The future of .COM after new gTLDs boom! Big DROP?!

Yesterday was Wednesday...



http://www.registrarstats.com/TLDDomainCounts.aspx

Phgauge000 said:

Everyone commented on the .online but I ask what looks better and makes more sense wn.media or wnmedia.com ?? It's kind of a no brainier cleaner shorter .. This is an instance where the gtld could sell for more than the .com

Click to expand...

What makes more sense is the .com because it's what people know and looks like a url. We've went over the other reasons many times in this forum.

So there is nothing else coming down the line people are looking forward too? And with the .app, they'll probably keep the obvious ones for themselves, weather, book, news etc.

I bookmarked this thread in my Domaining folder with:

so fucked - The future of .COM after new gTLDs boom! Big DROP?!

at least overall numbers wise. Just seeing how just 2 new gtlds have 42% of the market share (one of them might take a 3 million reg hit this Summer), most are Chinese regs in mostly English words and the uptake in the United States is far below what I expect. And all the good ones are pretty much out already. We'll be going into year 4, I imagine most of these are held by domainers, so drops should increase if they're not getting any nibbles on them. So .web is the only one I see that can make the numbers jump, if it comes out. So this doesn't look good to me. We shall see.

JB Lions said:

So .web is the only one I see that can make the numbers jump, if it comes out. So this doesn't look good to me. We shall see.

Click to expand...

I don't think, that Verisign will release .web soon.
Because, if "yes", it will kill .COM's growth forever, and it will never again reach a 127M mark. They know about it.

They may hold it for few years before GA, or will release it little by little... with auctions or high premium renewal prices, or something like this... or...

Let's see...

I personally am expecting .web to have a much smaller impact on .com than many other speculators seem to. After all, we refer to this at the InterNET a lot more than the WEB these days, and look at .net.

What would happen to .XYZ, .TOP, .CLUB and just about every other generic nTLD if .WEB came out with reasonable registration and renewal prices?

Hasta la vista....

wwwweb said:

After paying out $123M or so, why would .web release any quality names for domainers to resell. They are going to be their own direct sales channel, but you will be welcome to register their crap.

Click to expand...

Nailed it. This scenario is what most of the new releases going forward will apply. With only leftovers to work with it delays the development of the aftermarket for the extension. The window for the most cost effective investment is now closed.

I spec on New "G"s that have sound, disciplined, dedicated management, moderately priced renewals
All the others can crash and burn for lack of promotion and/or extortion pricing.
I don't have any problem with holding back the best for the first sale to recoup startup costs and supplement cash flow to break even. It has the effect of distributing high value more widely vs concentrated control of a few wealthy investors, establishes a base value for comps quicker and the sales so far do have some meat left on the bone for resale.
I do have a problem with the Wild West reg fees.
Regardless of the individual domain value, reg fees need to be standard for all and ICANN can make that happen
These contracts were originally for data base management not privatizing ownership and ransoming the perceived premiums for exorbitant reg fees when the cost to manage them is the same as an ave value or crappy domain in the same extension.
When clients ask why the difference? The only answer is because they can. Some pay it others say find something else. Even the end user perceives it to be unethical. Their position is if you have a building for lease it doesn't matter what kind of company occupies the space the lease amount is the same but if you wanted to sell the building it would go to the highest bidder every time. I agree.

New options for extension roll out not practical until now.

This makes the investments in some extensions a bargain and the value add enormous
with the potential to gut sales of other extensions across the board.
Most New "G"s don't have this inherent potential but if they do they pose the biggest threat to the investment community.


.blog .web .app all have (or had in the case of .blog) a massive opportunity to become an instant platform that doesn't sell space
but rents, builds,maintains,finances,processes payments,provides ad space all in one "box" Sounds like? Amazon, Ebay?
.blog - the potential for a massive media platform
.web - the potential for a massive ecommerce platform
.app - the potential for a massive development, distribution and ancillary product and services for apps platform
Domainer speculation would be moot.
Spammy sites would be moot.
Capture maybe ballpark 20 % of what might go to another extension.
Relative stable cash flow, expansion capability in every vertical and geo location
Relative stable security not just for the platform but added stability and security for the internet as a whole.
In the case of .web, .blog - Near Zero infrastructure build out costs
Merchant Trans fees - 24/7
Massive up sell options

garptrader said:

What would happen to .XYZ, .TOP, .CLUB and just about every other generic nTLD if .WEB came out with reasonable registration and renewal prices?

Hasta la vista....

Click to expand...

They all have standard low cost reg/renew pricing
.xyz is the most similar to .web web being the more ubiquitous among cultural meanings but in the China market .xyz has the cool + first to market advantage. I don't see massive drops in China for .web. It is a good possibility in the USA and Europe
.Club is forging a pretty solid path. I doubt .web will have any impact on this vertical.
Happy Hunting!

New.Life said:

I don't regret.
I already got one very nice "1 letter" domain, and it better than "x.digital" but little more expencive.
I can't tell the domain name right now, for some commercial reasons.
Probably in one year.

Click to expand...

Please post when you can !
OK now I'm curious.....
HAPPY HUNTING

168 said:

Please post when you can !
OK now I'm curious.....
HAPPY HUNTING

Click to expand...

Yes, I'll do! (Business ideas for the future.) Happy Hunting!

I think .web is a horrible TLD. It may be good for schoolkids, but not for anyone who is serious about an internet business.

coms are the cars, trucks and buses of the internet, but sometimes it is handy to have a bicycle or even a motorcycle. The new TLDs are the 'cycles of the internet at the moment.

New.Life said:

Yesterday was Wednesday...

Click to expand...

The daily figures on gTLD growth can go negative from day to day. The reality is that .COM went negative on monthly changes with the 01 December 2016 figures. That's somewhat more serious. The 2016 zone count for .COM was 126,995,780. This morning's .COM count (20161209) is 127,056,525. The zone count for .COM has been hovering around 127 million for the last two weeks or so.

Regards...jmcc

garptrader said:

What would happen to .XYZ, .TOP, .CLUB and just about every other generic nTLD if .WEB came out with reasonable registration and renewal prices?

Click to expand...

Well .XYZ and .CLUB have serious Chip/China market exposures. The Chinese market is a developing market and the more stable renewal patterns seen in Western dominated gTLDs are not yet present in Chinese market gTLDs. The .TOP is a Chinese market gTLD rather than a global one. The .WEB gTLD, if it launches in the next year or so, will see a lot of protective registrations that were not present in other new gTLDs. However, it will be very tricky to market as it could take registrations from .COM in the long run. For Verisign, it is sufficient that the gTLD is tied up in litigation (not a threat to .COM) and that no other TLD operator won it.

Regards...jmcc

.blog - the potential for a massive media platform

Click to expand...

Potential yes. After the launch I am not sure if they are going to be very popular. Pricing too high.

.web - the potential for a massive ecommerce platform

Click to expand...

Only theoretical potential. They are less likely to be a massive ecommerice platform compared to .net which sounds better and is more popular. These days few people care about .net. .web won't be better.

.app - the potential for a massive development, distribution and ancillary product and services for apps

Click to expand...

I think .app is a bit limited because websites usually have a website and an app not just an app but I think it will be somewhat popular due to the length and making sense. Remains to be seen.

One thing that comes to mind. Once we were told all mobile websites will move to .mobi and Google is supporting them. Now we are being told all apps will move to .app and Google is behind the extension. Hmm... will be interesting.

Check out the article at Domaining.com of 84 new startups and their domain names. There are some new TLDs in the list as well as some .CO, .TV, .ME and .IO domains. However there are more CCTLDs and far more .COMs. More importantly for domain investors though is whether startups are buying aftermarket domains or just hand regging.

I have quite a few .TV domains but I doubt MyPulse.tv was an aftermarket purchase 2016 reg date

Entropika.space - Oct 2016 registration date - even if you had .space regs you were out of luck

Idwall.co - another 2016 registration so again domain investors would be left holding the bag

Checkedin.club - hey a 2015 registration but I still doubt that was an aftermarket purchase

A lot of the .COM domains are not all that impressive as brand names. So again domain investors have a bigger issue than .COM vs new TLD. When choosing a domain name for a new business, reg fee seems to be the preferred option.

Worth noting as well that even some very popular TLDs were excluded...

.Net with some 15 million registrations and 30 years of history - not one startup used a .Net

.Info with some 5.5 million registrations and ~15 years of history - not one startup chose to brand on .Info

.XYZ and .TOP with more than 10 million combined registrations - not one startup cared to brand on these TLDs

garptrader said:

Check out the article at Domaining.com of 84 new startups and their domain names.

Click to expand...

Don't rely on domain blogs if you want to know what is going on in the wider domain name business.

A lot of the .COM domains are not all that impressive as brand names. So again domain investors have a bigger issue than .COM vs new TLD. When choosing a domain name for a new business, reg fee seems to be the preferred option.

Click to expand...

End users don't think like domainers. End users think about their market and what's the most accepted extension in that market. That's why .COM and .ccTLD generally occupies over 80% of the domain footprint of most countries. If you are only targeting the US market, the .COM is the de facto US ccTLD. However, outside the US market, the .COM is generally not as important as the local ccTLD for local businesses.

Regards...jmcc

Phgauge000 said:

Renewal rates can and will make a difference for someone holding on to a large inventory . That being said , small- mid size ant large companies alike ; depending on their business model ,volume and profitably can certainly budget 1200 a year a renewals . Yes , I also admit I don't have a masters ; although I have had several work for me through the years . My brick and motar buisness is relatively small for our industry and we spend 60k a month on marketing. So if someone had name that could potentially impact our marketing even if it's used to measure the success of other medias 1200 a year is negligible.

On a side note ; as some have stated most of us that have speculated heavy in the new gtlds don't come on here or other forums to defend our strategy every day. I have shared over 100k of reported gTLD sales with dnjournal just so others can see there is some traction taking place. As others have stated there is no need for me to talk others into competing with me on the drops and or eap releases. There are many non reported sales happening every day.

.com is great but it's not the only choice . As a market continues to evolve we can see shifts in demand for every product/ service . Nothing is a known fact until it has happened . Ford at one time had almost 100 percent market share . Now the market has grown and fragmented , brands like Toyota were at one time considered cheap inferior products but still an alternitive to the big 3 , well as history has shown , things can change .. What was considered inferior not only stole market share but eventually fought its way to a very large part of the total market and is considered a quality product .

At one time Woolworth Corp was very successful , Kmart the same , Sears ... MySpace ... Aol... And on and on .. Consumer demand can change , so anyone that says unilateral comments like gtlds are dead , have no use , purpose please keep saying it. This will help,the people that want to speculate in this area have less competition.

Click to expand...

You are not being honest with yourself, go thru all your GTLD's, add up your renewals, EAP, and acq. costs, and you will see you have a long uphill battle ahead of you. Anyone can spend $250K, and talk about $100K in sales. The KMART argument is ten years stale, that is not relevant going on into 2017.

You have to discount your renewals, against your better domains which will tend to sell first, then against holding $250-$1200 premium renewal domains, along with the costs of renewing domains which cost 4X the typical .com, your business plan has a kink in it.

Even if you get to the stage of getting someone to agree to a sale price, you need to break the news to them of a $500 renewal, majority of the time that will kill the deal.

Just because a business is a billion dollar corporation, does not mean they have billions to extend to domain purchases, just doesn't work like that in reality when it comes to budgets, and forecasting.

GTLD's have opened up options, maybe one to many, anyone deciding down this route, could get a $10K quote from you, a $500 quote from another guy, and maybe a $29 reg fee, for similar option endings. This only causes more expenses in regards to DOA deals.

How many of those $500+ renewal domains have you sold? If ICANN opens up another round in 2 years, how does this affect the value of your current holdings?

2016 has been a year where the underlying holders of the extensions, have just put end user BIN's on their own domains, and cut domainers out of the equation. You have a dozen guys paying $3K+ in EAP for the one that slipped thru the cracks, while the similar .com sits parked for the last decade.

garptrader said:

.XYZ and .TOP with more than 10 million combined registrations - not one startup cared to brand on these TLDs

Click to expand...

What about hooli.xyz?

jmcc said:

The daily figures on gTLD growth can go negative from day to day. The reality is that .COM went negative on monthly changes with the 01 December 2016 figures. That's somewhat more serious. The 2016 zone count for .COM was 126,995,780. This morning's .COM count (20161209) is 127,056,525. The zone count for .COM has been hovering around 127 million for the last two weeks or so.

Regards...jmcc

Click to expand...

Do you think Verisign was aware of this scenario long before today ? I think so.
Cheers

jmcc said:

The .WEB gTLD, if it launches in the next year or so, will see a lot of protective registrations that were not present in other new gTLDs.

Regards...jmcc

Click to expand...

What make you believe this about .web?

Good to hear protective reg's was just speculation and not fact.
Cheers

168 said:

Do you think Verisign was aware of this scenario long before today ? I think so.
Cheers

Click to expand...

Yes. Registries like Verisign pay very close attention to the performance of their TLDs. Verisign even noted the Chinese bubble in an investor conference last year. Renewal rates and new registration rates are two of the most important factors for a registry's revenue. Verisign said that the Chip registrations were unusual and that the rate of these registrations would not be sustained. It also said that the renewal rates of these registrations was uncertain.

From a domaining point of view, it is always important to check the explanations, if any, that the registries provide about such trends.

Regards...jmcc

168 said:

What make you believe this about .web?

Good to hear protective reg's was just speculation and not fact.
Cheers

Click to expand...

Some brand/intellectual property owners were not too concerned about the new gTLDs and decided against the old strategy of registering their brand in every TLD. They still do this with ccTLDs and the main legacy gTLDs. One of the things to make it easier for the brand owners was the implementation of the Tradrmark Clearinghouse where trademarks could be used to protect rights. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_Clearinghouse ) It wasn't perfect.

Most of the new gTLDs have not made a significant impact at a global level (<10K registrations) yet so a brand owner registering their brand in hundreds of new gTLDs would have been expensive. The .WEB might be a good global TLD and could get more paid registrations than any other new gTLD and as such, it would make it very important for a brand owner to have an active, even if it just redirects to the brand's primary website in another TLD, registration in .WEB.

As a gTLD string, .WEB will cause major problems for .SITE, .ONLINE, .WEBSITE and .ONL. If the price is in the region of a .COM, then there will be speculation in the gTLD. The higher price of some of the new gTLDs and the holding back of "premium" registrations by the new gTLD registries suppressed a lot of speculation in these new gTLDs.

Regards...jmcc

dordomai said:

Potential yes. After the launch I am not sure if they are going to be very popular. Pricing too high.



Only theoretical potential. They are less likely to be a massive ecommerice platform compared to .net which sounds better and is more popular. These days few people care about .net. .web won't be better.



I think .app is a bit limited because websites usually have a website and an app not just an app but I think it will be somewhat popular due to the length and making sense. Remains to be seen.

One thing that comes to mind. Once we were told all mobile websites will move to .mobi and Google is supporting them. Now we are being told all apps will move to .app and Google is behind the extension. Hmm... will be interesting.

Click to expand...

Please re-read my post
What I said: a platform is: they rent the domain promote a full service alternative and never sell any of them
YES - .blog just pissed that opportunity away YES - they didn't seem to understand their market by going the pricey route.
YES - .WEB, Theoretical and possibly necessary to recoup their investment. It will take nearly 14 million regs I don't see that happening
The theory is not intended to operate like .net or any other tld. It is intended to operate like Amazon, Ebay
.APP- The reverse is true Apps get sites for their own promotion. The point of a platform would give rise to an alternate to apple
and google, rent vs invest in domain as apps may or may not stay relevant for long, bring together developers and designers and other relevant players to collaborate. A trusted one stop platform for businesses or individuals outsourcing company apps etc.

So, .app and .web have the opportunity to start in this concept and if it's not broadly accepted can easily switch to the sell model.

.blog is dead in the water. Not too late to make the switch but they probably wont.

Yea, too bad about .mobi. I believe it was released too early in the mobile revolution. At that time very few people could even
get online with their phone and "mobile" computing wasn't that wide spread either. It may have died anyway when apps became popular In addition the concept of mobi only applies to what's mobile. It doesn't make sense for verticals or industries that aren't mobile.
The New "G"s do make sense for verticals or industries like .Media, .Global, .Club, .Tech, etc. as a person would have the reasonable expectation that a site with a particular extension would have that type of information, product, or service vs an arbitrary .com unless the domain contained a specific key word of course. That is what the New "G"s have over .com Every single site contains the key word. Pretty sweet for everybody and not just the few .coms that have it in the name.
Other New "G"s that don't have this quality will have a harder time gaining market share unless they prove to be popular for what ever reason be it a culture that can relate to it in some way(.xyz, .top,.wang)in China or a specific group that adopts it as apreference
like .io for techies (yes, i know .io is a cc, it's just an example)
Happy Hunting

jmcc said:

Yes. Registries like Verisign pay very close attention to the performance of their TLDs. Verisign even noted the Chinese bubble in an investor conference last year. Renewal rates and new registration rates are two of the most important factors for a registry's revenue. Verisign said that the Chip registrations were unusual and that the rate of these registrations would not be sustained. It also said that the renewal rates of these registrations was uncertain.

From a domaining point of view, it is always important to check the explanations, if any, that the registries provide about such trends.

Regards...jmcc

Click to expand...

Exactly. I think that is why they were willing to pay up for .web facing taking a hit on their stock which could easily add up to what
they paid
Thanks for your input of stats.
Cheers

JB Lions said:

It would more likely be people that have an interest in selling new gtlds, .com doesn't exactly need help. I imagine we have employees from these companies scattered throughout this forum. So you mentioned 23%, without any supporting links. It could be right, I just have no idea what you're referring to. Have links? When I post new startups are using these at a very small percentage, I back it up with links, with the information at hand. Apparently you have info that I haven't read?

Click to expand...

There are no links it's not something you can just read. you have to research, put several reports into one and that's what comes out
at this point in time. I'm not inclined to post such efforts for free. you can either do your own research to realize today 23% of startups are choosing something other than .com. Within the last 2 years the reported startups chose .com 100% those days are gone
Happy Hunting