href="http://freedns.afraid.org/" rel="nofollow">http://freedns.afraid.org/</a> to host small projects that don't warrent a domain name. I do wonder what this would do to search rank though.
Someone just emailed me today about one of these 'side project' domain names.<p>Back when I was a business noob I would register domains for just about any bright idea. It got expensive.<p>What I do now for those, 'on the shelf domains', is simply a white page with an email and a brief message explaining the domain is for sale.<p>A few inquiries so far, nothing much, we'll see how today's negotiation pans out.
Actually I have 5 domains left that are all 6-7 letters and make really sounding words. Bought them 6 years ago, holding on to them and use them whenever I start up a new company.
I consider the purchase price of a new domain to be the first, and one of the best, barriers when vetting new ideas.<p>If I come up with a sweet idea, I sit on it. If after a few weeks the idea is still burning a hole in my pocket, I'll purchase the domain.