Step 1

What a portfolio is for

Be honest about each name: active product, real option (thesis + timeline), or vanity. Vanity is allowed — just price it. Options without a date become vanity with better PR.

Step 2

Cost reality: renewals compound

List every renewal month and annual total. Opportunity cost is real: money and attention that could ship one good site instead of twelve parked ideas. If the spreadsheet hurts, that is the point.

Step 3

Keep criteria (weighted honestly)

  • Traffic or inbound that you would miss
  • Email / identity in active use
  • Brand or legal necessity
  • Emotional keep — acknowledge it, cap the budget

Weight the list yourself. “Someday SaaS” is not a keep criterion until there is a one-sentence thesis and a calendar slot.

Step 4

Drop criteria

  • No plan in 12 months
  • Pure speculation with no distribution path
  • Duplicate intent with a better name you already own

Dropping is not failure. Letting NS rot on a name you “might use” is how portfolios get embarrassing.

Step 5

Buy gate

Buy only if: you can write a one-sentence thesis and name the first distribution path (content, product, redirect to a real property). Otherwise don’t buy.

Step 6

Hygiene

  • WHOIS privacy on by default where available
  • 2FA on every registrar
  • Registrar concentration risk — do not keep everything in one login you barely watch
  • Know who owns DNS (registrar vs Cloudflare vs host)

Step 7

Forwarding vs building vs parking

Forwarding to a real property can be rational. Building is the compounding path. Parking rarely compounds for personal operators — treat it as a temporary holding pattern with an expiry review, not a strategy.

Step 8

Annual review ritual (template)

  1. Export domain list + renewal dates + annual cost
  2. Tag each: product / option / vanity / drop
  3. Schedule drops before renewal, not after the charge
  4. Re-run the buy gate on anything you almost purchased this year

Step 9

Mistakes

Common failure modes

  • Sunk-cost renewals (“I’ve paid for five years…”)
  • “Someday SaaS” with no thesis
  • Letting nameservers rot / expired DNS while renewing the name

Done

You’re done when…

Done when

  • You have a written keep/drop rule
  • You have a renewal calendar habit
  • You have a “buy only if…” gate you can say out loud