You’re paying $200 for a JPEG. Let’s start there.

It’s early. You crack open your laptop, sip yesterday’s ambition in a fresh mug of coffee, and head to your browser. Site’s down. No panic—just that quiet, slightly shameful acknowledgment: the domain you bought during a burst of pre-COVID optimism is set to renew… in 45 days. Plenty of time to migrate, reconsider, or finally pull the plug.

But here’s the catch: the sunk cost fallacy is loud, and the idea was good once. Or good enough. Now it’s a $200 jpeg—parked on GoDaddy, whispering promises it no longer intends to keep.

You and I—builders, dreamers, digital optimists—we subscribe to too many things. Canva Pro. Notion AI. Figma. Google Workspace. Ghost. Dropbox. Calendly. Airtable. Each one with its little monthly invoice, each one justified by “productivity.”

But pause.

If you spend an hour sorting through emails, another reviewing your Mint dashboard, then bookend the day with a coffee chat that turns into a freelance pitch—have you worked? Or have you just performed the theater of being busy?

Subscriptions aren’t inherently bad. But like unread newsletters, they pile up. And before you know it, you’re not running a lean operation. You’re managing overhead.

This morning’s outage? A blessing. A kind of cosmic ping, a digital detox invitation in disguise. The site isn’t pulling traffic. It’s not generating revenue. The blog hasn’t been updated since we were still talking about TikTok bans.

What are you keeping it for?

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If it’s just a static page with a logo and a “coming soon,” maybe you don’t need it. Maybe a link-in-bio tool suffices. Or a Notion page. Hell, maybe even your Substack is doing better work than your .com ever did.

If you’re not funneling through it—email, sales, media—it’s not an asset. It’s an ornament. And that JPEG? That’s $16.66 a month for nostalgia.

The new browsers—Comet, Arc, Perplexity—blur the line between static and smart content. Your “blog” could now be a living answer node in an AI ecosystem. Why write a WordPress post when your best ideas can be embedded into the model’s index?

Why pay for GoDaddy when GPT already links your name to your work, and your projects live in GitHub, Figma, and Discord?

Launch a product, yes—but launch it natively. Think browser cards, instant docs, AI-generated hubs. No more $200 vanity domains for projects you haven’t touched in 18 months. That energy is better spent building something that learns, adapts, iterates.

Let’s imagine a domain that’s worth it. That’s it. One clean link. Under $20/year. No WordPress plugins. No cPanel nightmares. Just clarity.

Let’s answer your real question:

“Is $200 annually for a JPEG a good proposition?”

Not unless:

• That JPEG is converting traffic into clients.

• That JPEG is a token tied to your digital identity.

• That JPEG is the first slide in your investor deck, demo reel, or NFT drop.

If not? Pull the plug. Redirect it. Or let it lapse. There’s no shame in closure—only in clutter.

You and I don’t need more tools. We need fewer things with more punch. Less noise, more signal. A homepage isn’t a commitment anymore—it’s a choice. And sometimes, the best productivity move you can make is to say no to things that no longer serve your flow.

So let’s make a deal: if the JPEG doesn’t earn its keep by the next full moon, we let it go.

Sound good?

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