Domain Name Wire Podcast Hand registering 7,500 domains – DNW Podcast #579
Mar 23, 2026
Josh Reason, domain investor and entrepreneur who hand registered thousands of .coms, walks through a year-long experiment registering about 7,500 names. He explains why he pursued mass hand registrations, how he filtered drop lists and ranked prefixes, which suffixes and themes he targeted, and how sales, renewals, and portfolio tools shaped his strategy.
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Promo Pricing Makes Or Breaks Hand Registration
- Bulk hand registrations can be profitable when first‑year promos are very low, but renewals double the cost and cut margins.
- Josh spent ~$45,000 on 7,500 .coms at promos and faces ~$80k+ renewals at standard rates.
Analyze Prefixes By Stripping The Suffix
- Filter drop lists by suffix then remove the suffix to evaluate prefixes separately.
- Josh downloaded expired domains with a specific suffix (e.g., partners), stripped the suffix, and analyzed the remaining prefixes.
Use TLD Presence To Rank Prefix Strength
- Rank candidate prefixes with domain metrics tools and prioritize those taken across many TLDs.
- Josh used DotDB to rank ~10,000 prefixes by number of TLDs taken to surface strong branding keywords.