news 10 Things Domain Investors Should Know (Apr 4, 2019 issue)

[Bob Hawkes]

The second in my NameTalent series on 10 things + bonus that domain investors should note has just been released. Ycan see the previous one here).

So what made this list of items I think domain investors need to notice?

1. Hand Reg COM contest Vote NOW!
   If you have not already done so right now vote in the COM HandReg contest for March. In a process that included both community vote (via the like feature) and a selection by an expert panel 27 finalists from the hundreds of submissions were identified. You can vote for up to 3, but you must select all 3 at the same time and press the vote submission button once. NamePros user BrandCougar did a truly amazing job supervising and promoting the competition. It became one of the most popular contests in the long history of NamePros. Due to generous sponsorship the winner gets $200 plus an Efty Growth subscription.
   
   
2. ORG and INFO (and BIZ?) Price Increases Coming?
   One of the surprises coming out of the ICANN 64 meeting in Japan was a proposal to take the price caps off ORG and INFO. You can read about it on DNWire - this is currently in discussion phase if you want to let your voice be heard. Just as we went to press a domain blogger reported that another legacy extension, BIZ, is also seeking to have price caps removed.
   
   
3. Efty Releases Big Changes!
   Domain management and sales platform Efty have released some big updates. One of the most significant is a chat feature for interacting with potential customers. They also did a big update on landers, based on an analysis of the lander features that resulted in more closed sales. Andrew is one of many bloggers who have covered the change. Reaction on social media is very positive on the changes. Efty keeps getting better!
   
   
4. Alpnames Transfers
   On March 15 ICANN officially announced the closing of Alpnames, and now they have identified which registrars the domains will be going to under ICANN bulk transfer provisions. Legacy extensions .biz, .com, .info, .net, and .org will be going to Moniker, with .pro and other extensions going to Key-Systems. Under ICANN bulk transfer provisions registrants do not pay for the transfer (no year is added). At time of writing the transfer was taking place on a TLD by TLD case with some already transferred. A representative of Key-Systems is active on this NamePros thread which you should follow for updates. This article at Domain Name Wire provides additional background.
   
   
5. Your Best 5 New Extension Domains
   Well known new gTLD expert @lolwarrior has launched a thread where new extension investors can list in one post the 5 (or fewer) best new extensions in their portfolio. The contest will be open for about a two week period, and will be followed by a voting stage to choose between finalists. This is a good chance both to see some great examples of new gTLD domain names and to showcase a few of your own. Although details not yet announced, there will be a prize.
   
   
6. Weekly Look At Sales
   Almost all domain investors watch each week for Ron Jackson’s superb DNJournal. However since that concentrates on the big (generally $$$$ and up) sales, it is also important to track more typical sales regularly. While the NameBio Daily Market Reports are a great resource, another one you should consider is the NameTalent weekly analysis. It is based on NameBio data. A couple of features that it provides are a daily look at the median sales price as well as how many sales are at $1000 and above. The most recent two are here (week ending March 26) and here (week ending April 2).
   
   Read the rest the full article at NameTalent.com to learn more on the following
   
   
7. New NameBio Search Feature
   
8. Price Increase News
9. Estibot Marketplace Live
   
10. Registration Growth Stats

I also have a bonus item critical for those owning co.uk domain names, an update on items from the previous report, and more. The full article at NameTalent has 25+ links for more information all in one integrated concise article.

It was a hard choice with so much happening lately! As always, welcome your comments, suggestions, corrections, etc.

Thanks for reading! Have a nice day!

Bob

 

[Grego85]

god help .info if Afilias is allowed to remove the cap.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

god help .info if Afilias is allowed to remove the cap.

Of course even if the cap is removed, it does not mean that prices will necessarily go up. I would think they must see that even the current rates are making .info not very competitive with other options, and an increase would make it more so. It does seem though that all registries are hoping to get rid of caps. As I understand it initially Verisign hoped to totally remove the com/net caps, and the 4 increases they were awarded was a sort of compromise.

Bob

 

[Grego85]

Of course even if the cap is removed, it does not mean that prices will necessarily go up. I would think they must see that even the current rates are making .info not very competitive with other options, and an increase would make it more so. It does seem though that all registries are hoping to get rid of caps. As I understand it initially Verisign hoped to totally remove the com/net caps, and the 4 increases they were awarded was a sort of compromise.

Bob

Good points Bob, and may I ask do you know if the cap removal would mean they could start reserving or putting premium pricing on dropped or unregistered .info names?

 

[otismo]

Thank You !

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Good points Bob, and may I ask do you know if the cap removal would mean they could start reserving or putting premium pricing on dropped or unregistered .info names?

My understanding (possibly incomplete or incorrect) is that unregistered and dropped domain names will have no caps on pricing. Currently the situations is that .org prices can at most increase 10% from year to year and that cap is removed. However, if they do not let their domain name drop existing registrants under the proposed changes will still be covered by the 10% increase limit per year. My understanding is that the proposed changes allow the registry to designate dropped domains premium priced (if I am wrong someone more in know with ICANN please correct). Here is the wording from ICANN:

"... the price cap provisions in the current .org agreement, which limited the price of registrations and allowable price increases for registrations, are removed from the .org renewal agreement. Protections for existing registrants will remain in place, in line with the base registry agreement."​

That was taken from this ICANN site where there are still 24 days for interested parties to leave comment before the final implementation of the proposal.

In essence the registry operators for .org, .info and .biz will be given similar status to the new gTLD registries with respect to pricing (except for those currently and continually registered).

Bob

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Since it is in the bonus content without a link in the part at NPs wanted to stress that any of you with co(.)uk and other third level uk domains should for sure be aware of your time-limited rights re securing matching .uk domains. Here is the link:
https://www.nominet.uk/three-month-...el-uk-domain-owners-to-opt-for-uk-equivalent/

 

[Bob Hawkes]

For those who wish to comment to ICANN re the proposed removal of price cap for .biz (you have until May 14 to do so)

https://www.icann.org/public-comments/biz-renewal-2019-04-03-en

While most of the attention has been on the removal of price caps on the various extensions, another important change is that they would be made to fall under the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) and several other trademark right protection provisions. This is potentially an important change as some new gTLDs have been suspended with, it seems to me, rather unconvincing arguments (BCG in .top is one example; BCG has many potential meanings, and in fact in Google search the Boston Consulting rebranding to that acronym is not even the most listed. It has significant meaning in biology for example, and even in the US others hold the acronym in trademarks. It seems to me a stretch that they should be able to suspend use in many hundreds of extensions without evidence of infringing behaviour.

Bob

 

[Bob Hawkes]

One item in the part of the article online at NameTalent is that it is now possible to do searches on NameBio that include one word but exclude another. For example if you search with block!chain it would give you sales with the word block but not if they also included the word chain. If you searched on chain!block it would give sales with chain but not with block. The term after the ! mark (no spaces) acts like the do not include this with a - sign in Google searches. For certain terms this additional NameBio functionality is really helpful. @Michael explained it himself on NPs at this link.
https://www.namepros.com/threads/wi...amebio-membership.1117736/page-3#post-7161172
How fortunate in the domain community we are to have the fantastic NameBio database and interface!

Bob

 

[Kai W.]

I don't know what I saw. But I know that as long as the communication rules have not changed, the domain will become more and more expensive.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Just as an update to the Alpnames bulk transfer situation, the KS rep on NPs posted a list of which extensions have already transferred. If you have one of these and do not see it you should check with them. Note that 3 TLDs have NOT yet transferred ORG (coming soon), GDN, TOP (both being negotiated with registry, no word yet on date of transfer).

https://www.namepros.com/threads/al...s-without-notice.1126471/page-10#post-7187342

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Since it was in the latter items not copied in full to the NPs portion of the article, I wanted to make sure that people did indeed make note of the announcement re Donuts prices. They are (mainly) going up starting Oct 1 so if you have names you plan to renew you might want to lock them in now. The price increases are in range 6 to 9%, so less than the current caps on price increases for info/or/biz for example.

https://domainnamewire.com/2019/04/02/donuts-to-increase-domain-prices-in-october/

However note that the wholesale price of one extension (.group) is going down by 35%, so if you can, better to hold off on renewing those until after Oct 1.

I have not been able to find the actual press release from Donuts? Can anyone provide us with a link? I would like to know the precise increases by TLD and which are the 16 that are staying constant.

Thanks,

Bob

 

[garptrader]

I would venture to say that most extensions with renewals of no more than $50/year likely have significant investor stakes in the extension. Some have estimated domain investors hold in the range of 25% of .Com domains and it is likely much higher with the more popular newer extensions (with low year one renewals). Developers generally despise domain investors with the logic that were it not for investors those domains would be available for reg fee. In some cases perhaps but once someone invests time developing a domain into a revenue-generating site, it is far less likely to become available at a reasonable cost (most aftermarket sales are $1500 or less). Compare the price of unused land versus mall or apartment property.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Point 8 was on the new Estibot Marketplace. Here is content from NameTalent re it:

"Estibot Marketplace Live
Well known domain tool Estibot announced and opened a marketplace. It is not a marketplace in the traditional sense, but rather a place where domain names for sale in some other venue can be collated. There is no commission charged by Estibot for inclusion in the marketplace, but you do need to be a subscriber to one of their plans to list there."​

This is the direct link to the Estibot Marketplace. So has anyone tried using it? What do you think?

Bob