domains said:
Pretty sure they were all registered at least once before, I think you had registered the last hundreds/thousands at that time? Then I think they all started dropping again. Interesting to see that they are all registered or close to registered again. I think it's worth holding some decent ones, they are good for acronyms of companies, organizations, and people in general. Not to mention good for crypto acronyms. BTC, ETH, NFT...
Every LLL is unique, a supply of one. Demand for one particular LLL does not usually translate into demand for any other particular LLL. If anything, not getting a specific LLL drives demand for domains like LLL{inc,llc,corp,group} etc etc...
I remember I had cherry picked 500 of the remaining 4000 or so LLL's (if I remember correctly) back in Nov 2004. Then not too long after, Adam bought the remaining ones up. That was a way ballsier move back then because it was 10x more domains than this time. I don't think either of our experiments went all that well as I remember a massive drop of those thousands of LLL's all a few years later. Even the ones I bought didn't do all that well. They broke even for many years, but were not generating profit.
Even now, I still don't get many LLL inquiries and the ones that do expect them for dirt cheap. Until very recently, I hadn't had an LLL sale in 2.5 years. Maybe I ask too much. But if you have 500 of them, you pretty much need a minimum $5000 USD sale once a year to just cover expenses. I even trimmed back some of my LLL.ca holdings to just under 300 or so now.
I like to think that _any_ serious Canadian business should be willing to spend $5K+ on their brand, especially when you consider all the other expenses they _are_ willing to spend on, office space, vehicles, utilities, websites, branding, tv & radio commercials, flyers, etc... And all that crap is recurring. You'd think that a one-time expense for the domain of their dreams would be worthwhile. Not even offering payment plans ever really helped.
But I think in some ways LLL's have lost favour. We were driven towards LLL due to bombardment from LLL Tv network names and big companies with long names reduced to an LLL. While some of that still happens, the younger generation doesn't even watch TV and some wouldn't even know what ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN, CBC, BBC, CTV, etc are!
But yes, [notify]domains[/notify] makes the point that crypto has boosted some LLL sales, but then again, even many of the biggest coin symbols in the .com aren't developed.
But you know what those LLL's could be useful for? Padding you portfolio in preparation for portfolio sale. It would be a relatively cheap and easy way to make your portfolio look bigger without it looking like obvious crap filler domains. And if you were valuing your portfolio based on a percentage of some independent valuation like godaddy's, then as long as that negotiated percentage times godaddy's valuation is more than the hand-reg fee, you've increased the value of your portfolio sale.
A purchase like that can also be useful for tasting. Just buy them all up, monitor them for a year and keep the cream, drop the rest. Makes it easier to break even and profit as you only need to find a handful of winners, you just need to be willing to cull the herd after a year so your expenses don't eat up any potential future profits.
Every so often they all get bought up, then they slowly hit TBR and the unreg'd count accumulates. I've contemplated buying them up on occasion but could never bring myself to do it. Adam is braver than I.