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new gtlds Pull up your sleeves, you new G's

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For the 3rd time in 6 months, watching the ol' tee-vee and wouldn't you know, on comes a Go Daddy commercial, with surprise surprise, promoting .guesswhatyesdot-com

I have yet to see another registrar or registry produce something like this for new G's, or anything for that matter.

So essentially, what we have here, is the maximum exposure on prime time television. 3 times in 6 months. Resulting in Mom and Pop knowing only three things:

- to buy a domain
- and there is only one extension
- all at one registrar

GD.

Soo, what the heck is every other registry and registrar doing to combat this monopolization? Nothing. No sleeves being pulled up, nothing being invested in main-stream television advertising by them.

I mean, comeon, get to work people. Investors pulling up our sleeves, but we seem to be the only ones. We have limited resources in educating the masses. To generate mass appeal on new products, we need exposure from the source, or even places like talk shows. Eg. Ellen or Jimmy Fallon. Else we're looking at a 50 year adoption rate. I mean slow and steady winds the race, but that slow??

When you have prime-time exposure, you don't have to worry about the distractors sitting around in circles singing kum ba yah and moaning and groaning how the non-coms don't get traffic, there's no comparables and oh no they are soo confusing. We don't need this mantra as new G investors. I would prefer if you're not willing to be educated, at the very least offer something constructive that improves to what we're building.

I realize Verisign is pooping cash, which helps them inject funds to, well, help them poop more cash, but surely the people who run new extensions had more than just the initial capital of 180k to acquire the new G?

They can't make something on the magnitude of a domain extension and expect people to just know about it. Particularly when up against an almost 40 year old behemoth.

So what's the problem? Are there vested interests that are attempting to bury new adoption? Or are these new registries really that cash-strapped? Whatever it is, looks like it continues to be up to us to roll up our sleeves and plug on. But until more excitement is generated, my weight will be on current stock rather than new acquisitions.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
@jmcc , thanks for the thorough analysis,

Does limited sales and limited market automatically equate to limited usage by the general public for New gTLDs
 
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I have also noticed @lolwarrior that it seems (I don't have hard stats or even soft ones :xf.wink:) to me that compared to say 18 months ago new gTLD domains that expire are getting picked up much more. I have noticed this both in trying to get ones I see are expiring, and informally following ones I let drop. But I must say that I don't buy into at all the idea that they are being picked up by the new gTLD detractors on NPs! It seems the major warehousing domain outfits are not taking them. I wonder if there are some big holders in Asia that are responsible for some pickups, but I think it is more likely just a bunch of individual domainers (and has been pointed out occasionally a registry realizing they should have reserved a name).
Bob
 
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You don't understand fundamental analysis and I guess you rely heavily on historical records (technical analysis)...
Thanks, I’ll mark you down as “undecided” for the next semester of ecalc school of economics and milk production. It’s only a matter of time before the EPA shuts us down anyway. I took another look at my previous post and changed my mind. Domains don’t have a floor value of $1 - it’s less than zero unless the name is earning ppc. I said $1 in a moment of weakness driven by NP appraisal rules, oblivious that I was in free speech territory. Most domains are liabilities, expenses not income, rented like bowling shoes. Here’s how I fundamentally analyze a name. Does it earn, if so how much, if not, next. Very simple, like rental real estate with the bonus of passive management which means a lot to me as the laziest man on 2 continents. You’ve chosen a path, good for you. I see domains as termites or cows and I don’t eat termites.
 
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A little above in this thread @Kate and @lolwarrior had an interesting and important discussion re new gTLD prices around the specific example WebDesign. Let me first of all say that I agree with Kate that in general the registries often have pricing set too high for their own (and extension best interests). But for new extension domainers, that actually is good for us, as it makes our offerings cost effective and/or provides some (possible) support for asking high prices. But I agree it is bad for real use of the extension.

What about those $6000 (or similar per year) renewal prices, though, that some registries are asking? Are those reasonable? As far as I could see there is no recorded sale for WebDesign in com, but for example the co.uk sold for about $37,000 which leads me to believe that the .com is at least the order of $200,000. If a company pays that, they must take into account the cost of the money tied up in that purchase, at the typical rate of 4.5% pa that represents an annual cost of about $9000.

So IF (I realize a big question) a company liked the .tech or some other extension, they could have it for a lower annual cost than the .com even with a $6000 annual fee. If a startup, not having that much tied up from day one is a potential advantage.

I agree the prices are high, but perhaps not completely unrealistic to end users.

Bob

The huge array of possible TLDs is good for end users but bad for new domain investors. To add to the examples given by @Kate and @lolwarrior earlier, you can get the word in the boutique extension, which would work for a small web design firm, for hand reg and no premium renewal, for example. If you wanted to go cute with .icu (I See You) although the purchase would set you back mid/high $$$ as their top tier premium, after that your annual renewals would be less than .com so it might be long term cost attractive.
 
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Did I hear somebody say “20 years”? That's good to hear!

There’s lots of experienced domainers on this thread so many should know about the Domain King’s “20 Year Plan”.

Back in 1995, being one of only about 50 people that were buying up the one word domain names, Rick Schwartz knew it would take until around 2015 to fully realise their value.

The new gTLD program should similarly take a long time to realise it’s value.

I often think about the recent DomainSherpa show about how the great domains now being sold are “off the market forever”. Well something has to replace the dwindling good dot COMs.

Oh, now you jumped it to 20 years and using Rick Schwartz for new gtlds? Different situation, plus that also involved the internet evolving.

Since you wanted to use Rick to somehow help new gtlds, shall we take a look at what he actually posts about them? Just a taste:

Largest Domain Name Registrar in the World Needs Hubble Telescope to See/Find GTLD Sales!

BREAKING: .Boston Has Dropped into the Sea! Biggest nGTLD Collapse!

The .HorseSh*t Era of Domaining is over! Are you Ready to Stop $wallowing 5 years of .HorseSh*t and Reclaim YOUR Industry?

This is how a spell checker deals with .crap. From a post on Twitter today. What a MESS!!! It's PURE .HorseSh*t!

Most people would agree calling something .crap and saying you need a telescope to find sales, isn't actually positive.
 
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Does limited sales and limited market automatically equate to limited usage by the general public for New gTLDs
No. Apart from the early market speculation on keyword domain names, most niche TLDs develop almost like ccTLDs rather than generic gTLDs. They have a highly concentrated market to begin with and usage is not driven by sales. The general public is largely oblivious to sales and domaining. They see sites and businesses using these sites. After a while, they begin to think of it as their TLD in that they identify with it. At that point, as with ccTLDs, the extension becomes almost psychologically invisible. This is why a lot of domainers can lose money on ccTLDs. When that kind of user identification with a TLD occurs, the TLD regionalises in that apart from a few generic keyword domains, geographical keywords become important. People will be searching for local services and products rather than at a national or TLD-wide level. Small businesses, not the big brand names like Google, Apple and Facebook are the drivers of growth.

Regards...jmcc
 
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BREAKING: .Boston Has Dropped into the Sea! Biggest nGTLD Collapse!
This might come as a bit of a surprise, but that's actually a good thing for .BOSTON. Most of the domain names that were dropped were on Epik.com and may have been associated with that rather dotbombish Digital Town venture. The domain names that dropped were highly speculative (lots of surnames) and utterly toxic to development in any gTLD. The era of discounted registrations and renewals for some of these NGTs may be coming to a close and these domain names went to full fee renewal. The thing about higher registration fees is that they result in more repeated renewals.

.LONDON was also affected by what appears to be Digital Town/Epik deletions. 13,231 domain names were deleted in February. NRW had 1,000 deletions. In January, 15,113 on BOSTON, 5,489 on MIAMI, 1,997 on BAYERN and 541 on MELBOURNE.

Regards...jmcc
 
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Sales are not a robust dataset for this kind of work because there are private sales and there's also, especially with newly launched TLDs, fake sales.

You really post good stuff, thanks for entering the discussions here.

Speaking of fakes- Have you done analysis on real domain name usage? I have spent a significant amount of manual checking and generally speaking- far more valuable names are parked than being used.

Specifically how many of these valuable one word dictionary .com or even ngtld domains that get sold, story published and then a year later they are parked for sale (Travel.agency), not resolving or some have an end user working website. I notice b.s. fake "web-site-parking-sites" too used for UDRP protection, which might be hard to tell but they exist. I got access and downloaded the zone files once, and then parsed a bunch into smaller text files and then gave up- it's beyond my skill set.
 
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Speaking of fakes- Have you done analysis on real domain name usage? I have spent a significant amount of manual checking and generally speaking- far more valuable names are parked than being used.
I don't break the results down by keyword domain names but it would be possible. I've just run the March 2019 new gTLD survey and the data is being crunched at the moment. Basically, it checks each domain name in the new gTLDs, whether they have a website and how that website is being used (active/holding/redirects/PPC/sales etc). It is highly automated but its classifes the usage for each domain name. Checking the table against a keyword table would be relatively simple.

Specifically how many of these valuable one word dictionary .com or even ngtld domains that get sold, story published and then a year later they are parked for sale (Travel.agency), not resolving or some have an end user working website. I notice b.s. fake "web-site-parking-sites" too used for UDRP protection, which might be hard to tell but they exist. I got access and downloaded the zone files once, and then parsed a bunch into smaller text files and then gave up- it's beyond my skill set.
It is quite difficult to do manually even with the necessary skills because of the scale. The fake content sites are worse than those UDRP sites because they look exactly like real websites. Unless you knew exactly what signals or indications to look for, they appear to be ordinary websites and detecting them often involves examining thousands of websites for those signals. Development of a keyword domain name is expensive. Developing a high profile site means thinking in a different manner to web developers developing a small business site. The one thing that large businesses worry about is the legal angle and it is far easier to protect a made up brand name than it is to protect a generic keyword domain name.

To use the travel.agency example, apart from people booking airline tickets and holiday/vacation packages online, travel agencies tend to be highly branded to distinguish them from other travel agencies and a lot of the bricks and mortar ones that still remain tend to be franchise operations. A generic domain name like travel.agency would require a lot of marketing money to be spent upon it to make it a success. What might seem like a great keyword combination on the web may not be so great in real life.

Some of the people who registered keyword domain names in the NGTs when they launched did so using .COM domaining rules in that what was valuable in .COM would be valuable in the NGTs. It hasn't worked out that way but some of those with deeper pockets can afford to wait until some of the NGTs become successful. Unfortunately, .COM speculation rules work best in .COM and with a large and high profile TLD. They don't work on small, highly niche TLDs. Apart from a few exceptions like .XYZ and perhaps .ONLINE, most of the NGTs are niche gTLDs.

Regards...jmcc
 
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Basically, it checks each domain name in the new gTLDs, whether they have a website and how that website is being used (active/holding/redirects/PPC/sales etc).

That is really cool. As much as I am a pundit, it's great to see data of really decent websites on whatever extension they are on, even .horse.

The fake content sites are worse than those UDRP sites because they look exactly like real websites.

It requires human confirmation, I guess like DMOZ used to do. I looked at some on the sites I posted single words reported as one word sales in 2018 from a list and found some great coming soon sites that had no outbound links, just fake buttons- so requires testing the links. I know some html templates I use for my own parking "sites" the developer implants a default a href tag "#" sign in those non-working links- you've seen that and can use it to parse out.

A generic domain name like travel.agency would require a lot of marketing money to be spent upon it to make it a success.

Exactly, I just picked that one out of the air. It's too bad to see someone buy it for too much and then park it. Someone like Thomas Cook, I suggested in an older thread- maybe they could use as a redirect. Definitely not branding on generic terms.

The one thing that large businesses worry about is the legal angle and it is far easier to protect a made up brand name than it is to protect a generic keyword domain name.

Understood, I know some huge holders like Disney or under markmonitor, etc I never looked what they do with their domains/sites. I guess my main interest is the knowledge of how many domain sales go to end users versus other domain investors. We get these sales report posts here constantly (That report a sale, and consider a sale is a sale), yet many of these are big dollar domainer to domainer sales (They appear that way) or perhaps "fake sales" for "price discovery" advertising, and am interested in how much of the market is true end user sales versus wholesaler to wholesaler sales- my gut tells me very low percentage based on manual reviews. Some people seem to not care about this passing around domains, but I do if you have seen my posts questioning constantly the integrity of many things I have seen.

Again, great to see you around on the forum and always appreciate your great posts.
 
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So for string "webdesign", sure, if you desperately need .tech with it, then you need to pay price/renewal you mentioned in your post. But you can easily go with .direct in this particular example, and you will pay only $19.88.
I guess she was pointing out the more obvious pairings that the common end user would be likely searching for, rather than the alternate, or more creative, fits that we've developed an eye for. And how the pricing results she got may have been a turn off for the average searcher.

I think those were decent solutions you provided, nonetheless, as far as getting around expensive renewals. At what point are those kind of work-arounds investor grade, though, if they wouldn't even be end-user grade?

Seeing a trend in the last year or two with more and more two-word left-of-the-dot becoming premium priced from the registry, a while back this was rarely the case.

**

What about those $6000 (or similar per year) renewal prices, though, that some registries are asking? Are those reasonable? As far as I could see there is no recorded sale for WebDesign in com, but for example the co.uk sold for about $37,000 which leads me to believe that the .com is at least the order of $200,000. If a company pays that, they must take into account the cost of the money tied up in that purchase, at the typical rate of 4.5% pa that represents an annual cost of about $9000.

I agree the prices are high, but perhaps not completely unrealistic to end users.
I wonder if we are seeing issues with "taking ownership", though. And what I mean by that is, when you're forking out say 37k for a one-time purchase in a legacy extension, you pretty much feel like the name is yours, you "own" it. You've got a pride of ownership. The $9 or $10 renewal fee is merely a maintenance fee. But when we've got the registries pricing these new TLD with exorbitant registrations, and then compounded with exorbitant yearly renewal rates on top of that, to me it takes away from the ownership status, and feels much more like an expensive stay at hotel. Nice and all, but nothing permanent. Although jmcc's comment says the contrary
The thing about higher registration fees is that they result in more repeated renewals.
so being forced to pay higher yearly rates results in someone not so willing to let go of that name, once they have it. I guess from an enduser standpoint, if its only one name you own versus many, the higher fee is justifiable.
 
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Domains don’t have a floor value of $1 - it’s less than zero unless the name is earning ppc. I said $1 in a moment of weakness driven by NP appraisal rules, oblivious that I was in free speech territory. Most domains are liabilities, expenses not income, rented like bowling shoes.

Even if a domain is earning ppc, it can still have a negative value in investor's view if the holding costs are higher than incomes including selling price.

Domains are liabilities only if you borrow money to buy them. Every domain incurs investment costs.

Does it earn, if so how much, if not, next.

This is a simple rule that applies to all domain investments and every investor must follow. But behind the rule, there are many complex processes, such as doing extensive research, to make investment decisions. So not easy actually. Many people ignore the complex processes or are emotional, and then buy crappy names and finally fail.

I see domains as termites or cows and I don’t eat termites.

I am jealous that you have a simple world. I see domains as many kinds of animals and eat them if they can make me feel full in my limited budget.
 
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People have been making these claims for 20 years, that new tlds will one day be popular, that day never comes.

You are wrong to put all ngTLDs into one category and then draw conclusion based on the category. Each ngTLD has its own focus and characteristics. Some focus on their specific business area or product type like .loans, .club and .app. Some are general such as .site and .online. Some have registration restrictions, such as .bot and .jobs. Some have years of history and some were just launched. And of course some obviously suck such as .sucks.

20 years ago internet was much less common and there were much less websites than nowadays. Success of domains depend on the usage of internet. The world and markets are everchanging, and indeed there were high ngTLDs sales (5 figure sales or above) recently. If internet will not collapse and there will be more and more websites that .com are not enough to supply, new good extensions will be more popular.
 
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You are wrong to put all ngTLDs into one category and then draw conclusion based on the category. Each ngTLD has its own focus and characteristics. Some focus on their specific business area or product type like .loans, .club and .app. Some are general such as .site and .online. Some have registration restrictions, such as .bot and .jobs. Some have years of history and some were just launched. And of course some obviously suck such as .sucks.

20 years ago internet was much less common and there were much less websites than nowadays. Success of domains depend on the usage of internet. The world and markets are everchanging, and indeed there were high ngTLDs sales (5 figure sales or above) recently. If internet will not collapse and there will be more and more websites that .com are not enough to supply, new good extensions will be more popular.

Nothing has really changed, there is no demand for new tlds, every single new tld launched has been a disappointing flop. .biz, .info, .jobs, .mobi, .guru, which of those has stood the test of time and become well used?

The 6 figure new tld sales a typically fake, done as a publicity stunt and organised by the registry.
 
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Domains are liabilities only if you borrow money to buy them. Every domain incurs investment costs.

A domain name is a liability if the holding costs exceeds its value, that is true of most new tlds, even the one word ones.
 
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Nothing has really changed, there is no demand for new tlds, every single new tld launched has been a disappointing flop. .biz, .info, .jobs, .mobi, .guru, which of those has stood the test of time and become well used?

The 6 figure new tld sales a typically fake, done as a publicity stunt and organised by the registry.

You can easily find the active, well developed websites that use ngTLDs in Google search. This is the demand for ngTLDs.

I don't want to spend time to discuss with you about whether the high ngTLDs sales are fake or not. I believe you are the only NP member who thinks they are fake. It is your freedom to insist that they are fake, escape from the actual world and live in your imagined world.
 
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You have no accounting concept. What you said is loss instead of liability.

Here is the problem, you are looking for the "exact right answer" and missing the big picture entirely. People say enduser don't like new tlds so you tell them there are sites in Google if you search for the exact extension?

Are you a programmer?
 
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Some of the people who registered keyword domain names in the NGTs when they launched did so using .COM domaining rules in that what was valuable in .COM would be valuable in the NGTs. It hasn't worked out that way but some of those with deeper pockets can afford to wait until some of the NGTs become successful. Unfortunately, .COM speculation rules work best in .COM and with a large and high profile TLD. They don't work on small, highly niche TLDs. Apart from a few exceptions like .XYZ and perhaps .ONLINE, most of the NGTs are niche gTLDs.

Regards...jmcc
Thanks for this magnificent analysis JMCC which would be worthy of a post in itself.
 
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The world doesn't need a bunch of gtlds, it needs a few handfuls of good, short ngtlds.
 
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It's just not worth the investment in most cases. Most of these are niche extensions, will never have big numbers. Spend x to get what back in return? Then development is where most people will even know these exist. But low reg numbers means low development. I still have 0 sites on new gtlds in my bookmarks. I think they will end up being something that just gets sold back and forth between domainers.

Pick one, let's say .cricket which is at 16,595.

How much would you spend on that, where, and how many new regs do you think would come from that spend? It seems it would be hard to get a return on most of these.
I think you are losing plot here.

Icann doesn't care about making domainers rich. They want to sell to sites to businesses who don't all see their domain name as being the be all and end all of their business. Not saying that the domain name isn't important.

The new extensions are for businesses etc. NOT domain flippers.

This is like people who sell uniforms thinking that the military or schools are all about their goods. Not really. Important yes but it's not all about them.
 
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1. I just wanted to correct your wrong accounting concept. I miss the big picture? Fundamental analysis is the approach to look at full picture. You say that a guy who suggests using fundamental analysis miss the big picture? What a joke!

2. OK, I can conclude that you are a purely subjective person without scientific mindset. You trust people's sayings without verifying their sayings? Are the people end users? Google search shows that they are wrong and there are many developed websites using ngTLDs.

3. I don't understand the purpose of asking if I am a programmer.

Because you sounds like a programmer, getting all the technical details right but without common sense, if domaining is part art and part science you have missed all of the "art". Good luck with your new tlds.

So you have sales to backup your comments? Show me then!

Why are you reversing the question? Have you sold any names?

The new extensions are for businesses etc. NOT domain flippers.

This is like people who sell uniforms thinking that the military or schools are all about their goods. Not really. Important yes but it's not all about them.

Businesses don't use these names. It is mostly domain flippers.

Same thing. They are selling names to businesses etc. End customers. Domain investment is a sideline.

Why are new tld registries lining up at domain conferences, sponsoring domainer blogs whilst doing no marketing to enduser then? The supposed 500k buyers turn up to domain conferences to spruik these names, that isn't marketing to businesses.

The enduser is the domainer but they don't want you to realise that, they want you to think you are in the middle making a fat middleman profit rather than the end of the line.
 
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I think you are losing plot here.

Icann doesn't care about making domainers rich. They want to sell to sites to businesses who don't all see their domain name as being the be all and end all of their business. Not saying that the domain name isn't important.

The new extensions are for businesses etc. NOT domain flippers.

This is like people who sell uniforms thinking that the military or schools are all about their goods. Not really. Important yes but it's not all about them.

What? I'm talking about the registries and also the registrars to an extent.
 
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What? I'm talking about the registries and also the registrars to an extent.
Same thing. They are selling names to businesses etc. End customers. Domain investment is a sideline.
 
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Same thing. They are selling names to businesses etc. End customers. Domain investment is a sideline.

We just had a whole thread of people talking about them not spending enough advertising dollars to promote these. I understand the concept of keeping the best names themselves and trying to sell them to end users.
 
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