I was doing the administration for my finances today, and one of the entries that annoy me the most to enter aren’t taxes, maintenance costs for my car or any other of those “adult” expensens. Nope, it’s buying domain names. I have had a problem with buying domain names ever since I started playing with Joomla over a decade ago. Once I had access to a credit card I started buying domains, to work on the “big idea”. You know the type, the sort of idea that will definitely work out and which will become a source of income.
History proves past me wrong, but that never stopped me from stockpiling domains. I peaked in 2016 where I was the owner of 116 domain names. Looking back, I honestly couldn’t tell you how I could possibly own that many domain names or which ones they were. I seriously have no idea. I held on to them, but during the years I managed to cancel about half of them. Only to buy many more during the past three years, bringing me back to a cool hundred domain names.
Of those domain names, currently only four are in active (and good) use:
- stevenzeegers.me – used by this very blog
- poweruserguide.com – for a tech blog formerly known as joomla & more
- fromapptozip.com – yet another tech blog, don’t ask
- vanapptotzip.be – the Dutch version of that tech blog.
With only 4 out of a 100 domains used, you will understand when I say that buying domain names is, on average, a stupid idea. Just like NFT’s domain names are only worth something if some idiot wants to pay you for it. However, I already knew how many domain names I own. I keep a list of all of them and occassionally look at it to decide which one I definitely shouldn’t renew.
Today, I decided to do some additional research. I was curious to find out during what period I bought most of my domain names. I knew that there was some spread across the year, but I suspected that most purchases happened during December and January, when the anxiety of “wanting to make a new start” usually roars up. So I did the math, and the results are surprising.
I calculated how many domains I bought per month, and then also divided them into purchases during the first half of the month and the second half of the month. You can see the statistics below. I didn’t include domains that I already cancelled and domains that I bought for a 3rd party.
Analyzing the stupid ideas
When we analyze the statistics for the stupid ideas, there are some interesting observations to be made.
2nd half > 1st half
The number of domains that I bought during the second half of a month is significantly highter than during the first half of the month. As you can see, there are four months where I only bought domains in the second half of the month. This could perhaps be explained by the fact that I usually wait to see how the month evolves before I make any purchases, so I don’t run into any financial surprises. It’s usually also the period when I buy something “nice” for myself if finances allow it, so that could definitely be a factor. Or perhaps it’s fueled by the fact that I do my accounting a first time half way during the month after I’ve made my expenses for my cost of living and received my salary. Your guess is as good as mine. However, the difference is significant and that makes it an interesting detail.
A weird exception to the is rule is the month of August, where I bought 9 domains in the first half and then nothing in the second half of the month.
Only one month of no purchases
As you can see, there is only one month during which I haven’t registered a domain name. This is probably connected to the fact that I always have a lot of expenses during that month, which might influence my decision not to spend an euro I don’t have to on stupid things like the next big idea that turns out to be a small and dumb concept.
The “busiest” period
When doing the math, I strongly suspected that December and January would stand out for the number of purchases. I feel like I have started on most of my ideas during these two months, but apparently that is not the case at all. The number of domain names purchased are pretty average, and none of the domain names bought during that period are actually in active use at all.
In fact, all domain names that are actively being used were purchased in April, which is also te month where the most domain names ( a staggering 17) were purchased. All active domain names were bought that month, which would be positive if that was ruined by the fact that I also bought 13 unused domains, making it both the month with the most used and the most unused domains.
April is the peak of a three-month period from March to May where purchases are really booming. Combined the purchases for these months make for 45% of all domains purchased. Hot damn, I had no idea the arrival on Spring had such an effect on me!
Conclusion
Statistics don’t lie, I just don’t know what to make of this “spread” of domain names. Other than that I need to hide my credit card when spring arrives, as this appears to be peak “domain name purchasing” season.
I also always assumed that domains in the category of “cool domains for a game or game company” would all be bought in September or the second half of August because of GamesCom, but that isn’t true.
I think the conclusion is that there is no limit on my ability to generate bad ideas and not executing them, but that Spring is indeed the period when new domain names blossom.