I logged into my GoDaddy account the other day (worst UI ever), and was greeted with a scary-looking warning that I had 27 domain names set to expire soon. That got me thinking about how many names I actually own, and how much I was spending annually on registrations. The answer startled me: I have 327 domains in my account (and at least a dozen with other registrars). Shit. At $10 a pop, that’s $3,270 a year I’m throwing at largely unused and dormant names. I’ve recently been on a minimalism/life simplification kick, so I decided then and there that it was time to do some pruning.

As I began to go through my collection of names, there were some obvious losers to cut right away and let expire (Orchards4Sale.com, anyone?). I must have been smoking crack the night I bought that one. But for at least 80% of the other names, I had this strange, almost sentimental attachment to them. Seeing the names again would make fresh the original basic idea that had spawned the purchase. After going through about ten of these “memory lane” category names, I realized that buying domain names can really become an addiction. Like crack, although I wouldn’t know from experience. Were I to ever try drugs, I’d probably go the Steve Jobs route and drop acid or something. But I digress.

As someone who likes to formulate ideas for products, apps and services in my head, I’ll frequently start dreaming up the perfect brands for these vague, vaporware concepts. I know I’m not the only one, but I’m among the maybe 5% of people who will actually throw the money at a name I like. I’ll usually check IDS to see if I can hand-register an available name. If it’s unavailable, my next move is usually to visit the site and see if it’s actually being used. Nine times out of ten, it’s a parked page that’s been squatted on for several years. In that case, I’ll head over to Whois the thing and gauge whether or not I could make a reasonable offer and expect to get a response. Again, nine times out of ten you’ll get either no reply, or you’ll get a ridiculous response from the current owner that they’ll sell it to you for the right price, which usually turns out to be $100,000. At which point you laugh out loud, then get kind of pissy about it, and eventually move on.

But the problem with buying domain names is the same as the problem with dreaming up ideas:

1. They’re cheap.
2. They’re the easy part.

It’s too damn easy to sit in front of your browser and dream up the perfect name for this great idea that you haven’t done a single damn thing to actually execute on. For most people, $10 is chickenshit money to throw at a good name. If you pull in decent bucks, even dropping $500 or $2,000 at a great name isn’t out of the question. But a domain name by itself is as worthless as the idea that resulted in the registration. Unless you actually do something with it, it sits on a shelf covered in cobwebs (or the web version of cobwebs: Garbage network link ads).

Some names have intrinsic value, and can be held as a form of investment (Candy.com sold for $3Million). But let’s be honest. 99.99% of registered domains are total crap. In the past week I gave myself an instant $1,400 a year raise by turning off the auto-renew registration on nearly half my names. Over the next few months I’m planning to sell off any remaining domains of value in my account that are not tied to a project I am actively working on. Any money I make from the sales will go right into my bootstrap savings account. I’m weaning myself off the crack.