A have a few dozen just for email, hobbies, etc... In full disclosure I don't really own them, I rent them from assorted registrars. I read up on how to become an accredited registrar and quickly gave up on the idea.
About 40, of which I only use a few. It actually got me started on a project: how can I minimize the cost of keeping all of those domains.
After a lot of tinkering I could cut costs with a healthy amount, not sure if it was worth all the time I put into it though, haha ;)
Maybe it will help someone out: https://www.dot.bs/registrar-combinations -> copy-paste a list of your domains, and it will find the cheapest combination of registrars for you
Over 5,000. To this date, there's no good service for managing and marketing large portfolios. If somebody is interested, we can team up - I have some great ideas, extensive experience, and good branding.
Well, as a startuper, most of the domains were startup ideas... However, none of those happened, so it turned into an investment that pays off in the long run, but it requires a big chunk of cash every year to fund the renewals.
I worry that domains are becoming irrelevant, but the reality proves me wrong - people still pay good money for good domains.
My point is that ICANN and the whole domain business should be disrupted. Similarly to cryptocurrencies, domains attack the wrong folk. Plus, most things about domains are daylight robbery, which the corrupt ICANN and the greedy registrars enable!
Look at the list of accredited registrars [0] - a handful of companies have hundreds or even thousands of entities because when a domain gets deleted, every registrar receives an equal chance of catching it for the aftermarket, and the more registrars you accredit, the better chance you get at catching dropped domains and selling it for tens, hundreds, and often thousands of dollars - something, which costs you less than $10!
In many cases, people have legitimate domains they use for email, and suddenly, due to billing errors, they lose them to find out that an investor has them. And then they need to bargain and pay thousands of dollars to get them back.
Most registrars have huge fees to redeem an expired domain before it gets deleted. Many somehow trick the ICANN rules and auction the domain before it's dropped.
Just imagine you being late on your phone bill, and your competitor or some "investor" gets it and gets all the incoming calls or blackmails you to sell it back to you.
So, ICANN needs to change as they are a bunch of crooks, paid under the table by domain marketplaces - I have zero doubt about it.
I got an excellent domain through some of these registrars many years ago. Guess what? I had no way to transfer it or renew it! The company was based in the Bahamas or some island and had no way to pay. They also never emailed me the EPP/auth code, so, I couldn't transfer it out either. I opened a case with ICANN, and they told me that this is a customer support issue and ICANN does not regulate such matters, so I need to deal with the registrar on my own! Now, I believe things are slightly better, but not much better!
About 50. A fair number of them are "defensive" registrations for my sites that are prone to bad actors trying to fool my users, though, eg. primary site is "example.com", and I get "example.com.au", "example.net", "example.org", etc. to prevent others abusing them.
