Owning Too Many Domains Over the Years
I went through my domains today and realized I own eleven of them. Six are for GhostJam Games.
Some of the others aren’t being used and never will be. I bought a few on a whim because I had an idea for a product that I never ended up making. Others were for projects that I eventually evaluated more honestly and realized would take too much time to be worth it. Most of those ideas were never serious enough to deserve a domain.
The problem with domains is that they’re cheap enough to buy and expensive enough to keep around forever.
That’s the trap.
A domain is a tiny, harmless purchase in the moment. A couple of dollars, maybe a few more if you want the nice version. You can justify it with all kinds of reasons: “I might use this someday,” “this would be a great project name,” or “I should own the name before someone else does.”
It feels low-risk. It feels strategic. It feels like planning.
It also feels a lot like collecting.
The Phase Where Every Idea Gets a Domain
I went through a phase where I bought a domain for nearly every idea.
I had names for side projects that never existed. Names for companies I was never going to start. Names for things I thought would be fun to write about one day. I bought them because I liked the sound of them, because they were short, because they looked good in a browser bar, or because maybe one day I’d need a landing page.
A lot of them were harmless. They sat there quietly, waiting for a life they never had.
Some of them expired. Some still redirect to the main site. Some are parked in a weird limbo state where the domain exists but no one is really sure why.
I used to think this was a clever move. The internet is full of people who bought a domain early and later made it famous. Maybe I was just early. Maybe I was being smart.
But the truth is, most of the time I was just buying anticipation.
There is a difference between buying a domain for a vague idea and buying one for a name I actually want to build around. If I think a name could become a real brand, I usually try to get the .com, .net, and sometimes the .org too. That is not always necessary, but it makes sense when the name is important enough.
Treadwell is a good example. It is my last name, and trdwll is that name with the vowels removed. It has been my alias for years. I used trdwll.com since around 2014, if I remember correctly. After waiting years for treadwell.net to become available, I finally bought it for $1,500. That sounds ridiculous for a domain, and maybe it is, but in this case I knew I would keep using it.
GhostJam is another example. I paid almost $4,000 for ghostjam.com in 2022. That is a lot of money for a domain, but GhostJam Games is an actual company and a name I intend to keep using. The other GhostJam domains are not random ideas I might get around to someday. They are part of protecting and organizing something real.
There’s a Real Cost to Hoarding Domains
The obvious cost is money. Each renewal is small, but the costs add up fast when you’re keeping ten, twenty, or thirty domains around for no real reason.
Every extra domain is a tiny bit of cognitive overhead. You have to remember what it was for. You have to decide whether it’s still worth keeping. You have to keep the list updated. You have to notice when one is about to expire and think, “Should I renew this? Was this ever important?”
That’s the real trap: they don’t just sit there unused. They occupy a little pocket of your brain.
You start using domain names like a backlog of half-formed ideas.
- Maybe this one should be a business.
- Maybe this one should be the portfolio site.
- Maybe this one should become something eventually.
- Maybe this one could become a product.
- Maybe I should keep it because one day I’ll need it.
And then you never do anything with it, because once a domain becomes a placeholder for an imaginary future, it stops being a tool and starts being a fantasy.
The Internet Encourages This Behavior
If you’re building software, writing, or making a brand, it feels natural to say, “I should probably own the name,” even before you know what you’re doing with it. There’s a weird prestige in having a clean domain and a polished idea, even if the idea is still just a sketch.
A bunch of names sitting in a registrar account is not the same thing as a business, a product, or a body of work. It’s just a pile of unused URLs.
The Better Rule Is Simpler
I’m more selective now.
If I buy a domain, it needs to be for something I actually have a reason to build, or for a name I genuinely intend to use as a brand. If I can’t describe the purpose in plain English, it probably doesn’t deserve the renewal.
I’ve moved away from the idea that I need to own every possible variant of a name just in case. If a domain isn’t tied to intent, it’s just clutter.
I’ve gotten more comfortable letting some things go. Not every domain deserves a second life. Some are just placeholders, and placeholders should be allowed to expire.
I dropped seven domains today. Apparently this is something I do every couple of years: look through the list, admit that I have not used certain names, and finally let them go. I offer them to friends first, and if nobody wants them, I let them expire or return them to the registrar. I guess two years is about how long it takes me to stop imagining that a domain might become useful someday.
The Real Lesson
Owning too many domains is less about entrepreneurship and more about indecision. It’s the feeling that maybe the next idea will be the big one, so I should reserve the name now. It’s optimism with a little bit of fear mixed in: saying, “I should be prepared for opportunities I might have later,” without doing the work to turn those opportunities into something real.
That’s not strategy. That’s a way of keeping the door open to every possible future while never committing to any of them.
The useful domains are the ones that tie directly to something real: a product, a project, a business, a place to publish, or a clear identity.
Everything else is just a little tax on imagination.
I still own a few domains I don’t use. I’m not pretending I’ve become perfectly disciplined, but I’m more honest now about what they are: a few memories, a few sparks, and a little evidence that I once had ideas bigger than my actual follow-through. That’s not the same as a strategy, and honestly, that’s a good thing to realize.
until next time