Hi everybody,
Sorry for the wait for my answer, and I want first to wish you all a happy new year 2020 and all the .Best for this amazing new decade!
You made last year so special for us that it is my greatest wish that this coming year be the Best for you.
So, let me please first start with the .Best « haters »
When I read : "It appears that all the "haters" were right after all."
I want to say that I am not shocked by these words as I can totally understand the pros vs the cons of the .Best and our social network strategy and one’s more, we/I don’t want to convince everybody here about our .Best strategy. So, no problem with that.
We always tried to be honest and 100% transparent about everything related to the .best even when it’s not positive or if we make errors. And we did and will do again for sure so I am here to help and correct them as I/we always did.
I am more embarrassed with wrong & negative information.
When you said for instance: "And Cyril seems to have disappeared. I am shocked!!!......Brad"
First, Brad I am sorry if I missed you during the holiday season
but I always answer the threads or questions related to the .Best in Namepros.
Of course, I can probably do it better/faster, but I am the CEO of 4 companies in the world and we have a lot of things to do right now with THE.Best social network final round so I would say that the fastest way to reach me in case of problem-related to the .Best is to send me directly an email to
[email protected] and I will take the necessary time for you to answer or clarify any bad point related to the .Best if exists.
I was there and will be there in Namepros to inform, explain, clarify or correct any point related to the .Best if needed.
So, now let’s start and go back with our price change transition.
About "legacy" domains
I have already explained and commented all this a lot in different threads before but in case you missed it or still don’t know, we didn’t create the .Best registry : We made the acquisition of the .Best registry in July 2018 in order to attach .Best domains with THE.Best social network :
www.the.best
At the time of our .Best registry acquisition, we had less than 3K live domains, all sold and renewed since 2014 at the rate of $70 wholesale with a renewal rate up to 70% each year since 2014.
See :
https://ntldstats.com/tld/best
Moreover, right after our .Best acquisition, we worked hard with our « legacy » registrars to convinced them to lower the .Best standard pricing for our new .Best domain registrants.
This hard-work enables us to find a .Best deal after the Namescon 2019 (end of January 2019) and we informed/notified all our .Best registrars on 5th Feb 2019 that :
- For any .best registered at standard rates on Feb 5, 2019 or later, the new renewal rate will be of $15 wholesale.
- For any .best registered earlier than that date (price change legal notification), the wholesale rate will remain at $70 = the value that the renewal for the TLD had been historically.
- The effective new price change should be effective on 5th August 2019 (as we had to respect a strict legal notice period of 6 months with our .Best Registry-Registrars contract)
So, the renewal price at the time you registered a .Best domain has never increase !
We only changed the status (not the renewal price) of the legacy domains (=domains registered before 5th feb 2019) in order to classify/identify the domains registered before 5th Feb 2019 for our registrars.
Means, that the renewal rate of .Best « legacy domain » is not higher than what you were informed at the time you registered each .Best domain!
About our .Best pricing strategy
We are the only registry that decreased its wholesale standard registration and renewal rates by about 78% on 2019 !
That was a promise that we made 5th Feb 2019 after informing all our .Best registrars and that became effective in August 2019 with even a fair retro-discount of 6 months for all our registrants that had registered a .Best domains between 5th Feb 2019 and 5th August 2019 (time where the renewal price was still at $70 wholesale with all our .Best registrars)
Means that in a time when most prices edged up :
- Uniregistry increased their prices :
https://news.gandi.net/en/2017/09/uniregistry-price-increase/
- .CLUB announces three years of price increases :
http://domainincite.com/23829-club-announces-three-years-of-price-increases
- Donuts increased their price :
https://www.eurodns.com/blog/donuts-extensions-price-increase-october-2019
- .com will increase their price :
https://domainnamewire.com/2019/10/25/icann-is-about-to-give-verisign-its-com-price-increases
- price caps were removed from a legacy extension :
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...omain-price-caps-despite-lopsided-opposition/
The .BEST registry reduced its wholesale standard and renewal price by +78% !
Of course, we could probably do it better in terms of pricing, so please let me explain why this .Best standard price is still a competitive price compare to the market for a domain investor.
First, let me reminds you that during the BlackFriday + December 2019, we set-up some deals and promotions with some registrars on renewals to enable all our registrants to renew any .Best domain with a 50% discount ! (Even premium domains).
Means that if you renewed your .Best domains during this period (BlackFriday + December 2019) at some .Best selected registrars (Dynadot, Domain cost club , …), you could renewed your .Best domain :
At a wholesale standard renewal price of $7.5 / year (=cheaper than a .com)
Even .Best premiums, you can renewed them with 50% discount in advance !
So for a .best domain investor during Black Friday + December 2019, you had the possibility to get a .best domain for : $1 standard first year registration + $7.5 per year renewal !
Moreover, I strongly encourage you to not judge the value of a registry only on its renewal price.
I don’t want to make any assumption or comparison with any other tld/registry but as a comparison with the real estate industry, I would say that the price of an apartment in Champs-Elysées in Paris is not exactly the same that Boulevard de la chapelle in Paris - nothing again Boulevard de la chapelle residents but you get it (Works also with 5th Av in NYC and any other NYC street
).
So, it’s not because it is cheaper, that it is better in terms of investment.
So, as an investor, I only judge the value of my investment (a domain here) on its possible ROI.
I want to set-up this immediately that for me the ROI of a domain (no matter the TLD) is directly linked to its possible usage.
The fact that the .com is today the primary TLD in the aftermarket is not « only » related to the +140M .com live domains but more to the 50M .com live websites = end-users.
Of course, .com and cctlds are the kings in terms of « website usage » so I would say that if you have a short-term ROI objective, you should primary focus on those TLDs.
But, if you are also investing in ngtlds on a mid/long-term process, you should only invest in TLDs focusing and developing their own usage.
And usage at scale if possible to increase the value of the domain !
Coz usage is the only game to create a liquid market on the long term and it is quite impossible to create an effective aftermarket for domainers if there is no usage = market of their domains.
This is why all our strategy, efforts, energy and blood since +2 years are concentrated on the usage of the .Best domains through THE.Best social network.
Coz the innovation of THE.Best social network is that :
We created a « new usage » for a domain : « not as a website » but as a « social media account »
- A social media account to reward +3B existing social media users.
- A social media account to protect +7M existing trademark.
- A social media account to advertize +180M businesses.
Of course, the road is still and will be a long way to success, and we do not pretend to imitate TikTok amazing scale in the next two years (with 1.5B app download) but the social market is huge and more important the .Best trend is growing month after month.
Not only in terms of registrations (as
we went from 3K to almost 90K live .Best domains in almost a year), but also in domain checked with our registrars as you problably don’t know this stat but the domain checked for .Best domains (stats that we recently get from centralnic – our backend operator) went from :
150K domains check / month (June 2018) to 1.5M domains check / month (December 2019)
About « hotels.Best » and « hotel.Best »
We/I always said and reported that we did not accept the $1M proposal that we received for « hotels.best » + « hotel.best » domains because we « still » thought/think that it was far from the $11M deal for « hotels.com » concluded in 2001.
By the way, the deal is publicly open to anybody that wants to come and visit us in our .Best office in Paris, or meet us at INTA in Singapore in April 2020 or GDD summit in Paris in May 2020 (of course under NDA).
FYI, in 2001 the « hotels.com company » purchased the name Hotels.com for around $11m and even if at that time this was thought to be “a crazy sum of money”, now David Roche (CEO for hotels.com) still thinks that it was a bargain!
So of course, i can totally understand pros vs cons because this is of course a lot of money and a fantasy for many domainers but we thought that this was also not the right time to sell a high-value .best domain because the reality is that we are not still DAY 1!
I mean, we are now close to 90k .Best live domains but trust me, the game has not yet started for us !
But DAY 1 is pretty close:
100K .Best live domains + the launch of THE.BEST social network !
About THE.Best social network :
I can totally understand the critics about the long waiting for the launch of THE.Best social network.
So now, let me give you a few information about our planning and also the reason of this long wait.
The primary reason for this long waiting period is that it is part of our .Best marketing strategy. And, we assume it 100%.
Why? Because it’s not the same hype for the media and press when launching an unknow project with zero users VS .Best launching a social network innovation with +100K domains that can be directly connected to THE.Best social network.
FYI, THE.Best app is now ready and we just started the early adopter's onboarding process beginning 2020. Pre-registration/Information website for .Best influencers :
www.the.best
i.e - Examples of reviewers social media accounts:
www.cyril.best,
www.adrien.best,
www.alexandra.best,
www.julian.best,
www.perrine.best,
www.fabrice.best,
www.heloise.best,
www.stephane.best,
www.honore.best,
www.parisien.best,
www.karim.best,
www.steeven.best,
www.christophe.best, ...
Moreover, THE.Best business model is absolutely not based on selling domains or making money on end-users or domainers!
We will even reward our social media users for their .Best contributions/reviews inside THE.Best social network.
Our business model is 100% brand-oriented by selling protection, monitoring and advertising services to brands. i.e Information website for .Best Brands protection:
www.brands.best
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THE.Best App is ready and available in French and English!
It will be available for all « .Best domain owners first » when on stores after reaching 100K live .Best domains !
Our plan is to be live for around the end of March 2020 (as we are now close to 90K .Best live domains) and will present THE.best social network to Brands at the INTA Singapore (end of April 2020).
Pre-register now (
https://the.best/register/) if you want to get & test THE.Best app before the others and be part of the .Best community.
Wish you again all the .Best for your future trade and business in 2020 !
Cyril