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Comment by keithnz | Hacker News Reader

Oddly I have the opposite problem, I keep having good idea for names and registering them, then I end up doing nothing with them. I think I need to attend domain names anonymous

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My personal rules for this are:

1. If I haven't used the domain in 2 years, it's never going to happen so I will let it lapse

That in itself may not be enough, as you may become attached to some of the names, because they're just too good. So there is also rule 2:

2. Max 12 domains at any time (1 for each month), to keep costs reasonable.

If I'm at 12 domains, and I have a really good idea for another one... I have to weigh it against the existing domains and either not register it -- or immediately turn off auto renew for whichever other domain lost against my brilliant new idea.

When somebody eventually wants one of your domain names, do you sell it for roughly the total of your holding cost, thus making the author of TFA happy, or do you sell it for as much as you can get?

You buy a car with the intention to use it, but life gets in the way, and it ends up sitting unused.

Somebody else decides your car is perfect for them and is willing to buy it off you for far more than it has cost you.

At what price would you sell the car?

The analogy isn't great, because you having car A ( with its advantages, like easy to remember, good SEO, good pun on the company name, etc.) doesn't preclude anyone from having the exact same car bought elsewhere. Domains are unique, cars rarely are.

All cars are produced in limited numbers, and luxury or classic cars can be extremely rare.

Even mass produced cars are rarely identical. From new, there are a huge number of ways cars can be optioned, and on the resale market there are myriad variables that can make a car more or less desirable to different buyers.

And insurance, registration and maybe excise tax fees give you an incentive to not own it if you don’t use it.

You usually don't need to pay insurance or registration if you literally never use the car, as long as you have some private property to park it on.

The supply of any given car is finite. I'd like to have a Ford Focus RS but they never sold that many of them before canceling production.

In practice, unless you're chasing collectibles (in which case this is analogous to domain squatting), you'll find more than one seller if you look around, and a ton of sellers if you're willing to settle for a slightly different make/model - so competitive pressure keeps prices on a reasonable level.

Importantly, unless you literally tell a given seller that you won't settle for a different make/model, they have to assume that you might, and thus in their minds, they're competing for you with a lot of other people. As a buyer, you'd have to work really hard to get an unreasonable quote.

Don’t you think collectibles are more analogous to domain names than cars which are in bountiful supply? Nobody is paying more than the purchase price for a Camry.

But from a practical standpoint you will be served equally well or better by a different model of car. Domains do make a difference for businesses though. It's important for them to be relevant, memorable, and easy to type.

There are a lot of domains that are easy to type and memorable, and being “relevant” will come with name recognition. It seems pretty glib to just say cars are “practically” all the same; why does anybody pay 3 times as much as the cost of an economy car if the difference is so small?

Just because cars are fungible to you, doesn’t mean they are to other people.

The same applies to domains. Some people don’t care if they need to add an extra word, or pick a different extension. To other people it matters a lot.

Only one domain name of each exist. As long as there are many Ford Focus RS:es, you can definitely buy one of them for non-monopolistic pricing.

You 're not alone ... I promise, next week i will work on the website for that domain i bought in 2014

IMO the problem isn't the person who holds ~25 unused domains, the problem is the company that holds ~25,000 and parks a "make me an offer, minimum 2,000" page on all of them.

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