discuss After latest large new gTLD domain sale, I have renewed my whole .live portfolio until 2025...

dande said:

You mean 70% of total sales? Who told you that.

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Jurgen Wolf said:

Donuts will increase fees in September...
From this POV, it is not a bad idea to renew in advance... if you are not able to catch those names for promofee.

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Recons.Com said:

And how do the probabilities compare if you look at sales over $1k, prices that are often required for investment grade names and exclude most of resale acquisitions?

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Bob Hawkes said:

87% of the .com sales disappear at that price point, so the probability of sale of a .com in one year over that level goes from 0.0048 to 0.00062, or about one chance in 1610. This of course does not take into account how many sales are missing from NameBio. Factor of 5? Would become1 chance in about 325 of a sale at that level in one year. If you take only past year, all .live disappear at that level. If you take average of past 3 years, numbers tiny, but probability would go down from 0.0021 to 0.000061 or about 1 in 16000. If you assume again a factor of 5 for sales not listed on NameBio (ratio may or may not be same as for .com), one gets about one chance in 3200 of a .live sale. While these numbers are too small to mean much, overall if you look at ngTLDs it is something like a factor of 3 to 5 less than .com for probabilities of sale. The average prices, over all new gTLD, are higher, which partly, but not completely, make up for the difference, even when registry sales are corrected for.

The one line summary: your chance of a $1000 sale is higher in .com, but very low in both. The median .com sale these days, at least in NameBio is only slightly above $225. It was higher 5 and 10 years ago, it seems.

The profitability of new gTLDs depend either on improvement of market in coming years or finding a rare superb match across the dot that got ignored as a premium and you can have good renewal rates.

Overall in 2017 there were 1006 NameBio recorded new gTLD sales for $5.2 million
In 2018 it was 1464 for $5.7 million.
Registry sales account for about 25% by number but about 50% by dollar volume in that.
So far in 2019 the dollar volume seems down, but also the percentage registry also down significantly. Mainly .top is way less active so far this year.

Bob

(also in reply to @JB Lions re $100 too low. I had originally used it as that is the NameBio level of public reporting)

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Recons.Com said:

So the odds of xxxx at NB for .com is 0.00062 and for .live is 0.000000000000000000000000

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Bob Hawkes said:

@Recons.Com Would you mind rechecking math? I get one more 0

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garptrader said:

From a branding vantage point .LIVE could be considered a competitor to .TV with cheap year one registrations and about $20/year renewals (.TV at Godaddy is about $30/year). As a newer extension keyword availability would be easier for those who entered the space early. Despite some occasional reported .TV sales (which often never resolve to developed sites with original video content), the ratio of end users paying premium prices for aftermarket .TV domains is rather low.

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Recons.Com said:

4. Live is purely English, while TV is spelled that way in most languages

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MapleDots said:

I have made that statement in regards to numerous new TLD's including those owned by @lolwarrior.
I think he is from Czechoslovakia, yet he is collecting English TLD's. To a degree they are no better than ccTLD's and even then I would argue that ccTLD's are better because they are established in each country.

So with .live or .whatever that is in English there probably will be little to no market in non-english speaking areas.

So many things to consider when investing into these pricey extensions. (pricey as in renewal costs)

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Bob Hawkes said:

BTW this thread seems a good place to share something I wrote last year on why long term renewal can make sense. Here is the summary (from here) of my main points:

1. You lock in future costs at known rates.
2. You take advantage of promotions and savings.
3. With the luxury of future years registrations prepaid, you will be more confident in asking good prices.
4. The additional years will make your domain names more valuable to potential end users, and give them more confidence about long term costs.
5. Deciding which names warrant renewal for multiple years will force you to critically evaluate your portfolio and emphasize quality over quantity.
6. The long term approach saves you time that can be put into other domain portfolio priorities.

With caps loosened on .com, and perhaps being taken off .asia, .biz, and .org, I am not sure that we are not in for a period of higher renewal costs. And Donuts of course did announce fall increases of averaging 7% on many of their extensions (not all, a few like .group are are going down significantly).

The situation is interesting right now with .science and .review (and some, but not all, of the other former FFM extensions). The wholesale cost for new registrations (and transfers) is about $5 while the wholesale renewal is about $2 (retail costs about $1 more at the cost competitive places). Of course almost all extensions promote the other way around, cheaper for first year than to renew. There is a certain logic to trying to keep registrations, vs.register and drop, and I hope it works out for them and becomes standard in the new gTLD space.

Bob

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MapleDots said:

.live?

What about the rest of them?

What did you drop that had no action?

I'm happy to hear you had some successful sales.

The only thing I will caution you about is renewing too much ahead. Personally I never renew more than a year, even on my best domains. That keeps down expenses on drops and sales.

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xynames said:

It’s hard to follow but it’s not clear that OP’s talking about any sale of his. Or even claiming that he’s ever sold anything. He’s apparently just saying that after he heard about some sale on some extension he was inspired to extend the renewals on his domains that are of the same or similar extension.

At least, that's the way I feel about it.

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xynames said:

Every domain that you sell with YEARS left on its expiration is money out of your pocket, dropped into the buyer's pocket. The more you sell of these domains that you prepaid years out, the more you lose.

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Bob Hawkes said:

While I absolutely agree there is logic in this view, I think it can be argued that the new owner will perceive value in the prepaid renewal and that in some cases may result in a higher price.

But the biggest advantage (beyond your stronger bargaining position since the buyer will know you don't plan to let it drop) is that you have locked in renewal at favourable rates. That may be the reason .live was selected as at least one registrar is offering long term rates at less than $6 per year. Donuts domains prior to the fall 6-9% (most) increase and the current favourable renewal rates on former FFM would be other examples where renewing now has a strong case. Of course the same argument applies to legacy if caps are to leave .org, .biz etc.

I agree it only makes sense to renew in advance those names you are convinced you should hold long term.

Bob

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equity78 said:

I certainly would never go out many years on a new gtld, because if that extension goes under, you are not getting refunded

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• Donuts, seems very stable, lots premium renewals help bottom line
• .live has 340,000 registrations (top 20)
• Registrations in .live have never significantly gone down
• Only 34% .live registrations are parked, indicative of healthy end use
• The ratio of Alexa 1M to registrations about 1 to 540, again indicative of strong relative use
• Good spread over different countries and registrars, again a positive stability sign.