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discuss (Rant) People are investing so much in new gTLDs...

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Hundreds / thousands of people on here, especially newbies, spending thousands of dollars investing in questionable gTLD's with hardly any track history on namebio, and desperate nonsensical crypto domains which will never find a buyer....

... That is is becoming EASY for people to find a handreg .com for their next web dev project.

Now please understand that this isn't a pop at gTLD's in general, or indeed crypto domains (regretting a few I let go in 2015 right now!). But rather just a general observation that you domainers are letting it slip a little bit.

Allow me to illustrate with my current two projects.

Case study 1: Documentary website

So I wanted to build a documentary website. First things first I need a domain, damn. Where can I find a decent domain? First step is always to hope you strike it lucky with a handreg of course, if that fails you start looking at prices on sedo and afternic.

It was easy, I picked up DocumentaryVine.com, it was a handreg. Loved that domain, so didn't need to start trawling through Sedo, which is good news But why was this available to register in the first place? Here are some developed sites with a similar name:

GodVine (Alexa 111k)
NewsVine (recently closed, internet institution acquired by mnsnbc)
ReadingVine (teaching software)
FileVine (cloud based legal software, $3.2m funding)
CollegeVine (college mentoring program)
GuideVine (Financial adviser directory)

There are a lot more.

Here are some publicly disclosed sales:

LearningVine.com ($3995)
TimeVine.com ($1028)
JewelVine ($2188)
WineVine ($3288)
SocialVine ($2500)

So tell me.... why was DocumentaryVine.com available? Documentaries is one of the largest subreddits, 12 million subscribers, I know for a fact that the second largest free documentary website gets around 3 million page views per month. This isn't a small niche.


Case study 2: Wallpaper website

Most of the hard work is done on the documentary site now, Alexa top 165k already and climbing daily... just have to keep adding content, could do with switching to https and serving content through a CDN at some stage... but I'm ready for my next project.

I'm a fan of 'evergreen' content rather than time limited content, I'm looking for passive income rather than a job.... wallpapers seems like a nice niche, once you've broken through the ridiculous amount of competition. I'm a patient man, I'm building for 5, 10, 15 years so I'll take that challenge.

So once again I need a domain. Ideally a handreg, but will pay if I have to. Admittedly this one was a lot more difficult to find a decent domain for....

I looked at prices of domains I liked.... WallpaperVine was priced at about $1300 unfortunately, outside of my budget. I was struggling, but eventually found.... WallpaperBoss.com

Here are some publicly disclosed sales:

WallpaperBase $3550
WallpaperFinder $1100
WallpaperForYou $1931
WallpaperTop $1205
WallpaperCentral $850

Ending in Boss....

HairBoss.com $2000
LifeBoss.com $5700
PaintBoss $1288
StockBoss $1500
DraftBoss $1400
PasswordBoss $3000
PocketBoss $1500

(etc, etc).

Now, you may counter me on that one and point out that wallpaper domains don't usually go for decent money. I'll accept that one, loads go for around $300, but this was actually a developed site for many years and has some excellent historic backlinks. I hand-regged the domain of a former authority site with some lovely high quality backlinks!

So many people putting faith in gTLD's and stuff like .co and .io.

Do you want to know what I turned down in order to register WallpaperBoss.com? I'll tell you..... I could have handregged DesktopWallpapers.io, and I could have handregged DesktopWallpaper.io to go with it.

And the phrase 'Desktop Wallpapers' gets a lot of monthly searches (100k to 1 million).

And you want to know why I didn't reg that? I didn't reg that because .com is king, and will always be the king, and its ludicrous when you see some of the stuff people are regging on a .io and a .co at huge reg fees and all sorts of other dot craps, when there are evidently still dot coms to be had.

Now I bet that instead of thinking "you know, he's right, I'm going to go and find myself a few .com gems" there will now be people go and register desktopwallpapers.io.

I don't blame them to be honest, that's a nice domain and one which actually works in that extension. If I could be bothered I'd do it myself and see if I could flip it, but I'm too busy (you can forward 10% commission to me if that works out for you).

But I think a lot of people spunking $30,$40, $50 taking a punt on some of these alternative gTLD's, probably in the mistaken belief that they have missed the boat when it comes to dot com and gambling on all sorts of rubbish are forgetting one basic principle....

K.I.S.S

Keep It Simple Stupid

Dot com is king and will always be king.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Man I feel good getting that off my chest, a good rant once and while is good for the soul.
 
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Dot Crap, I haven't heard that one before. Better description than Dot Whatever. Well, the ease of hand registering one word dot craps is easier than pouring over expired day after day. I have basically invested a solid year looking at the daily drop lists, and have seen plenty of decent names in things that domainers got tired of holding and don't interest me. So, that leaves more for the smart money to gather up. I am compiling a database of parsed out two word domains from about a years worth of drops not sure how to organize it yet.
 
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Dot Crap, I haven't heard that one before.

This is cool on two counts...

1). I may have coined a new phrase?

2). This means you actually read my whole post, I'm glad somebody read it :xf.grin:
 
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Selling handregs is hard. Even with .Com names.
 
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Selling handregs is hard. Even with .Com names.

You've missed the point a bit.... I'm an end user in both of these examples, and in neither example did I need to purchase a domain to meet my requirements.

My point is that people are hand-regging all sorts of weird dot craps, when they'd be better off hand-regging .com's.
 
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I have a very hard time trusting anything outside of .com, .net or .org. Call me crazy, call me whatever you want in ANY language you want(I am sure I've been called worse and if you don't say it in English or Spanish with your real identity, it really means nothing to me) but, from experience, any other extension has carried a lot of scams and other BS. I do understand that time and change has brought a necessity for new extensions but it seems like ANY extension is fair game these days and I am a bit old school! Some extensions are longer than the domains themselves!
 
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.net seems depressed recently, judging by some of the stuff you can find on expireddomains.net

Tempted to register a few in the hope that the prices pick up a bit again in the future.

I like the .net extension, has gone out of fashion a little bit but I think it can bounce back when this gTLD mania dies off and the .io and .co fad loses its novelty (already has a bit).

By the way.... there is a post somewhere on here at the height of the LLLL.com bubble where I argue against about 20 people. I state that LLLL.com is in a bubble which is about to pop. I had 20 people arguing that it wasn't.

It was. Then they got stuck with their chips :xf.laugh:

You look brand new here... but basically the Chinese went crazy for LLLL.com domains a year or two ago, same thing happened in 2008. The crappest ones were going for $1000 each, the good ones $3000+.... today there is a thread offering loads of LLLL.com's for $199 a piece.

I called that because the same thing happened in 2008. None of the people arguing with me had an account older than 2013.

Well today I'm predicting that 2018/2019 will see some gTLD's go extinct, and people will start playing it a bit safer as a result.... and generic / keyword .net domains will pick up.
 
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way too much text for anyone to read and respond to in a precise and meaningful way.. please summarize your points and intentions with this post in just two sentences. What are the important parts only? Dumb it down for everyone please :)

..btw upon quickly reading through your examples for Case #1.. all the examples you cite include either a 1 or 2 syllable first word, while Doc-U-Men-Tar-Y is five syllables just for the first part of the URL.. its longer, more sounds, more to type, that's the difference. URLs should be as clear, short, and concise as possible (without losing any meaning). The difference is that your name, Documentary Vine .com, that you found was available because it was so much longer and awkward sounding compared to the names you presented as examples of existing sites and sales. I'm not saying its a worthless domain, just answering your question in which you asked, "why was this available to register in the first place?"

I think this post has value and insight into what an end-user considers when choosing a new name though, so please simplify things here. We might all learn a lot if we understand exactly what the point of this post is and if you can cram it all into 2 simple sentences / points for everyone to respond to. Right now there is way too much information.. is it that .coms are king, nTLDs are worthless, chips already peaked, endusers can find available .coms,

or is it all just nonsense to promote Documentary Vine .com?
 
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OK I'll summarise.....

1). People are wasting too much money on junk gTLD domains that nobody will ever buy, irrespective of how many syllables.

2). It appears to be relatively easy for end users to find appropriate hand reg domains at the moment in many niches in the king extension. Is this because domainers are busy spending all of their money on .express domains?

By the way.... The most trafficked of such site is TopDocumentaryFilms.com (Alexa 18285) and second is DocumentaryHeaven.com (Alexa 47,661). Both have more syllables.

I'm a little bit confused about how syllables is relevant though, I don't think fingers are concerned about those when they are typing.... such a site is never going to be on a television advert or on the radio.

Another way I could summarise my entire post is.... don't worry about it, I was just letting off steam.

I just come on here and see people registering some complete tripe at extortionate reg fees which they will never sell.

"What an end-user considers when choosing a new name though"

Simple.... I want my most important keyword in the domain. In the first case this is "documentary" (although "documentaries" could also have been suitable at the end). In the second it was "wallpaper", or it could have been "wallpapers" (although at the end).

It would be infinitely more difficult for me to register/buy docugod or wallhero and rank it the way that I want to do SEO, although my thinking may have been different if I was building a user generated content site which was focused around a community and constant repeat visitors instead of targeting search traffic. I may have been more interested in brand affinity then.... which is where 'Namepros' and 'Squidoo' make sense.
 
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OK I'll summarise.....

1). People are wasting too much money on junk gTLD domains that nobody will ever buy, irrespective of how many syllables.

2). It appears to be relatively easy for end users to find appropriate hand reg domains at the moment in many niches in the king extension. Is this because domainers are busy spending all of their money on .express domains?

1) Yes, without question. The overall winners of nTLDs are the ones who launched them and sold them for enduser prices to domainers.

2) That is true. I've had quite a few inquirers mention they just opted for an alternate, usually longer name, available .com. This may be the case for some end-users regardless of it being 10 years ago or present day. If a buyer doesn't want to pay more than regfee, they will find a regfee domain. If they want something premium, they'll pay it. I don't know to what degree this would be related to the nTLDs though.. are you saying more .coms are free because domain investors spent their money elsewhere on overpriced nTLDs that have little demand beyond domainers themselves?
 
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"Are you saying more are free because domain investors spent their money elsewhere in overpriced nTLDs that have little demand beyond domainers themselves?"

Yep, that's what I am hinting at.

Second domain is an example of that I think.... it was an aged previously-developed domain with a backlink profile. It obviously got ignored on the expired domain lists (sometime in 2016 I think). Even though 'wallpaper' domains seem to mostly only go for $$$..... that's still unusual.

By the way, I added a little bit more to my previous reply about what it is I wanted RE: my domains.
 
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OK I'll summarise.....

1). People are wasting too much money on junk gTLD domains that nobody will ever buy, irrespective of how many syllables.

2). It appears to be relatively easy for end users to find appropriate hand reg domains at the moment in many niches in the king extension. Is this because domainers are busy spending all of their money on .express domains?

By the way.... The most trafficked of such site is TopDocumentaryFilms.com (Alexa 18285) and second is DocumentaryHeaven.com (Alexa 47,661). Both have more syllables.

I'm a little bit confused about how syllables is relevant though, I don't think fingers are concerned about those when they are typing.... such a site is never going to be on a television advert or on the radio.

Another way I could summarise my entire post is.... don't worry about it, I was just letting off steam.

I just come on here and see people registering some complete tripe at extortionate reg fees which they will never sell.

"What an end-user considers when choosing a new name though"

Simple.... I want my most important keyword in the domain. In the first case this is "documentary" (although "documentaries" could also have been suitable"). In the second it was "wallpaper", or it could have been "wallpapers".

It would be infinitely more difficult for me to register docugod or wallhero and rank it the way that I want to do SEO, although my thinking may have been different if I was building a user generated content site which was focused around a community and constant repeat visitors instead of targeting search traffic. I may have been more interested in brand affinity then.... which is where 'Namepros' and 'Squidoo' make sense.

Want to know why most of the stuff on Brandbucket and other brandable marketplaces have value? Simple.... they are bought by the type of companies who want to trademark their name. A completely made up word = non-contested trademark application.
1. You should tell that to namepros members who have sold over 100 ngtlds each, maybe you can convince them that they are a bad investment
2. I think that you can't make a difference between 2009 and 2017, the EMD will not help you a lot in 2017 to rank high for traffic, when you have websites like Onclckds and others like this ranking high. You can have hjluhkjlhkjl.express or documentaryvine, it will take you the same amount of work to rank them.
You are starting a thread once in a year just to start new conflicts when you could use your time to do something constructive for this forum or even better, don't do it at all.
 
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I think that you can't make a difference between 2009 and 2017, the EMD will not help you a lot in 2017 to rank high for traffic, when you have websites like Onclckds and others like this ranking high.

I don't think you understand what an EMD is, neither of the domains I registered are EMD's. They are brandables. An example of an EMD = WatchFreeDocumentaries.com

But guess what.... TopDocumentaryFilms.com is an EMD, and its Alexa 13k!

You can have hjluhkjlhkjl.express or documentaryvine, it will take you the same amount of work to rank them.

That's complete rubbish. Go and post that on SEO Moz, would love to read the responses.

You are starting a thread once in a year just to start new conflicts when you could use your time to do something constructive for this forum or even better, don't do it at all.

Some people will perceive my thread as constructive. I don't perceive it as an attempt to start a conflict, but rather an invitation to have a frank debate... which is what we are having. The only people who are 'triggered' by it are those who find this a sensitive subject, probably because they face huge renewal bills after their ngtld sales haven't met expectations. Does that describe you I wonder?
 
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End users have proven they don't know either buying other domain extensions.
 
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End users have proven they don't know either buying other domain extensions.

Can you clarify what you mean?
 
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Popular keywords will be bought in many extensions as used names. after the dot com is taken then rest tld's and cc etc. Nobody will ever argue dot com is king but there are a few TLD's that will get the searches they will sit on top so are sellable.
 
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"or is it all just nonsense to promote Documentary Vine .com?"



Mate I've been building sites for about 15 years.... I used to work as an SEO contractor, I don't need to spam a domain forum for hits, I grow sites via search... watch my quantcast over the next year.

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Its a discussion by a domainer about domains, having recently become an enduser who found that he didn't need to spend money on domains for his latest two projects. That's all.

For the three projects prior to that I've had to purchase domains. That was my observation.

I've got 1203 namepros posts that could have my URL at the bottom if that was my motivation (I have no signature!)
 
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I didn't say that all ngtld's are junk, or that all people who invest in ngtld's are wasting their money. I said that too many people are wasting their money on junk ngtld's. Your lack of reading comprehension is a damning indictment on whatever education system you came out of.



I don't think you understand what an EMD is, neither of the domains I registered are EMD's. They are brandables. An example of an EMD = WatchFreeDocumentaries.com

But guess what.... TopDocumentaryFilms.com is an EMD, and its Alexa 13k!



That's complete rubbish. Go and post that on SEO Moz, would love to read the responses.



Some people will perceive my thread as constructive. I don't perceive it as an attempt to start a conflict, but rather an invitation to have a frank debate... which is what we are having. The only people who are 'triggered' by it are those who find this a sensitive subject, probably because they face huge renewal bills after their ngtld sales haven't met expectations. Does that describe you I wonder?
So, there were tens of threads at namepros talking about the fact that 90% of the ntlds sales are not reported at namebio with hundreds of examples to prove this, but still you are trying to prove your idea with namebio and you're the one who's talking about education and knowledge. I have at this time 11 ngtld's, I have sold 1 to end user and another 7 to resellers for xx-xxx, so it's not my case. You are talking about .co and io's...I had 40 .co's this year and sold 9 to end users, 22 to resellers renewed 4 and two other had inquiries and dropped 5, so do the math and check the ROI and I'm sure that others who are dealing with io's will give you even better examples of ROI. I've sold around 350 domains to resellers and 23 to end users this year, making low xxxxx profit for each, end users sales and resellers sales, let us know how many sales had you this year, if you want to teach us how to make sales. Always, the one's with couple of sales are trying to show the others the way. So you're a developer with hardly any domain sales, but still you are trying to teach us what we should do.
 
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Popular keywords will be bought in many extensions as used names. after the dot com is taken then rest tld's and cc etc. Nobody will ever argue dot com is king but there are a few TLD's that will get the searches they will sit on top so are sellable.

Completely agree that there are strong ngltd's that are sellable, never disputed that.

My observation is that there are lots of people registering junk ngtld's when they'd be better off regging .com's that they may get a few hundred dollars for. Mainly newbies.

It feels a bit like bitcoin though, where bagholders hype up crypto and those who don't have coins talk it down..... a lot of people heavily financially invested in ngltd's and therefore emotionally invested too.

Every time I come on here I see another bunch of newbies wasting their savings on junk domains, and nobody telling them to stop. Then they disappear. A couple of years ago I saw somebody spend about $60,000 on .co domains.... he reported one sale, then dissapeared from the forum. I tried to tell him to calm it down with the regging but he didn't listen and was convinced that .co was about to replace .com. Hope the poor guy didn't lose his house / wife / sanity.
 
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Those that buy bad gtld probably register worse dot com
 
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still you are trying to prove your idea with namebio

What idea? All I've said is that there are lots of people on namepros registering junk domains in various obscure extensions. Anybody would have to be a bit of an idiot to deny that.


I have at this time 11 ngtld's, I have sold 1 to end user and another 7 to resellers for xx-xxx, so it's not my case.

Literally the 5th sentence of my very long opening post was this:

"Now please understand that this isn't a pop at ngTLD's in general"

I've since said this:

"Completely agree that there are strong ngltd's that are sellable"

This is why I called you out on your reading comprehension. I'm not saying that people should not consider buying or registering ngltd's, I'm saying that there are a lot of people registering the type of ngltd's which will simply never find an end-user. Not sure how many times I want to have top repeat the same thing over and over again, it may start to get boring.


You are talking about .co and io's...I had 40 .co's this year and sold 9 to end users, 22 to resellers renewed 4 and two other had inquiries and dropped 5,

Oh FFS, I've got to say it again.

I said: "you see some of the stuff people are regging on a .io and a .co"

I did not. I repeat did not say anything along the lines of "all .io and .co domains are crap and anybody that buys them is an idiot".

You are putting words into my mouth. I actually own some io's and probably even a .co.... happy now?


"So you're a developer with hardly any domain sales"

Said who? I've sold plenty of domains, why do you think I have a 9 year old account on a domaining forum. If you must know I've walked away from domaining for a bit because 2019 is going to be a very exciting time in the UK domain space, because .uk domain rights end and are open for people to fight over... so I'm building a war chest. That's where I'm from, the UK.

I never referred to myself as a 'developer', because that implies coding skills at above intermediate (which I don't have) and I never said that I'm not a domainer (sold hundreds! a few of them on here!).
 
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Those that buy bad gtld probably register worse dot com

True that, actually. Best point made so far on this thread.
 
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What idea? All I've said is that there are lots of people on namepros registering junk domains in various obscure extensions. Anybody would have to be a bit of an idiot to deny that.




Literally the 5th sentence of my very long opening post was this:

"Now please understand that this isn't a pop at ngTLD's in general"

I've since said this:

"Completely agree that there are strong ngltd's that are sellable"

This is why I called you out on your reading comprehension. I'm not saying that people should not consider buying ngltd's, I'm saying that there are a lot of people registering the type of ngltd's which will simply never find an end-user. Not sure how many times I want to have top repeat the same thing over and over again, it may start to get boring.




Oh FFS, I've got to say it again.

I said: "you see some of the stuff people are regging on a .io and a .co"

I did not. I repeat did not say "all .io and .co domains are crap".

You are putting words into my mouth. I actually own some io's.... happy now?




Said who? I've sold plenty of domains, why do you think I have a 9 year old account on a domaining forum. If you must know I've walked away from domaining for a bit because 2019 is going to be a very exciting time in the uk domain space, because .uk domain rights end and are open for people to fight over... so I'm building a war chest.

I never referred to myself as a 'developer', and I never said that I'm not a domainer.
So you're the guy who was trying to sell lot's of info's and .org.uk's and asking people to help you sell your domains some time back,( because you're back to domaining after a long time) and still you're the one trying to teach peoples how to make sales( peoples who are doing sales at a daily basis, not once in 5 years). Maybe you should worry more about your info's and .org.uk's than about other's ngtld's.
 
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