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 ?

 

[Brands.International]

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

I think new gTLDs do not affect much high level .com names at the moment (1 word .com name with large business potential). They also do not affect names in LL and LLL .com form.

They start to affect prices of medium and low quality .com names, as buyers now have multitude of other options to choose from. When you have word1word2.com name where word2 exists in form of new gTLD extension, it happens that buyer will choose word1.word2 new gTLD name instead of paying a large premium to domainer holding the word1word2.com name. On the other side, it happens that later on, the buyer will also purchase .com version, just to be on safe side, in 2017. But not always, and it will be less and less in future imo. There are some companies which do not care anymore whether they hold or not .com version of their word1.word2 gTLD domain name (although .com domainers will also advise them that it is a necessity to buy such name, because of lost traffic, and millions of other reasons - which are some good arguments at the moment, but those arguments will also get weaker as time pass).

So if you have names like hotels*com or cars*com or set of LL or LLL .com names, you will be just fine.
If you have a weaker .com portfolio, I assume new gTLDs must really get on your nerves
For those with ccTLDs investment, new gTLDs are not big competition too (as most of the new gTLD extensions are in English)

 

[Alex Domain]

Long story short - .com is fighting a battle on a thousand fronts. And while .com is king and some think its untouchable... Its reputation and perceived value is being attacked by literally thousands of new choices/extensions for end users which will only distort and destabalize .coms value even further - like waves slowly withering away a boulder. Worse part is that .com's only counter-attack is general perceived value from the past- which will inevtiably change like everything else in life. Especially when you find out that some "hot shot" .com domains dont have merely as much traffic as they are runoured to have. I mean its 2017 - lets be honest - who is honestly making money off parking domains??!!!

There was a time when Napolean Bonapart would use aluminum silverware over precious metals because its value was perceived as more at that time. Boy have times changed and will continue to change!!!

Eventually the walls will come crumbling down for most type of .com assets - aside from 1-3L .coms and short premium one words. Just my opinion

 

[bmugford]

Long story short - .com is fighting a battle on a thousand fronts. And while .com is king and some think its untouchable... Its reputation and perceived value is being attacked by literally thousands of new choices/extensions for end users which will only distort and destabalize .coms value even further - like waves slowly withering away a boulder. Worse part is that .com's only counter-attack is general perceived value from the past- which will inevtiably change like everything else in life. Especially when you find out that some "hot shot" .com domains dont have merely as much traffic as they are runoured to have. I mean its 2017 - lets be honest - who is honestly making money off parking domains??!!!

There was a time when Napolean Bonapart would use aluminum silverware over precious metals because its value was perceived as more at that time. Boy have times changed and will continue to change!!!

Eventually the walls will come crumbling down for most type of .com assets - aside from 1-3L .coms and short premium one words. Just my opinion

I doubt it.

The truth is so far the new gTLD program has been a disaster that is currently losing registrations and has far under-performed expectations.

Lots of new gTLD proponents act like the future is going to change usage patterns, while at the same time all the young people are exposed to .COM used my popular sites daily - Facebook.com, Twitter.com, Google.com, Instagram.com, YouTube.com, and basically every other popular site.

As long as domains have value there is going to be value in popular terms, products, services, etc. followed by .COM.

Brad

 

[newshunter]

imo its more natural to talk about 'alt. gtlds' than 'new gtlds'. So how have alt gtlds done it the last year(s)?
Think new alt. gtlds will be considered a must have among end-users to the same extent dot travel has been considered a "must-have" in the travel-industry. I leave it to others to do the math.

 

[Kate]

Long story short - .com is fighting a battle on a thousand fronts. And while .com is king and some think its untouchable... Its reputation and perceived value is being attacked by literally thousands of new choices/extensions for end users which will only distort and destabalize .coms value even further - like waves slowly withering away a boulder.

So far the instability is in the nTLDs.
The past four years since nTLDs were introduced have been disappointing. Is the trend like to improve ? Why and how ? I think it could worsen. NTLDs are unwanted children trying to justify their existence. Consumers weren't asking for hundreds of arbitrary strings.

Worse part is that .com's only counter-attack is general perceived value from the past- which will inevtiably change like everything else in life.

Domain extensions are not mere technical identifiers, but they are brands too.
.com is a brand
ccTLDs are brands too, and they are also virtual flags, that command allegiance.
Thus, they are not easily interchanged.
But one day .com will disappear for sure. The DNS will probably be obsolete before nTLDs become mainstream. But I think the DNS can last for a few more decades, like phone numbers which are old technology too.

.com has enormous accumulated mass with 130 million regs. Even if end users decided to ditch .com and shift to new extensions, they would take decades to catch up.
Still, for many years .com has been losing ground to ccTLDs in terms of market share. In mature markets outside the US, the local extension is considered more relevant than .com. So how are non-.com gTLDs supposed to thrive in that kind of environment ? There is very little room left. But again, they are so late to the game...

Oh by the way. If you are wondering if gTLDs are affecting .com growth we can have a guess:

Source: http://www.registrarstats.com

 

[BaileyUK]

I think it is fair to 'acknowledge' that a fair amount of what I would call 'New-Domainer' Investment money is going into the new domain extensions. Which in-turn is probably having an effect on the resellers market for the middling type domains in the establish extensions. But for anyone to believe that end business users are suddenly going to wake-up and think hey lets run with one of these new domain extensions and burn our marketing budget on a wing and a prayer, I don't think so.
Lets not forget the domain market of old, came about because most businesses Didn't have a web presence in 1999 to lets say 2005/6/7 etc.. But, domainers (of old, yes like me) had bought up all the territory. in the belief that any decent business is going to want its web presence. You can't reinvent that 'Surge/Requirement/Need again today. Today we are all solely dependent on New business start-ups. Market department whims and budgets etc today sell to end-users. The market can never return to it's heyday, no matter what your wishful thinking may be.
To say .com and all that was out there before the new tlds - i.e., All the established web presence of literally millions of businesses (with an on line presence today) are at anytime going to awaken to these NEW domains is like saying every business is going to reinvent itself. Sure there's turnover and new presence everyday but, that's just a fraction of the opportunities of old And the opportunities, today they're simply Not there anymore for most of us.
end user sales today need to be in .com or the Country code and have an appeal and believe me even those aren't easy. I do wish the new domain extension holders well but this is not an ongoing market growth anymore - so to flood it with this fodder is simply the controlling authorities up-high trying to milk the last out of the whole domain system.

 

[Alex Domain]

So far the instability is in the nTLDs.
The past four years since nTLDs were introduced have been disappointing. Is the trend like to improve ? Why and how ? I think it could worsen. NTLDs are unwanted children trying to justify their existence. Consumers weren't asking for hundreds of arbitrary strings.


Domain extensions are not mere technical identifiers, but they are brands too.
.com is a brand
ccTLDs are brands too, and they are also virtual flags, that command allegiance.
Thus, they are not easily interchanged.
But one day .com will disappear for sure. The DNS will probably be obsolete before nTLDs become mainstream. But I think the DNS can last for a few more decades, like phone numbers which are old technology too.

.com has enormous accumulated mass with 130 million regs. Even if end users decided to ditch .com and shift to new extensions, they would take decades to catch up.
Still, for many years .com has been losing ground to ccTLDs in terms of market share. In mature markets outside the US, the local extension is considered more relevant than .com. So how are non-.com gTLDs supposed to thrive in that kind of environment ? There is very little room left. But again, they are so late to the game...

Oh by the way. If you are wondering if gTLDs are affecting .com growth we can have a guess:
Show attachment 70346
Source: http://www.registrarstats.com

You're thinking way too small.

Technology and the internet is growing exponentially!!!! Not to mention a growing global population thats tripled since 1980. And the fact that english continues to grow as the universal language, thus more ppl switching off cctlds. I even switched my company's website from cctld.

And instability is always normal for new products - and ntlds should be considered very very new.

I think some domainers have seriously failed at putting themselves in the end users shoes. We dont have to discuss extremes like .ninja taking the #1 spot for most registrations or that casino.com domain name will only be worth $5 someday.

We're talking about simple economics. You increase supply and demand goes down. However, with the exponential growth of the internet that new tld supply will get soaked much faster than u think. (Millenialls and gen z have a lot more say in this than u think btw) Truth is consumers DIDNT need this many extensions but regardless - many ntlds will thrive for future generations (.shop / .llc etc) and as those ntlds shed more light on new possibilities for consumers - this will 100% affect .com growth and values!!!!! There is no other answer to this question!!!!
The snowball effect has already started!!!

Theres an old saying in the restaurant business "even if the guy next door only sells free water hes gonna steal business from you"

 

[JB Lions]

The snowball effect has already started!!!

If you compare Oct 6, 2017, to Oct 6, 2016, less overall regs.

You increase supply and demand goes down.

You just gave a good reason new gtlds are a poor investment. So many out there, those that settle for second rate extensions, have many more second rate extensions to choose from.

 

[Alex Domain]

If you compare Oct 6, 2017, to Oct 6, 2016, less overall regs.

You just gave a good reason new gtlds are a poor investment. So many out there, those that settle for second rate extensions, have many more second rate extensions to choose from.

I'm not even talking about whether something is a good/poor investment. Im simply answering the question based on fundamentals. The more options people have to choose from the more it will take away from the .com monopoly.

...Even if you're unimpressed that each ntld doesnt have 10s of millions of regs- it doesnt mean its not slowly chipping away at .com's numbers and value

Dont forget casino.online sold for xs $200,000. Not casinoonline.com

For many great extensions like .shop / .auto their future values will highly depend on their reg fees which are exorbitant at the moment.

 

[JB Lions]

I'm not even talking about whether something is a good/poor investment. Im simply answering the question based on fundamentals. The more options people have to choose from the more it will take away from the .com monopoly.

...Even if you're unimpressed that each ntld doesnt have 10s of millions of regs- it doesnt mean its not slowly chipping away at .com's numbers and value

Dont forget casino.online sold for xs $200,000. Not casinoonline.com

For many great extensions like .shop / .auto their future values will highly depend on their reg fees which are exorbitant at the moment.

It chips away at other alternatives, .net, .co, .me, .info, other new gtlds etc. Not .com. There is .com, .org for where it makes sense, cctlds, then a whole slew of alternatives.

 

[ecalc]

... the internet is growing exponentially!!!!

Today's internet traffic growth rate is molasses compared to 1997-2002 which no surprise was the best time for one tld to establish dominance and the best time for investors to grab domain names. Current events are too little too late to make a dent in that.

Year Global Internet Traffic
1992 100 GB per day
1997 100 GB per hour
2002 100 GB per second
2007 2,000 GB per second
2016 26,600 GB per second
2021 105,800 GB per second
Source: Cisco VNI, 2017.

Ditto JB's snowball assessment ...

 

[platey]

I don't have time now, but in one of the next days I could make a selection of names sold 5-7-10 years ago and which are for sale now or they were sold lately again, the prices are down even by 90% in some cases, I would like to see, if there are, some premium .com that have sold a few years ago for a certain amount and which were resold again in the last year or so higher, I don't think you could find even 5 examples. The first affected are truly the lower end value of com's, but it's like a chain reaction: the buyers of low cost com's are going to ngtlds, because of this, the prices of average 1k-3k are down, because it's less competition, to much inventory and multiple choices and it's going like this all the way up. My vision is that .com will always be the king, but I think it will drop in value until it will reach around 30% of the top prices from some years ago, 50% of the 1k or so ngtld will not survive(something like mobi), 25% will be average(like info-biz now) and 25% will do good, some will replace a part of the mid value .com's. Probably you can still find some high end sales for certain names, but these sales will not be a norm, more some isolate examples. Also, we have the crypto currencies market, parking and online ads value going down, alternative investments. The true is that around 60% of unicorn companies are still choosing .com for now, but you should consider that a few years ago 90% of them were choosing com and also the unicorn companies represent less than 1% of the total number of companies. 99% of the 6k startups born every day will afford a low cost brandable .com or a catchy ngtld, so all the statistics about what extension are using the companies raising millions/billions are not so important for 90% of the rest of us.

Even the best domain is only as good as the vision of its owner and when the vision for a Domain runs out the even the best domain is of no use irrespective of its residual value but just had a look at the 10 pages of. Coms prices sold today and there were some great. Coms sold for good prices

 

[Alex Domain]

It chips away at other alternatives, .net, .co, .me, .info, other new gtlds etc. Not .com. There is .com, .org for where it makes sense, cctlds, then a whole slew of alternatives.

We're not talking about 10-20 new extensions that entered the market... we're talking about 1000+

There are plenty of billion dollar companies without .com and many more to come now with the new extensions- especially those with 2 words in them...the brands that best utilizes extensions like .group .management .agency and .technology.

 

[JB Lions]

We're not talking about 10-20 new extensions that entered the market... we're talking about 1000+

There are plenty of billion dollar companies without .com and many more to come now with the new extensions- especially those with 2 words in them...the brands that best utilizes extensions like .group .management .agency and .technology.

That makes it even worse. .com has 6 times the amount of regs than all the new ones combined and still growing, while the new gltds have been going in the opposite direction.

"There are plenty of billion dollar companies without .com and many more to come now with the new extensions"

Really? Give me a list of billion dollar companies that don't have a .com (they might go with their cctld). And you say more to come, like new businesses, startups etc? The ones that pick .ai over all the new gtlds combined? The ones where they're only picking new gtlds about 2% of the time? The ones where half the regs are from China? And the ones that do try to develop on a new gtld, there is going to be a .com owner always sitting there with the same keywords. Do you eventually pay them?

 

[dordomai]

We're not talking about 10-20 new extensions that entered the market... we're talking about 1000+

There are plenty of billion dollar companies without .com and many more to come now with the new extensions- especially those with 2 words in them...the brands that best utilizes extensions like .group .management .agency and .technology.

It does not matter how many extensions you release beyond a certain point.

At best you will get to the same number of combos as .com if you create word.word domains.

Example:

xy.media = xymedia.com, online.games = onlinegames.com, diamond.pizza = diamondpizza.com etc. etc.

So for each nGTLD you can create you can also create a matching .com

What you can not do is to create "short" 2L-3L domains if you use nGTLDs. I mean you can but they will never be as good as abc, ab.com etc.

Thus we have doubled the supply of combos that make sense. It is not 1000 times it is 2 times.

So we have .com vs. the same number of nGTLD combos at best, in reality it is far less because not all possible extensions have been released.

You can have at best the same number of .com vs the same number of nGTLDs.

Also there is a real need for a default, gold standard extension that everyone knows. It does not matter how many extensions you release there needs to be one 'leader'. .com is that leader simply because it was there first and everyone knows it.

It is too late to change this and there is no real need for change.

People will say change is inevitable and they are right. Nothing will last forever and one day .com will not be used. It is just that the change will not come from nGTLDs but something else that we don't know about yet.

 

[dordomai]

That makes it even worse. .com has 6 times the amount of regs than all the new ones combined and still growing, while the new gltds have been going in the opposite direction.

"There are plenty of billion dollar companies without .com and many more to come now with the new extensions"

Really? Give me a list of billion dollar companies that don't have a .com (they might go with their cctld). And you say more to come, like new businesses, startups etc? The ones that pick .ai over all the new gtlds combined? The ones where they're only picking new gtlds about 2% of the time? The ones where half the regs are from China? And the ones that do try to develop on a new gtld, there is going to be a .com owner always sitting there with the same keywords. Do you eventually pay them?

it's been 4 years and we have a few companies using them. We had companies use .net, .info and .co before. In the grand scheme of things I don't see much change. nGTLDs are more like a cheap alternative(often not cheap in reality) when you can not get the .com

How many years before companies think they are the first choice? Why would they ever think they are the first choice?

- so to flood it with this fodder is simply the controlling authorities up-high trying to milk the last out of the whole domain system.

yes I think it is that they are just desperate to make some fast cash, a lot of hype and get as many businesses and domainers to invest in junk that has not much value. I mean it works to a certain extent at least for them.

I'm not even talking about whether something is a good/poor investment. Im simply answering the question based on fundamentals. The more options people have to choose from the more it will take away from the .com monopoly.

...Even if you're unimpressed that each ntld doesnt have 10s of millions of regs- it doesnt mean its not slowly chipping away at .com's numbers and value

Dont forget casino.online sold for xs $200,000. Not casinoonline.com

For many great extensions like .shop / .auto their future values will highly depend on their reg fees which are exorbitant at the moment.

.com number is growing, nGTLD registrations are shrinking. All one needs to know.

 

[Alex Domain]

That makes it even worse. .com has 6 times the amount of regs than all the new ones combined and still growing, while the new gltds have been going in the opposite direction.

"There are plenty of billion dollar companies without .com and many more to come now with the new extensions"

Really? Give me a list of billion dollar companies that don't have a .com (they might go with their cctld). And you say more to come, like new businesses, startups etc? The ones that pick .ai over all the new gtlds combined? The ones where they're only picking new gtlds about 2% of the time? The ones where half the regs are from China? And the ones that do try to develop on a new gtld, there is going to be a .com owner always sitting there with the same keywords. Do you eventually pay them?

Im personally on the other side of the spectrum. For instance, I have a lot of [keyword]storage.com domains... and im scared i wont ever sell them now that .storage is here......and in all honesty why would any new storage company want to to purchase the equivalent .com - do you honestly think the .com will help their marketing? Honestly doubt it. Brand security? Seriously?

Twitch.tv bought the .com for the leaked traffic - but this is an exception because "twitch" is a simple one word brandable without many companies using it in their title. What about all the companies using common nouns/verbs - like cloud, gold, seo etc. Are they all supposed to fight over the same .com? They used to and it drove up values but now is a different era...

Twitch.com redirects to the .tv - because end users dont just want a status symbol - they want to convey their brand. Thats also why they didnt pay much for the .com seeeeeee having alternatives DOES AFFECT .com values. Its called leverage in negotations

As for billion dollar companies not using .com - there is a massssssive list. Any its predominantly on the back of big commercial/ industrial companies and trading houses worldwide that dont rely on internet traffic for business (Meglobal.biz) but are too global to use cctld.

There are billion dollar hedge funds and finance companies that are switching to .management or .capital.

There are sooooooo many extensions that simply better suit some companies' online presence than .com

Im not happy but it doesnt mean its not happening.

 

[dordomai]

Im not happy but it doesnt mean its not happening.

data?

 

[Alex Domain]

 

[Alex Domain]

data?

Data? How bout the number of rightside/donuts registrations? Ummm whether they are down or not... and whether people want to admit or not - those registrations took value and growth away from .com

crm.supply is a dutch company with the website also being in the dutch language even though their domain is english and not using the .nl - but guess what... they took advantage of a high value globally recognized keyword (which would cost millions $$ in the .com) on an underrated extension that complimented it nicely and build a serious multi-million dollar brand/service.

 

[dordomai]

Data? How bout the number of rightside/donuts registrations? Ummm whether they are down or not... and whether people want to admit or not - those registrations took value and growth away from .com

crm.supply is a dutch company with the website also being in the dutch language even though their domain is english and not using the .nl - but guess what... they took advantage of a high value globally recognized keyword (which would cost millions $$ in the .com) on an underrated extension that complimented it nicely and build a serious multi-million dollar brand/service.

they took away value? How much ? 0.1% 1%, 10% ?

The data here shows that they are dying not thriving. No real adoption by startups, no significant % of Alexa Top 1 M, no positive net growth in the past months (.com is still growing!)

https://namestat.org/s/newgtld-summary
https://www.namepros.com/blog/domain-data-ycombinator-startups-love-com.973209/

also being in the dutch language even though their domain is english and not using the .nl - but guess what... they took advantage of a high value globally recognized keyword (which would cost millions $$ in the .com)

So if a domain contains a keyword it is automatically valuable? like sexcrm.com is a great domain because it has a million dollar keyword in it?

I think a keyword doesn't make a domain automatically valuable, anyone can have a domain with 'supply' in it even under .com

I think it is simply a poor naming choice not the result of good decision making, happens all the time.

There are billion dollar hedge funds and finance companies that are switching to .management or .capital.

One of the recent switches I remember was from monkey.capital to monkey.com. as soon as they could afford it and a suitable name was available, they left. One does hardly ever see the reverse of it. What does this tell us?

Im personally on the other side of the spectrum. For instance, I have a lot of [keyword]storage.com domains... and im scared i wont ever sell them now that .storage is here......and in all honesty why would any new storage company want to to purchase the equivalent .com - do you honestly think the .com will help their marketing?

Yes because people will remember the domain and emails won't end up in spam filters.
Over 9 out of 10 companies will want a .com over a storage for their main web presence.
.storage is an unknown extension and word+storage.com works very well.

 

[boker]

It chips away at other alternatives, .net, .co, .me, .info, other new gtlds etc. Not .com. There is .com, .org for where it makes sense, cctlds, then a whole slew of alternatives.

Check these out: shop.link; star.house; sherpa.group; token.sale; learn.wine; op.media, all xxxxx sales (and others over 1500 xxxx sales, over 200 xxxxx sales and other xxxxxx sales like these) where the equivalent .com stays parked, or a blog or not revolving at all....if you still think that they are not affecting sales, you should think about it. I've hand regged com where the equivalent ngtld was used by companies with xx or xxx employees...that should say something as well.

 

[dordomai]

Check these out: shop.link; star.house; sherpa.group; token.sale; learn.wine; op.media, all xxxxx sales (and others over 1500 xxxx sales, over 200 xxxxx sales and other xxxxxx sales like these) where the equivalent .com stays parked, or a blog or not revolving at all....if you still think that they are not affecting sales, you should think about it. I've hand regged com where the equivalent ngtld was used by companies with xx or xxx employees...that should say something as well.

these comparisons are sooooo misleading, last month we had over 4.5k .com sales reported vs. only 37(!) nGTLD sales.

37 sales a month is nothing and many of these of course registry sales at least half of them.

Something like 18 domainer sales a month. Investors must be going broke from lack of sales.

 

[boker]

these comparisons are sooooo misleading, last month we had over 4.5k .com sales reported vs. only 37(!) nGTLD sales.

37 sales a month is nothing and many of these of course registry sales at least half of them.

Something like 18 domainer sales a month. Investors must be going broke from lack of sales.

The last month is misleading as well...in last two years, there were over 3k ngtld sales, still far away from .com, but eating a lot of .com's pie...80% of my sales are still com, but it's affecting my com sales and it's not just me. Also, like everybody, I have friends connected to offline and online small businesses, and they are all intrigued by the ngtlds, they are catchy, something new...I'm not saying that it will change overnight, but together with crypto currencies , stock markets and anything else, will affect sales and it will lower the ROI. Probably it will still take around 5 years for ngtlds to develop properly, but it will in time. It was the same in the late 90's for com, when it took years to reach maximum prices.

 

[dordomai]

The last month is misleading as well...in last two years, there were over 3k ngtld sales, still far away from .com, but eating a lot of .com's pie...80% of my sales are still com, but it's affecting my com sales and it's not just me. Also, like everybody, I have friends connected to offline and online small businesses, and they are all intrigued by the ngtlds, they are catchy, something new...I'm not saying that it will change overnight, but together with crypto currencies , stock markets and anything else, will affect sales and it will lower the ROI. Probably it will still take around 5 years for ngtlds to develop properly, but it will in time. It was the same in the late 90's for com, when it took years to reach maximum prices.

.com prices went up very quickly once there was ecommerce activity.

People attribute flucuations in .com value and prices entirely to nGTLDs (wishful thinking). .com sales and prices have always fluctuated. In reality after the Chinese bubble a downtrend was to be expected.

nGTLD sales are trending down as you would expect looking at .mobi or .xxx history.

People do not want nGTLDs as a first option, they only want them if they can't get a .com and if they are cheap and even then most would choose a .io or a crappy .com before they use a nGTLD.

Check these out: shop.link; star.house; sherpa.group; token.sale; learn.wine; op.media,

All parked and one redirects to a .net. The only developed one is op.media

Only 1 single example of development.