Small Business Sunday: Organize Your Domain Portfolio In 2012

small_business_sunday

Hello everyone and welcome to one of my favorite series – Small Business Sunday! Since it’s the beginning of the year this is a great time to get organized as a business. If you are running a Domain Investing business it can be easy to lose track of your portfolio. January is the perfect month to put some basic organization behind your portfolio so you can have a solid game-plan for the year.

While there are some great automated portfolio management tools out there I’m going to be talking about using good old Excel. You can actually use Excel to easily give yourself a reality check and set your plans for the year into motion.

First create three separate tabs:

  1. Domains To Sell
  2. Domains To Develop
  3. Domains That Pay For Themselves
  4. Domains To Drop

At first you might think that no domains belong in category #4 but once I’m done with you some will be in there whether you like it or not! Okay, start by putting all the months of 2012 as column headings in each tab. We’ll start with the first tab – “Domains To Sell” – at first you might just want to dump all your names in here, however that’s just not being realistic.

Now is where this starts to become personalized to you. What was the most amount of domains you ever sold in a single month in 2011? Let’s say that in October of last year you sold six domains, whatever the number may be this is the maximum amount of domains you can put as “Domains To Sell” for a particular month. Fill in each month of 2012 with domains you plan to sell, there’s a good chance this will only be a fraction of your portfolio – you’re getting more realistic already!

Now for the second tab – “Domains To Develop”. Unless you have extensive development experience your maximum here will be one per month. Put one domain in each column or feel free to only put a few names in for 2012 – stick with an estimate that you think is realistic.

Tab #3 is pretty self-explanatory, put all domains that pay for themselves or generate a profit in this tab. You could sell these at any time but I’m wildly addicted to passive income and you should be to. Hang-onto these and feel free to put some of these in the Development tab if there is more work to be done.

Tab #4 is everything that is left, that’s right – since you don’t have plans to sell these, don’t plan to develop them, and they don’t pay for themselves these are good candidates to drop. Carefully examine each name in this tab and make sure you have a really good reason to renew it if you decide to do so this year. Of course if you’re a pro Domainer and have some killer one and two-word .COMs that you’re holding out for the right buyer this does not apply to you!

What you will end with is a solid plan for the year with goals of which domains to promote for sale each month, domains to develop, and a good idea of what domains aren’t quite making the cut. The best thing you can do is drop the junk from your portfolio each year and use the money you save to invest it better names. I do this every year and you can to.

2012 is here and it’s time to stop collecting and start investing!

(Photo Credit)

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton