info How I Track my Domain Name Portfolio

[amplify]

Elliot Silver shows a way to track your domain names, and keep to the rule of KISS (keep it simple, stupid).

His spreadsheet is pretty simplistic with the domain name, purchase price, and year acquired. That's all very basic information to keep on a domain, and it should.

One important piece that I keep with mine is the associated costs in another column. This can be anything from a transfer to renewal as you may be likely to move domain names around at times.

Without associated costs added to the purchase price, you get a fuzzy view of how much the asset, or domain, costs and what your return on it is.

While costs are typically minimal and could easily be multiplied out by a round number of, say 9, from the year acquired, you may end up paying more in taxes for the entire portfolio than you have to.

What's a loss of 10 bucks to the IRS though? They'll surely give it right back when they find the error.

 

[robmonster]

The Epik Domain Manager is a one stop shop for domain name asset management. It is free for anyone to use even if domains are external to Epik registrar. It generates free stats from Estibot and also provides free DNS.

The domain manager also lets you track searchable notes and tags.

Upon approval external domains are also eligible for parking, including PPC. This is quite handy when managing renewals in terms of deciding which domains to keep or drop.

As for tracking cost basis, we should add that feature. It has been on the list -- the ability to monitor the total cost basis including renewal expense for granular match of all associated cost basis.

The .COM transfer promo for Epik at $6.99 is also continuing for anyone looking to beat the price increase.

 

[amplify]

The domain manager also lets you track searchable notes and tags.

It would be nicer to have domains organizable by category or folder, much like Uniregistry. I give them credit for the ability to do it this way as no other registrar -- that I know of -- has done it in a fashion that is quite like using a PC to organize files, that just seems intuitive as domains would be the files.

As far as your personal domain portfolio goes, how do you keep tabs on it? In a single spreadsheet like Elliot, more advanced matters like following up on email chains, or anything else that someone can use to manage 1 to 10000 names?

Thanks!

 

[robmonster]

The topic of domain organization is one of preference. The advantage of the tag method is the ability for any domain to have a one-to-many relationship with tags, e.g. the domain name NFT.com might be in the category of (1) 3L, (2) short, (3) crypto, (4) NFT and (5) brandable.

On a related note, with Epik's recent acquisition of Intelliname.com we are also adding a vast taxonomy of industry codes which will be particularly useful for providing customers with codification of their marketplace listings as part of full-service agency to help customers find the perfect domain.

In both cases, it is better to be able to put domains in more than one box. The folder model is inherently flawed in that it forces a single category which limits discoverability.

 

[amplify]

The topic of domain organization is one of preference. The advantage of the tag method is the ability for any domain to have a one-to-many relationship with tags, e.g. the domain name NFT.com might be in the category of (1) 3L, (2) short, (3) crypto, (4) NFT and (5) brandable.

Certainly agree there. I like the tags because of what you mentioned as well as using them in a manner to keep notes as to whether I want to renew or drop a name. Having tags as a layer on top of hierarchy organization like categories/folders would be icing on the cake; but, that is also up for debate.

In both cases, it is better to be able to put domains in more than one box. The folder model is inherently flawed in that it forces a single category which limits discoverability.

That's where it was flawed, but still worked.

I just got into sorting the ones I want to put on automatic renewal so I need to get in there and tag names when I have the time. Apart from some obvious ones like "brandable", I was thinking "drop" or "renew" so I have a note of some kind going into automatic renewal whether I want to turn it off or not by revisiting the Analytics on the names.

 

[robmonster]

I do hear you though.

It was Joseph Peterson who convinced me of the structural advantage of tags over folders. I initially pushed back but in the end, I believe he was 100% right.

I believe when the new Intelliname taxonomy comes online with professional coders assigned to coding names for marketplace discovery and SEO landers, we'll see some impact.

 

[amplify]

The Epik UI/UX takes a lot of getting used to Rob. I would like to see domains not capitalize and a quicker process for doing certain actions, like parking and setting up landers.

That would be neat if domains were only capitalized until you set the casing which would override it (Marketplace > Domain Casing)...

 

[DomainsGENERAL.com]

That would be neat if domains were only capitalized until you set the casing which would override it (Marketplace > Domain Casing)...

This may be some sarcasm (maybe not totally obvious, though), because this is the way it does work.
Personally, I would prefer the Casing BY DEFAULT to be the way I entered the domain when adding it. This way, you could directly have the casing you want without having to modify it.

The Epik UI/UX takes a lot of getting used to Rob. I would like to see domains not capitalize and a quicker process for doing certain actions, like parking and setting up landers.

I disagree with you, there. It seems fairly easy to understand and to get used to, from my POV. Maybe it feels a little "different" than what's often used, reason of your feeling. But I still think it's logical, understandable, and easy to get used to.

I agree with you on stats and graphs. Would be very nice.


A very small thing could be easily changed, IMHO: When you list external domains on the marketplace, it shows a "9%" commission, which is false. The commission will be 10% for external domains. It could show the correct number depending on if it's an internal or external domain (above screenshot is an external domains, yet, it still shows 9%, which won't be the case when sold).