I used to be of the mindset that because domain names are relatively cheap, there’s really no reason why a person’s assorted web projects shouldn’t stay online indefinitely.
And yet right now, I’ve got a couple of different domain names coming up for renewal … and I’m not so sure that I want to bother renewing them anymore.
In total right now I have about a dozen domains registered and I think if you twisted my arm, I could make reasonable arguments for keeping maybe seven of them. It used to drive me nuts when I’d see domains snatched up by spammers just looking to make a few bucks in bulk off the old site’s referral traffic as long as it lasted, although surprisingly if I lookup the last handful of names that I’ve let lapse … they’re actually able to be registered right now.
And not even for $1,200 from a reseller, either!
Maybe that bizarre bubble just finally burst, but it’s still increasingly hard to justify when A) the sites get almost no traffic, and B) if I want to maintain them, I can always throw them under a subdomain on this site like I’ve done in the past. At this point they’re just as good to my portfolio as xyz.scottsevener.com as they are xyz.com … plus, it saves me ten bucks for every one I kill off.
I’ve got four more days to make my decision… 😯