poll Is there a future for new GTLDs?

@HotKey said a couple of really critical things above that I wanted to give my perspective on...
https://www.namepros.com/threads/is-there-a-future-for-new-gtlds.1133844/page-2#post-7210870

He suggests that the process will be gradual, and one day people will realize that new gTLDs are established without quite realizing it was happening. I see that too - much slower than many thought, and I still think it is some years away. I don't think that it is ever that people in general will know if there is a .dog or a .soy TLD (yes there are) but rather people will get used to the fact that all sorts of endings are possible and accept that.

I actually think Google will play a rather big role in this, in addition to the success (or not) of their specific TLDs. They are a universally recognized name, whereas most of the registry operators are not.

The second thing @HotKey says though is new extensions becoming established does not automatically mean that there are good new extension domain investment options and that investors need to be really careful. I agree entirely. In many ways the registries have advantages and it is challenging to find a profitable role for new domain investors. I am much more confident that in 10 years new extensions will seem natural than I am that a lot of money will have been made by new domain investors.

Bob

Bob Hawkes said:

As far as I know only a single new gTLD has "failed" (.wed) and even it is at moment still limping along in EBERO status (I think). It had a bizarre business model with $150 for year 1 and $30,000 for year 2 (really! Who thought that was smart?). It launched with a single registrar handling it, and I think only ever had 2 or 3 registrars, and only ever had a few hundred registrations. And even it is not yet non-operational.

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It gest back to the whole idea of "experts" not understanding the business, Bob,
The whole NGT program originated because of the artificial demand caused by Domain Tasting/Kiting. Most of each day's drops in COM/NET/ORG were being hoovered up before ordinary domainers and users could get to them. Thus the whole idea that all the good domain names were taken started to propagate. There was also a dark side to this in that brand names such as Dell were being targeted by bad operators who would register tens of thousands of variations of the brand names in combination with whatever computer or offer was popular. So the ordinary would-be registrants couldn't get domain names and brand owners were getting very upset with ICANN and its failure to stop the abuse. So the new gTLDs (NGTs) were seen as the solution. So for $185K a pop, a company could, once it passed evaluation, get to run a gTLD. As with any new business, this did attract a lot of complete spoofers passing themselves off as experts and promising the gullible millions of registrations and untold riches. But ICANN was shamed into enforcing a kind of restocking fee for domain names deleted during the Add Grace Period. It had been free from registrars to register and delete domain names during this five day period. Domain Tasting almost collapsed overnight and the floodgates were opened. The artificial demand for many of the new gTLDs had disappeared. Legal action was also taken against some of the worst abusers of brand/trademarks and these registrars were shut down.

The weird thing about the .WED business model is that it makes sense in a non-domain name industry sense. There would, in this theory, be a finite number of combinations of names and they would be to advertise a one-off event. The domain names wouldn't be needed after the event. The problem is that the domain name business doesn't work that way. TLDs make most of their money from renewals. The new registrations matter but the renewals are solid, repeating income.

Some of the registries completely underestimated the costs of marketing and the demand for their gTLDs. They were frequently single gTLD operators. Some of them sold out to the portfolio operators like Donuts. These gTLDs were not successful in their original incarnation but the transition from single gTLD registry to being part of a portfolio operator generally went unnoticed by the end users. Since the deals are done without the NGT entering EBERO, they don't appear as failed gTLDs.

While it is true that the extensions with the most solid backing and sound business plans are most secure, but so far, and we are now 5 years into it, despite the struggles the number of new extensions which are open to anyone to register that have failed is I think 0 (but the $30,000 per year 2+ .wed is on life support).

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The .WED has been frozen since January 2018 and it is even eternally pending on the CZDS. The .WEDDING is currently around 22K registrations. (The single/plural/variation thing is a whole new set of arguments. The backing and business plan matter but the fate of TLDs is decided by demand. If the registries don't promote their gTLDs and don't help registrars to promote them, then the gTLDs just don't get traction in the market. The blood trails on gTLDs that are in trouble are visible in the registrations, renewals and usage. By usage I mean real web usage analysis rather than the cargo-cult rubbish. It is possible to estimate which domain names will not renew based on a combination of these statistics and an algorithm. The correlation between poor web usage and development and low renewal rates is quite stark. One NGT had a renewal rate of 0.58% for 2017 registrations and the 2018 renewals are going to be as bad. (The multi-year registrations are also an indication of how a gTLD is perceived by its registrants. More multi-year registrations and renewals are good.) However, the removal of these low quality and heavily discounted registrations from the NGT is a good thing as it will, theoretically, allow the NGT to recover. It can take about five years for newly launched TLDs to stabilise. The completely screwed up launch pattern (another ICANN mess) means that some NGTs are only on their first renewal while others are on their fourth. Thus the XYZ and TOP have millions of registrations and .APP is approaching its first renewal and .DEV is still, technically, in its land rush period of operation.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc said:

Basically Frank had to stop thinking like a domainer and start thinking like a registry operator. What he did, as unpleasant as it sounds, was the right thing. A new TLD cannot depend on domainers for all of its registrations.

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And, by increasing prices, Frank actually saved his NGTLDs. From what? From what is hapenning with .xyz or .top : cheap registrations, $0.01 promotions and the like = TONS of spam and other questionable activity = bad reputation = no future.

jmcc said:

Yep. It was in trouble as soon as Apple launched its smartphone and stuck with .COM as the default. MOBI's market has shifted. It still has renewals from brand protection registrations but it anyone pitching English language domain names is going to find it far more difficult than selling the same name in .COM.

Regards...jmcc

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New tld has all same problems! .mobi still has 400k registration @full price, better extension than any new tld.

tonyk2000 said:

And, by increasing prices, Frank actually saved his NGTLDs. From what? From what is hapenning with .xyz or .top : cheap registrations, $0.01 promotions and the like = TONS of spam and other questionable activity = bad reputation = no future.

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Higher registration and renewal fees mean that people are less likely to drop domain names and will keep renewing them. It almost kills new registration rates for a few months (and maybe a year or so) after a price rise but the higher cost also means that people might be more inclined to develop sites or use the domain names for e-mail or branding. The higher prices also discourage domaining. That flattens the demand in the first six months of launch (the land rush period) because domainers are not registering and selling domain names and promoting the NGT.

The XYZ zone stuffing was brilliant marketing despite the negative aspects. Discounting is always a tradeoff. The new registrations have to keep ahead of the deletions. The renewal rate for discounted registrations varies according to the discount and can be around 5% or lower. But XYZ targeted the most blue chip registrar first. Many of the registrants who got the free XYZ domain names automatically renewed them so that group of registrations renewed better than most of the registrations on the Chinese registrars (a completely different market and a highly speculative one). The heavy discounting also shifted much of the questionable registration activity away from the legacy gTLDs but XYZ isn't as bad as some of the other NGTs that have been using discounting. There is actual usage taking place on the gTLD because it provides a cheap entry to hosting for businesses and web developers outside the US/CA/EU/AU/NZ markets. They may eventually graduate to a .COM but this is is a market with many country level markets and a cheap .COM registration in one country might appear expensive elsewhere. A cheap .XYZ or whatever might be the most cost efficient way for people to get their business online.

Regards...jmcc

Sales so far this year @namebio

.mobi - 13 sales
.club - 8 sales
.xyz - 3 sales
.best - 1 sale

If people think new tld is better than .mobi on what numbers? Wishful thinking?

Must buy only best new tld (I suggest people look at brands.international if they want the best ones)

jmcc said:

A cheap .XYZ or whatever might be the most cost efficient way for people to get their business online.

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Yes, or whatever... In many non-U.S. cases it converts to their country code tld. Which is something a lot of new gtld operators do not think about, as a matter of fact

I also voted for "there is a future for new gTLD names".
Although I think some members here are very impatient...instead of forever discussing whether new gTLDs are worth it or not, I would say just focus on building your own portfolio, so you have at least few great names with low renewals. Nothing more I can add to it, really

https://twitter.com/DomainKing/status/1120283219323162624

lolwarrior said:

Nothing more I can add to it, really

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I only can add:

Try to live without NameBio... and without various idols and kings.

jmcc said:

Yes.

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Thanks. Would be nice to know who these end users with websites are, then separate out how many redirect to their real company name in a .Com or .ccTLD.

Travel .agency (flipped and now parked sold a couple year ago), home .loans, are large dollar sales of a couple with publicity on this forum.

Here is Rick's recent comments:



https://twitter.com/DomainKing/status/1122135606392426496

tonyk2000 said:

Yes, or whatever... In many non-U.S. cases it converts to their country code tld. Which is something a lot of new gtld operators do not think about, as a matter of fact

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There's a niche for NGTs in some countries where the local ccTLD is not well developed. What generally happens is that the ccTLDs start out being run from the Computer Science departments of universities and the cost of these ccTLD domain names tends to be higher than that of some of the discounted NGTs. So what happens is that there's a flurry of registrations from some of these countries. They don't occur across the NGTs. It is much the same way as the .COM developed as the de facto global TLD in the 1990s.

Regards...jmcc

offthehandle said:

Thanks. Would be nice to know who these end users with websites are, then separate out how many redirect to their real company name in a .Com or .ccTLD.

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From the March 2019 survey (non-IDN 23,031,257 ):
3.85% Active/unclassified (887,724)
0.025% Brand protection
0.23% Clone (sites from other TLDs)
0.15% Framed redirect
2.40% External TLD redirect
7.46% Not found/Forbidden
17.41% Holding page
2.88% Internal redirect
0.86% Empty
4.45% Affiliate lander
0.9% Exact match redirect (external TLD)
11.01% PPC
3.27% Sale
5.08% HTTPS redirect (1,171,056)
1.56% Unavailable
0.11% Video affiliate/streamer
7.52% Adult Affiliate
0.01% Compromised/hacked
0.04% Social Media
0.43% Same TLD redirect
27.62% No site/no response

Some categories are not included. The external TLD redirect are sites redirecting to a site in another TLD. The exact match redirect is a site redirecting to the same name site in another TLD.

The level of Sales and PPC varies by gTLD. In US/CA, PPC parking is more common. In the Chinese market PPC parking is not as common and many sites are using affilate landers. The 3.85% Active development percentage and the HTTPS percentage are the important ones. Again, the usage varies across the NGTs. Some NGTs tend to use HTTPS by default. It hasn't worked out well with the Google NGTs because of the problem of people using one certificate for multiple sites.

Here is Rick's recent comments:

Show attachment 117419

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The NGTs are bleeding registrations are the moment and that's largely due to heavily discounted registrations not being renewed and, in the case of the ex-Famous Four NGTs, not being replaced. There's still a lot of them to drop yet and the next five months or so will be really bad for some of these NGTs. The real problem with the NGTs isn't that domainers and speculators (whether the registry or other large players) own large numbers of domain names in the NGTs. They don't. The real problem is that discounting in some of the larger NGTs obscures development and usage. The NGTs are a set of generic TLDs, domain hacks and geographical/regional gTLDs. The only thing they have in common is that they are gTLDs.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc said:

The NGTs are a set of generic TLDs, domain hacks and geographical/regional gTLDs. The only thing they have in common is that they are gTLDs.

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^^^ This!
I think it is unfortunate that we all lump together the ngTLDs since they have very different natures and roles. Also I think that regional differences in use and perception will continue to be pronounced in most of these.

@jmcc Thank you so much for the data. If a site has content but is configured so that someone who goes to the http is sent to https, does it just get counted as https redirect or as content site?

Bob

jmcc said:

7.46% Not found/Forbidden

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jmcc said:

27.62% No site/no response

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These numbers are not necessary accurate. I mean that there may be something (not forbidden etc.) shown to human visitors. With tons of bot-powered traffic looking for vulnerabilities or simply grabbing content, I myself pay special attention to block it either on webserver level (403) or even firewall level (no response), and the bot who run "the March 2019 survey" is likely blocked on my servers for example. I simply do not like to waste resources (such as running php as the result of such a visit) for something that I'm not considering as beneficial... (An example of something I carefully blocked would be bots run by various domainer-servicing businesses). Bots are trying to change useagents or ips, but it does not really help Many site owners are doing the same.
So, there may be noticeably more live websites in a block included into "the March 2019 survey".

Forbidden response is not rare even for real users...
I get it periodically on various websites where Ukrainian IP ranges are banned by some idiotic software/firewalls...

Jurgen Wolf said:

Ukrainian IP

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I wanted to ban all mobile 4g UA providers once (by AS), as many bots are run from these IPs, but decided not to... humans (or potential humans) should not be banned under any circumstances. I even allow all Chinese visitors, even though they rarely buy...

My internet connection is wired (Eth), not mobile...
But I get such response for many years... this was even before 3G.

Regarding Ukrainian buyers...
The highest sale I have seen publicly: ALL.BIZ (~$62K) in 2011.

Jurgen Wolf said:

Regarding Ukrainian buyers...
The highest sale I have seen publicly: ALL.BIZ (~$62K) in 2011.

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Great one. Yes, the world is not only U.S.... I had a number of gtld sales to buyers from UA/RU and from other ex-USSR countries, nothing close to this range though. All were correct non-mistyped dictionary terms in Russian, correctly transliterated (I know for sure, as I speak this language). By some reason, however, higher %%% of such sales occured to U.S.-based businesses with ex-USSR roots.

Returning to formal subject of this thread: It may well be that this -

jmcc said:

There's a niche for NGTs in some countries where the local ccTLD is not well developed.

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already happens, or will soon happen, with ex-USSR countries. Last time I checked, retail CCtld prices were abnormally high in this area. There are also discussions about "independent internet" and the like, which may force some registrants to "secure" their online presence in non-CCtld extensions.

Leo Angelo said:

I was surprised to learn today that a non-domainer friend migrated his website to the same name .blog because "for a blog, .blog makes more sense than .com." What about the renewal fee? "$29/yr. Not enough to be a deterrent."
He is an intelligent person who appreciates using the best and the fewest words. Using the self-explanatory TLD makes sense and is worth the extra money, in his opinion.
Maybe the new GLTDs are making inroads with public awareness and will keep gaining market share. What do you think, how do you feel about it?

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ngtlds have their place, like a house in a shanty town does in the world.

Not all ngtlds are the same so you have some that are like luxury homes.. But they are still in the ghetto

Leo Angelo said:

"for a blog, .blog makes more sense than .com."

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As we have seen, differing viewpoint on the topic of the thread, but I think this quote encapsulates the key issue. I think increasingly discerning organizations will select the domain that is the right fit for their operation rather than a one TLD fits all. A middle sized or larger business for their main website will select .com, because that is the right fit. As we have seen, many developers are seeing .dev as the right fit for them. A cooperative will select .coop. I think increasingly organizations will use .org instead of .com. I think this is all positive - in elegant design all parts of the domain name, including the extension, should have meaningful role beyond being a sign of distinction due to cost.

Thanks for starting the thread, @Leo Angelo!
Bob

tonyk2000 said:

retails CCtld prices were abnormally high in this area.

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I have $6.xx for .com.ua
Sold 2 .com.ua domains: $4.5K and $600 (both are English).

Bob Hawkes said:

^^^ This!
I think it is unfortunate that we all lump together the ngTLDs since they have very different natures and roles. Also I think that regional differences in use and perception will continue to be pronounced in most of these.

@jmcc Thank you so much for the data. If a site has content but is configured so that someone who goes to the http is sent to https, does it just get counted as https redirect or as content site?

Bob

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It is a HTTPS redirect, Bob,
It is important to split them out from simple redirects because it shows possible development. However, not all HTTPS redirects (if a site hasn't a valid cert then most browsers will refuse to connect) have working sites but many do and that makes this category important.

Regards...jmcc

Regarding Russia and nTLDs...
Had a few inbound offers + 2 domains (.top & .work, Russian word) sold to the same buyer from Moscow ($973 cumulatively).