What’s in a name?
I collect domains. Not intentionally, but by accident.
In 2003, I set up my own company. Lime Training and Consultancy Limited, and bought the domain limeconsulting.com. I still have it now. Lime co-existed alongside my next corporate adventure, MTI. That domain, or rather, those domains, were sold with the business.
Retired, I decided first to become an author, and second to un-retire. Now, what domain would Stuart Lennon the author have? I settled on stuartlennon.com (SL), given that for some reason lennon.com is not available😉. For reasons lost in the mists of time, I opted to become stuart@stuartlennon.com, which makes no sense at all, but hey-ho. Mrs L has addresses at lime and SL. Hmmm...margaret@stuartlennon.com. A shade patriarchal perhaps? I acquired margaretlennon.com too.
The thing with domains is that they are like mushrooms. One bit of rain and you’re inundated with the things. If I own .com, shouldn’t I own .net? What about .club? or .co.uk or .uk or .anything? Then of course, there’s Nero’s Notes, or Pocket Notebooks as was, which is owned by Loggedoff Limited. There’s another field of mushrooms to tend.
I don’t own stuartlennon.com. I rent it. Every year, I pay a domain registrar for the right to use it. That’s true of every single domain. Most, get redirected to the “main” suffix, but for the main ones, I pay a host to host the website, and an email provider to host the email.
It’s costing me a fortune.
The sales method is simple. Anyone can rent a domain that isn’t rented. So, pocketnotebooks.co.uk redirects to Nero’s Notes, but pocketnotebooks.com is rented by someone, who will sell you the right to rent it for $3,999. Limetraining.com redirects to limeconsulting.com, but limetraining.info goes to a master craftsman who restores old properties. Domain registrars encourage you to buy all the suffixes to your chosen domain, and people do. The whole point of a memorable domain is so that people can, well, remember it. What if people can’t find me? Or send an email that doesn’t get to me? There’s a fear that I’ll miss an opportunity or lose business.
That’s how I ended up renting 27 domains.
Sales by Fear of Missing Out.
Would I miss out? If somebody was looking for me online, typed in stuartlennon.nonsense and didn’t get taken to my site, would they give up? Is that how it works? No. I don’t think it is. I’m prepared to keep the cash and miss out.
Time for me to divest of some domains.
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