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 ?

 

[Arca]

There is certainly not a re-seller decline. Have you been watching auctions on popular venues?
Almost every marginal .COM is going for mid $XXX+ now.

Brad

Do you think these price increases will sustain and continue to increase?

 

[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.

 

[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?

 

[promo]

Again with the "I know people that said"... "look at this press release and tell me its wrong" ... "when I talk to people".... "when I read data, I think its something else"..

Frankly I am also based in the EU and Kate is as well. We both have been in the industry for 10 years longer than you have and both have completely different views from yours on the market direction. We seen the alternatives crash and burn already. And back then we were saying exactly the same thing as we are today. .COM is king and nothing will change that in short to medium term.

You dont seem to base your theory on anything data based, you seem to base them on your feelings and press releases by people that want to sell stuff. Whereas mine is clearly based in economic theory and actual sales data. You come back here when you actually sold stuff and tell us about it. Until then its hopes and dreams.

 

[Willox Perez]

The abundance of new GTLDs just simply gives people more choices. But no matter how many choices they have when it comes to that category killer .Com they simply won't stand a chance.

Let's look at the movie industry and the fact that a big percentage of people now simply stream at home free movies instead of going to the movie theaters and paying for tickets. Even though this is happening and people have all these choices in regards to watching the movies, the movie theaters still make massive money on a yearly basis.

In this example the Movie theaters represents .Com and the alternative methods of live streaming movies online free or low cost represents the new GTLDs. No matter how cost effective the alternative methods are the Movie Theater experience rains supreme.

I know just crazy lol but it kind of makes sense in a way =-D

- Will

 

[dordomai]

Ha, of all people.

"90% of the EU business is done by small and medium companies, ngtlds could fit them perfectly."

So not their own cctld, not .com but new gtlds usually comprised of English words?

The small Italian companies you mentioned were all Italian words, besides the mediaset.

First of all for each nGTLD you can create a matching .com and vice-versa, we are talking about doubling the supply. If we take into account that .co and .net exist we are talking about increasing supply by 1/3. That is not as much as they claim it is. Hundreds of extensions sounds impressive while in reality most are very niche like .irish or .rodeo

Second, increasing the supply is not good for anyone so if prices of .com go down because of increased supply their prices will decline as well. They somehow think everything that hurts .com is good for them while in reality it just hurts domains and their sales as well. If the market could be really flooded and .com destroyed there wouldn't be any winners left, except for a few large registries and ICANN. Certainly not domainers.

In reality, thinking this is just a question of supply/demand is wrong.

Interesting that they claim we are ignorant about economics and business while they ignore basic economic principles that they should know but conveniently ignore because of their investments.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economicmoat.asp

The network effect can further fortify a company's economic moat by making its products valuable the more people use them. An example of a network effect is online marketplaces such as Amazon.com and eBay, which are widely popular among consumers because of the large quantity of people buying and selling various products through the platforms.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/firstmover.asp

First mover is a term that describes a certain competitive advantage a business obtains by virtue of being the first to bring a specific product or service to market. Among other things, being first typically enables a company to establish strong brand recognition and customer loyalty before other entrants to the market arise. Another advantage is the additional time a first mover business has to perfect or improve its product or service.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brand-loyalty.asp

Brand loyalty is a pattern of consumer behavior where consumers become committed to brands and make repeat purchases from the same brands over time. Loyal customers consistently purchase products from their preferred brands, regardless of convenience or price.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs.

There is a reason why Warren Buffet the world's greatest investor owns 12% of the .com registry.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VRSN/holders?p=VRSN

 

[garptrader]

Maybe you should check dngeek or crunchbase to see the list of companies receiving funding of millions every week and how many of them are using a ngtld, every week there are anything between 1 and 3-4 companies, so if you count in the last 12 months there are 100-200 companies using ngtlds and receiving funding of millions.

Most startups are not buying aftermarket domains and rarely aftermarket nTLDs. They generally choose very poor quality domains available for reg fee - despite the millions of funding they have available. I have said this numerous times - companies spend thousands and thousands of dollars to market their business' products and services and thousands and thousands or dollars on ordinary business expenditures which are just part of doing business. But when it comes to choosing how people will refer to their business, they just pick whatever they can find available for reg fee. Would they do that with the management team or office space?

 

[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

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[Josh R]

.Com is becoming more dominant... People that say otherwise are those without any decent .coms in their portfolio. (obviously they want to find reasons to bash the .com)

Alternatives like .Net are losing steam... Domains like .ME, .IO, .LY, have phases of being "fashionable" for startups, but they all end up buying the .com.

All these newbies trying to create a market for the gTLD's because they are the only domains that are easy to buy is just getting old... gTLDS failed.

Do your homework, work hard, and buy .com - It will continue to dominate... 99% of the people on NamePros will readily admit that if they were to start a real business, it would be on a .com domain...

 

[boker]

There is certainly not a re-seller decline. Have you been watching auctions on popular venues?
Almost every marginal .COM is going for mid $XXX+ now.

Brad

I think you're right, for resellers, these are highest acquisition prices in the last years, but when you check sedo, flippa, afternic, the average price is less than half of what it was a couple of years ago and also the number of sales are way down, where there are mostly end users involved. I don't blame only ngtlds, but it's all a chain reaction with multiple causes, but the fact it that end users sales are at a crosspoint...

 

[Impaler The Vlad]

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

YES...... domains rise and fall together.

 

[doc24]

There is certainly not a re-seller decline. Have you been watching auctions on popular venues?
Almost every marginal .COM is going for mid $XXX+ now.

Brad

Fact

 

[cipcip]

The value of the new gtld's will be seen in years, not 2-3-4 years, but 10-15.
.com has value because is the oldest one out there.

 

[lock]

We are in the business of speculation. Look at the extensions sold of popular keywords and see it was bought up in many extensions long before gtld. You need to have the best name plus gtld and you need to have it in an extension that others are going to buy also.

 

[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

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[dordomai]

Im not happy but it doesnt mean its not happening.

data?

 

[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]

Yes it is either ccTLD or .com but almost never nGTLD.

China is usually using .com, or .cn. Not much different than from the US. Not sure about Japan but I would guess it is like in China.

I don't think there is any part in the world where nGTLDs are popular.

At least in most european countries is like 85-90%cctld-10%com. I'm not saying that ngtld's are more popular than com or cctld's in any country, just that they are catching up...