discuss Are gTLDs affecting .Com price and growth

[Isac]

I think there is a decline in demand and price of .com domains because of new gTLDs. What's your opinion ?

 

[dordomai]

Yes, theory...when you sell a cctld to a EU company and you ask them if they don't want the .com as well and they say no, than you offer them to give them for free and they still say they that don't need it and you call this theory.

you think that .com doing poorly means your nGTLDs sell. Not the case really. You could outlaw .coms and most business would shift to .net and ccTLDs and your .longwords would still not have value.

 

[boker]

you think that .com doing poorly means your nGTLDs sell. Not the case really. You could outlaw .coms and most business would shift to .net and ccTLDs and your .longwords would still not have value.

That way they have paid xxxx for a ngtld or are paying premium renewal when .com .net and the others are available.

 

[Kate]

I can't see how this doxing is relevant to the discussion.
I may have sold a few names over here for $50 ea in the past. Some liquidation sale that was not even representative back then, and even less today.
So what ?

 

[boker]

I can't see how this doxing is relevant to the discussion.
I may have sold a few names over here for $50 ea in the past. Some liquidation sale that was not even representative back then, and even less today.
So what ?

It's not relevant, he said that because I've sold some expiring domains cheap here, than my opinion about domains it's not relevant, so I wanted to prove that everybody is doing it. Also, saying that he has a master in business he's right and the rest of us we don't know anything about business, so our opinion is not valid, so I had to to prove that he's business degree is not more valuable than the business experience of others.

 

[LovingLife]

why spend millions on branding when you can get your company brand IMega-Zone.biz for regfee?

Way to put up a straw man there. I'm not defending the new names, but surely some potential buyers would think twice about paying the premium for a .com.

In the past I have purchased .com names for development. Not anymore, my business model relies on search engine traffic. I don't see the point to pay for the .com when I can outrank it with one of the new extensions. Maybe I'm the only person on the planet not paying a premium to get the .com, but I kinda doubt that.

Of course the big brands and major companies should have the .com. That switch lifetimefitness.com made to lifetime.life makes no sense to me.

 

[JB Lions]

Way to put up a straw man there. I'm not defending the new names, but surely some potential buyers would think twice about paying the premium for a .com.

In the past I have purchased .com names for development. Not anymore, my business model relies on search engine traffic. I don't see the point to pay for the .com when I can outrank it with one of the new extensions. Maybe I'm the only person on the planet not paying a premium to get the .com, but I kinda doubt that.

You're completely different from a lot businesses tho. Real businesses aren't reliant and only think of search engine traffic, they think bigger picture. If you just want some little, reliant on search engine traffic site, it doesn't matter what extension you use.

 

[LovingLife]

You're completely different from a lot businesses tho. Real businesses aren't reliant and only think of search engine traffic, they think bigger picture. If you just want some little, reliant on search engine traffic site, it doesn't matter what extension you use.

If I had a "real" business I would purchase the .com. My little sites do just fine without it. All I can say as an individual, I'm not buying .coms anymore for development. So that money is off the table, I'm probably not the only one.

 

[JB Lions]

If I had a "real" business I would purchase the .com. My little sites do just fine without it. All I can say as an individual, I'm not buying .coms anymore for development. So that money is off the table, I'm probably not the only one.

No, people from the start have used different extensions, this isn't new. But bigger companies understand why you get the .com.

 

[LovingLife]

No, people from the start have used different extensions, this isn't new. But bigger companies understand why you get the .com.

The .com is not going anywhere, the best .com names are going to sell for a premium and the new gtlds probably have little effect on that.

At the same time, lesser quality .com names may be taking a hit.

 

[dordomai]

If I had a "real" business I would purchase the .com. My little sites do just fine without it. All I can say as an individual, I'm not buying .coms anymore for development. So that money is off the table, I'm probably not the only one.

yes but the thing is that this type of exact match alternative domains make only sense for small sites.

If you are going to build for the long-term and invest some money I would not build on a subpar URL.

If you have only 20% of people not remembering your URL or being confused by it you could fail in a highly competitive field.

You need something that people know and trust and recognize which is .com

The alt registries want to tell us that their domains are as good as .com or even better but this is not true. .com has a far higher brand value because of the billions that have been spent on promoting it. Everytime you see a website URL you promote .com, every time you see an ad with an URL you promote it. .com is one of the most if not the most visible brands in the world. It is virtually everywhere. These days people spend a lot of time online almost every day and .com follows them everywhere they go.

There is no way that word.word or word.ws is a valuable and recgnized as .com and that is why prices and sales for alt extensions will never be close to .com

 

[LovingLife]

yes but the thing is that this type of exact match alternative domains make only sense for small sites.

If you are going to build for the long-term and invest some money I would not build on a subpar URL.

If you have only 20% of people not remembering your URL or being confused by it you could fail in a highly competitive field.

You need something that people know and trust and recognize which is .com

The alt registries want to tell us that their domains are as good as .com or even better but this is not true. .com has a far higher brand value because of the billions that have been spent on promoting it. Everytime you see a website URL you promote .com, every time you see an ad with an URL you promote it. .com is one of the most if not the most visible brands in the world. It is virtually everywhere. These days people spend a lot of time online almost every day and .com follows them everywhere they go.

There is no way that word.word or word.ws is a valuable and recgnized as .com and that is why prices and sales for alt extensions will never be close to .com

Just about everything you are saying I agree with. The question the OP has is are the new gTLDs affecting the price of a .com and its growth.

Just a few days ago I had a 3k offer for one of the new names. If the new extensions didn't exist I would not have had that offer. It would have probably gone towards a .com.

 

[mad409]

I don't think new G's are affecting the value of .com but I know for a fact there are times when a new gTLD is purchased and the .com still sits for-sale.

Just a quick example would be shop .link and shoplink .com is still available. So it's documented that some .com sales are being lost because of the newer extensions and that fact isn't debatable.

 

[dordomai]

I think they have an effect. Since being released .com registry stock went up a lot and is trading close to all-time high. Just kidding.

I think they must have a small effect because at least some people will choose a new extension over a .com. I do not think that so far it is having a massive effect though and I don't think this will change anytime soon.

 

[DNdot]

I don't know much domaining.. But because of gTLDs, the value of .COM is gone up.

 

[garptrader]

I have some aged .Net domains up for renewal soon. Before Google changed its search algorithm, EMD .Net domains would occasionally sell for low $XXX. Not so much in recent years. I was checking the Godaddy auctions listings for the keyword of one of my .Nets. My list price is well under 1% of the equivalent .COM price and I have been renewing that domain for years. Yet noone has yet bought it - despite its low $XXX price. .Net has been around for ~30 years and many small businesses use .Net. There are approximately some 15 million .Net registrations so it is widely recognized. However, .Net just does not sell well in the aftermarket. So again I just do not see the risk / reward of the new extensions. Yes, there will be sales, but like my .TV holdings where I have some awesome keywords, renewal costs bury the random sale.

 

[LovingLife]

I don't know much domaining.. But because of gTLDs, the value of .COM is gone up.

I have heard that several times but I don't understand the logic behind that thinking. Is there any evidence to back that up?

There was an increase in the price of 3 and 4 letter .coms, but that came from Chinese investment and had nothing to do with the new names.

 

[xynames]

I'm getting thousand dollar and higher offers every single day on my dot coms, and closing sales regularly in minimum mid four figures, sometimes low to mid five figures. Granted my domains are in my opinion GREAT, but still I don't think I would be getting so many offers if I had some of these ersatz top level domains.

 

[GoKaizen]

If .COM was outlawed I would switch to .US, .ME, .UK, .EU, .IE, .DE, etc. over a new G.

you think that .com doing poorly means your nGTLDs sell. Not the case really. You could outlaw .coms and most business would shift to .net and ccTLDs and your .longwords would still not have value.

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

.com is not the future.

 

[garptrader]

We are now down to about 20 million new TLDs from almost 30 million only six months ago (wow 9 million drops in six months). A portion of those were 1 cent to $1 promos but given the number of premium renewals on average new TLDs are probably not renewing at less than $10. The company I work for has a number of new TLDs but they don't even resolve - just trademark protection domains. Who know the true percentage but it is likely the vast majority of new TLDs are held by domain investors. We are now closing the fourth year of the new TLD program so many domains have gone through a renewal cycle or two. It may take 3-5 more years to see the numbers bottom out. In the meantime, new TLDs have consumed hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of domainer resources which otherwise could have been invested in the stock market, cryptocurrencies, legacy TLDs, precious metals, etc. So I would agree new TLDs have affected the .COM resale market.

 

[CrazyTech]

Just not convinced gTLDs are taking over. Yes, they will dilute the market some just by nature, but take a look around at the adverts and note that you're just not seeing buy-in. And let's face it, the enduser market is what drives the value in even in a reseller market.

Case in my point is my own industry, banking. We defensively purchased our domain name in the new .bank extension, and we've been careful to watch our peers. One bank adopted .bank, but there have been very few other examples. Most are either redirecting or just holding on to the domain in case it becomes an accepted domain. The whole push behind the domain, first adopted by some industry groups, was to take the .bank extension and make it a secure vehicle only owned by banks. This sort of thought process makes as much sense as any for a gTLD, but it saw little to no adoption.

 

[jmcc]

I've tried to find a statistic made by a australian company related to tld usage in europe, but I can't find it right now. They have asked random peoples in each country what site they will use/trust first if they want to shop/need info: example.fr(for France) or example.com/ngtlds
The result was between 61% to 87% will choose the cctld, the 61% being in UK, the average being around 80% in most countries. So, when you have 80% of the customers choosing a cctld, why would you want to use a com to loose tones of traffic? Also, 2,6% were saying that they will trust a ngtld, the example being a .insurance domain, for auto insurance.

I don't trust opinion poll surveys because they are generally inaccurate and have small sample sizes. In Europe, certainly in Western Europe, the ccTLD dominates its local market. The .COM has gone legacy in most of these countries and usage and development in the ccTLDs numerically outstrips .COM usage and development. The reason for this is simple: most business is local. That means that people are more likely to use a local ccTLD website because it has a higher level of trust and identifies the business as being local. The .COM has no such loyalty.

Regarding .com being considered more as US tld than international I don't know about any statistic, but I can tell you what business owners and customers with whom I interact are saying and I'm dealing with peoples from 7-8 european countries, so it's not something true for just an area.

The .COM is the de facto US ccTLD and most .COM registrations are on US hosters and registrars.

It's simple, go on the street and ask peoples with what they associate example.com and example.it, or more accurate something like amazon.com and amazon.it and you will notice the response.

When it comes to large brands, the TLD does not matter. People identify the brand not the TLD.

In reality it's exactly the same, they use .com for US market and cctld for the rest of them, so probably it's their fault as well, if you ask somebody in Europe what tld they will use if they want to buy from a company from US, over 90% will say .com, I don't think you will find to many(if any) who will say something about using .us

The .US ccTLD has been chronically undermarketed for years. It really should be at the 50 million registrations mark or higher. But that's a different subject.

Also, .com being controlled by US government and US laws doesn't help, it's a difference of views between EU an US, from data protection to laws, that the 90% of business owners will choose to be protected by Eu laws in contrast with US laws, so being protected by local governments it's another plus for using a cctld.

Most endusers really haven't a clue on data protection and privacy issues.

As far as I know in Australia is the same, the wast majority will use a com.au than a .com, excepting hotels and international companies.

In most countries with a strong ccTLD, there's a point where the number of registered ccTLD domain names exceeds the number of .COM domain names and after that point, the .COM plateaus. The high volume growth in that market generally switches to the ccTLD. The .COM domain names are still used for international commerce but the bulk of the .COM registrations in such a country are old registrations.

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

We are now down to about 20 million new TLDs from almost 30 million only six months ago (wow 9 million drops in six months). A portion of those were 1 cent to $1 promos but given the number of premium renewals on average new TLDs are probably not renewing at less than $10.

There are some more implosions on the way in new gTLDs that used heavy discounting to drive registrations. However, it is not all doom and gloom. Some of the new gTLDs that have higher than .COM registrations fees have good renewal figures. Some of the Chinese gTLDs are highly speculative in nature and they depend heavily on discounting for their domain name counts.There are a few gTLDs that have become quite problematic due to the use of discounting. Development and usage has declined dramatically in these gTLDs and the quality of sites in these gTLDs is affecting renewals.

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

What I find truly shocking is the lack of confidence in companies that have applied for their own strings. For example, Apple, Microsoft, still doing nothing with their corpTLDs. Then you have Canon, Barclays, hailed as success stories, yet they still have plenty of links to their .com or subdomains on their home page. Totally botched.

Remember the Domain Tasting issue pre 2010? That's the environment that most of these brand gTLDs were worried about. Thousands of brand name domain names were being tasted each day and it wasn't economically feasible for the brand owners to take action against all of them. So there was an artificial demand and a strong economic argument for a brand gTLD. But ICANN introduced a "restocking fee" for domain tasting based on the number of Add Grace Period domains deleted each month. If the registry tasted more than a particular percentage, the fee kicked in and almost overnight, high volume domain tasting was killed off. Unfortunately the brand owners were locked into the application process and while major threat to their brands had subsided, most of the proceeded but did not really do anything with their gTLD.

PS: remember what some NP members were saying when the first batch of nTLDs was released. "Give it 3-5 years and new extensions will be mainstream, they will be everywhere, it will be a landslide". Sometimes people overestimate the pace of change.

I am seeing some usage of new gTLDs in the surveys and a few of them are already showing similar levels of usage to non-core gTLDs. For early market gTLDs, that's quite good. However, a few of them are nowhere near such usage levels.

Regards...jmcc

 

[LovingLife]

I'm moving forward with the new gTLDS. Last month I had well over 3 million pageviews from sites using new gTLDS, this month is on track to double that. They rank well and people don't seem to be afraid to click on them when they show up in Google.

That is just my experience with these new names. Like I said before, I won't be paying a premium to get a .com for development, but I am still in the market to pick up decent .com and .org names for the right price.