Cherish them all really, because they can often be few and far between… and they can even appear to stop! The larger and more quality portfolio you have, the less likely this will happen but as your portfolio shrinks, so will the offers and sales! At least this is exactly what has happened to me!
I held around 500 domains at one point and am now nearing 200 and falling. As a portfolio grows, so does your annual renewal, so it is very important to be able to keep up with that. $10 domains doesn't seem that expensive, but 500 domains turns into $5,000 annual renewals. Add in the addicting buying of domains from $50 here, $250, $1,000 etc and your annual spending can easily hit five figures. Without "making some money" off of those domains, it can start to be an expensive investment if you are holding some bad apples.
Don't forget your "tool fund" that keeps adding up every month. Hosting, DomainTools and all the other fun little domain sites that charge a monthly fee like Estibot, Freshdrop and more.
Before you know it, if the sales stop happening, domain parking doesn't fill the domain renewal bill, things can start looking pretty ugly.
DotWeekly would easily pay the renewals on all my domain names and it also allowed me to invest in more domain names but it was never steady. 1 good month, 2 bad months etc. never consitant! Things happen in life and things change, so you deal with that. I ended up having a lot less time to blog on DotWeekly and as you blog less, you get less visitors, you make less money.
The snowball is rolling!
Renewal fees start getting tighter, parking seems to keep dropping revenue and you start letting some domain names drop! Next month, you let a few more drop and so on.
No new investing and that ball keeps rolling down hill. In my case, at about as bad of a time it could happen it did, DotWeekly went up in a big ball of flames during a hosting change and the entire site was deleted. Everything! About 4 years of work, archives and simply a site that still was bringing in about $400 a month with no new content was simply GONE! Also gone, that $400 a month that was really helping keep the bow of the boat above water.
To make a really long story some what short… I have DotWeekly back up, but it will take a year or more to get things back rolling. Maybe longer or never again as it was but I am trying!
My ship is sunk. I am getting domain name renewal emails daily, but no funds to renew the domains. It makes me sick really. Things are piling up and I can officially say the ship has sunk.
Cherish your domain name sales because they can go away. When they go away and no other income is happening, things can turn pretty ugly, pretty quickly. It has been sometime since I sold a domain, got an offer or even considered purchasing one and I really miss those days. Hell, I would even take a "low ball" offer and it would at least cheer me up a little bit!
I'm hoping I can reach the life boat and board a new ship, but one important thing that I wish I really did when they were happening…. was to cherish the domain name sales I had, when they were happening!
I'm sorry to hear about the rut you're in. I personally enjoy your posts and I'm sure things will get back on track. In the mean time, please send me your list of names or point me in the right direction to see them. I'm always buying names, so might be worth a look before you let them drop. No promises, but would love to help out, if I can.
Thanks for the comment Vincent. You can checkout the majority of my domains here http://www.afternic.com/listings/Yofie that is the easiest.
You've really poured your gut out here, Jamie. Got too many names in my portfolio, as well.
Been dropping 20 to 50 a month for over a year. (You picked up two of them about 18 months ago – food related.)
The thing I've learned over that time is not to fall in love with your domains.
Hey, blogging ain't easy, I tried and it ain't for me. You communicate and write well.
I believe your blog was one of the first, if not the first, to do followups on end user sales.
Hope everything works out well for you.