I honestly think the .INC registry has one of the best business strategies of all the ngTLD's.
Their pricing point works perfectly for that they want to do and who their expected clients actually are.
If I had to choose one registry to work sales for, it would be .INC. Depending on their overhead costs, I think they've likely got a great long term business.
HOWEVER .. it's important to note that while .INC and a few other premium-heavy ngTLD's are viable businesses for themselves, their price points are not domainer friendly and their domains are most certainly not necessarily good investments AS DOMAINERS.
Specifically looking at .INC, I'd say maybe the top ~50-100 generic business keywords are still potentially good investments (for example: Money.inc, Mortgage.inc, Business.inc, Solar.inc, Cars.inc, etc). But for anything but those strongest of the strongest keywords are just not worth it at the current pricing.
There are no thoughts here .. never EVER take into consideration the price tag of a domain. What one domainer could set at $1,000,000, another could set at $50,000 ... the only time a price tag should be relevant to you as a domainer is when the domain actually sells! Paying attention to the price at any other time is just a distraction*.
*(Unless the domain is priced by a known and successful domainer)
As someone who grabbed many .mobi for potential development (long before I actually started "domaining"), I still feel that when it was released, .mobi was one of the most relevant TLD's with the highest potential value ... until the onset of Responsive Web Design .. which in an instant (more or less .. lol), effectively wiped out the entire value of the TLD. But until that point, all businesses potentially needed a separate website, making .mobi a good bet because the TLD had a specific purpose that was to be in huge demand.
If I'm to use the word globally here, or vendor, DnPric.es suggests these are terrible sellers regarding reaching prices over $1000. I guess I would use this as a variable, among variables, when determining what's worth registering.
When I see seen money.inc advertised on a Uniregistry park, it sparked an interest, as I know money is a hot word.
So for the word money next to many gTLD's, It might have a better chance of hitting those higher numbers.
Which made me think "this lad, paying 2k a year, using Uniregistry, and likely has a fair idea about what he's doing, decided to take a stab and might cover costs selling a Brandable a year. This could grant him a fair payout of $980,000 as marketed."
The .inc is yet to produce a secondary market sale, so as a gTLD it isn't great, but the word money is marketable and its ability to reach the higher dollar sale is fair.
Do you think I should dismiss advertised prices, as they could be worthless. Like MoneyVendor on GoDaddy is 50k ish, but other valuable words and 'vendor' still produce little according to DNPric.es. I mean, most valuators wouldn't even touch the price the seller is asking.
If I were to pick an available search for a domain right now it would be keywords using home, job or credit. These words hit above the 20-30k a fair amount of times.
Numbers 123, 247, 360, 180 can do well before and after a word too.
Seeing a ddomad with those words or numbers, yes I'm interested in what people advertise them for. But after reading your post, I agree with you. Their prices they use are irrelevant. Its the data. The data is important