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If you’ve been building things online for a while, there’s a good chance you own a few ghost domains

Field Note #217
🔬 Generalized 🟢 Beginner ⏱ 30 Minutes ✓ Observation from Experience
If you’ve been building things online for a while, there’s a good chance you own a few ghost domains — names you registered at midnight for a project idea that never launched. They sit there, renewing quietly every year, costing money, doing nothing.
September is a reasonable time to open your registrar account and do a quick pass.
 
Three checks worth running this weekend:
Audit your auto-renewals. Pull up every domain you own. If you’re holding a name speculatively — betting the word or phrase might be worth more later — keep auto-renew on and track it separately from your working domains. The ones to cut are the midnight ideas you know you’ll never build. For your primary business domain, confirm auto-renew is on and your payment method is current.
 
Protect your brand variations. If your main site is yourbrand.com, check whether common typos or the .net and .org versions make sense to own and redirect to your primary domain. It can help capture some mistyped traffic and reduce opportunities for confusion around your brand.
 
Verify your registrar contact. This one catches people off guard. Expiration warnings and security notices are sent to the contact information on file with your registrar — not necessarily your everyday inbox. If that email address is old or unmonitored, a missed warning could eventually put your domain at risk of suspension or expiration.
How many unused domains are sitting in your registrar account right now?
👉 ZU2B.com

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