Why do clients keep renewing unused domains?

[NiceNIC]

Hosting providers often see customers renew domains that have no website, no email, and no visible activity.

Some may be holding them for future use. Others may simply not want to lose the domain.

Do you see this often? What usually makes a client keep an unused domain?

 

[bigredseo]

Speaking as a client, I hold over 100 domains that are currently unused. Some I've had for more than 15 years and never pointed them anywhere.

Many of the domains are registered to protect the main domain. Back in the days of running a hosting company, I had variations of our name, misspellings, and also, just to be on the safe side, I also had "HostingCompany-sucks", "HostingCompany-reviews" and variations - mainly for reputation protection as this was a very common thing for competitors to latch on to. Then we had lots of domains point to our main domain too, which were used in marketing campaigns (easier to track sometimes)

I probably have 20+ domains for ideas I want to do, but haven't done them yet. Heck, I'm finally building out a website currently that documents our travels. I registered that 2+ years ago and am only now building a website. I have domains registered and sitting in limbo for ecommerce sites and hobby sites I want to build at some point.

So there are any number of reasons to register a domain. I don't know which is more common, however: registering for a future idea or registering to point to another domain. That'd be an interesting thing to find out.

 

[NiceNIC]

Speaking as a client, I hold over 100 domains that are currently unused. Some I've had for more than 15 years and never pointed them anywhere.

Many of the domains are registered to protect the main domain. Back in the days of running a hosting company, I had variations of our name, misspellings, and also, just to be on the safe side, I also had "HostingCompany-sucks", "HostingCompany-reviews" and variations - mainly for reputation protection as this was a very common thing for competitors to latch on to. Then we had lots of domains point to our main domain too, which were used in marketing campaigns (easier to track sometimes)

I probably have 20+ domains for ideas I want to do, but haven't done them yet. Heck, I'm finally building out a website currently that documents our travels. I registered that 2+ years ago and am only now building a website. I have domains registered and sitting in limbo for ecommerce sites and hobby sites I want to build at some point.

So there are any number of reasons to register a domain. I don't know which is more common, however: registering for a future idea or registering to point to another domain. That'd be an interesting thing to find out.

That's a great example, thanks for sharing it. Brand protection, old campaign names, future ideas.... those are all real reasons people keep renewing. It's easy to call them unused from the outside, but the owner usually remembers why they registered them in the first place.

The "just in case" part is probably what keeps many domains alive for years.

 

[bigredseo]

That's a great example, thanks for sharing it. Brand protection, old campaign names, future ideas.... those are all real reasons people keep renewing. It's easy to call them unused from the outside, but the owner usually remembers why they registered them in the first place.

The "just in case" part is probably what keeps many domains alive for years.

We had "kimandconor", "conorandkim", "5minuteseo", "10minuteseo", dog names, trip adventure names, individual names like conortreacy or kimtreacy, businesses we will eventually launch, and others we know the time has passed. Then there are domains and websites I built purely as a joke amongst friends; it served its purpose and expired the next year. It didn't cost me hosting fees, as I had servers; it just cost the $8 for the domain (or $1 when I was getting .biz or .info names back in the day)

"5minute" and "10minute" are things that are no longer items I'm interested in for example. I could have put them on Domain Flippa or something, but it wasn't worth my effort. Originally, the idea was to post content or videos of things people could do within 5 minutes to change their SEO trajectory, or a 5-minute video on how to change something. The problem? Time - I keep running out of it. And to use it as a loss leader in our main business doesn't make sense, as we don't want DIY clients; we mainly work with clients that hire us and step out of the way.

So ideas shift and change. There's still a domain I lost 15+ years ago that I continue to monitor every year to see if the people renewed it. One day, they'll not renew it, and I'll get it back 🙂