The Domain Hoarder

On the peculiar habit of collecting domain names. Most will never become anything. But the practice of capturing is the point.

Published: 2026-01-24 · 5 min read

There's a running joke among indie makers: check how many domains they own.

Most will expire unused. Some are forgotten entirely. A few are for ideas that will never get built. Objectively, a waste of money.

And yet the buying continues.

The capture instinct

An idea isn't real until it has a name. A domain forces you to distill an idea to its essence. What is this thing? What would someone type to find it?

The $12 forces commitment. Not much, but enough. You're betting on this idea, even if just a little.

Most bets lose. That's fine. The practice is the point.

The graveyard of possibilities

Every domain list is a graveyard of alternate lives. Each one represents a version of you that went a different direction:

• The you who built a meditation app
• The you who started a newsletter
• The you who created a course
• The you who launched that weird niche marketplace

None of those versions existed. But for $12 each, they were possible.

Ideas as inventory

Some treat ideas like inventory. Capture everything. Store it somewhere. Most will rot on the shelf. A few will become valuable.

You can't predict which ones. So you capture everything and let time sort them out.

A domain is just a storage container for an idea. The container costs $12/year. The idea inside might be worth millions. Probably not. But maybe.

The real return

The ROI on domain hoarding isn't the domains that succeed. It's the practice of thinking in products.

Every idea becomes a potential business. Every problem becomes a potential solution. Every observation becomes a potential name.

This lens, once installed, doesn't turn off.

Worth the $12? Every time.