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 ?

 

[boker]

@boker

Well the reason I am brokering .com is because I want to make money. If I did not want to make money, I would broker nGTLDs.

And no you have not left any links to prove anything. You counter actual data with .. "I spoke to someone that said"... "My feeling is that"... "In future probably it will be like this"..

7 years ago I wrote my masters thesis in international business management. The topic was the domain name aftermarket. I did primary data collection on consumer trust of TLD and keyword. Actual research with 200 people surveyed. The result was clear. Clear keywords based on the local ccTLD (I am based in Denmark) was first, .com was second in consumer trust.

So when I entered this market professionally I used that knowledge to select which names to pursue brokerage off.. And its not gTLDs and its not ccTLDs either. Why would I pursue a single national market when a global one exists with a clear preferred product?

You think you see where the market is heading. But you are wrong. I am not sure if you dont understand economic principles like market monopoly and consumer habits, but all of your thoughts are not based on data. Just what you think might be right. And we are telling you, with data at our backs, that you are wrong.

If you follow the threads you will notice all the link's that count. Also, probably the data collection from last year made by the australian company is wrong and your data collection from 7 years ago is the right one, of course. Also, I have something that a lot of domainers don't have, I'm involved in several online and offline businesses in 3 EU countries and all my friends, family partners are connected to european market, so let me believe my rough data collected directly from people I deal with in 2017, than believe some data from 7 years ago. Also, as I remember, you said yourself in another thread that you sell 90% to resellers, so I don't think that you can compare one with another.
Also the usage of .com in most european countries, where .com is used by 3-5% of the top local websites is also wrong, even do the same data is showed by all the big data collection companies, but if you have different data, then you should use that, maybe it's something that the rest of us don't have access to.
When I'm talking with 30-40 european business owners and they are all open to ngtls and a few of them owning some and they start building businesses with them, and you are saying that your data from 7 years ago it's saying that they don't know what they do, maybe I should tell them to retire and leave the businesses to somebody who want's to use your data.
Probably namebio is wrong as well, saying that aftermarket sales hit bottom or that for every 10 resellers sales there is only one end user sale.

 

[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.

 

[boker]

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.

What do you mean 'sold stuff'. I have 19 end users sales and over 300 resellers sales and because I'm not doing bulk sales like you, selling 500 domains at a time for a commission, now you act like you're the only one selling. So now, doing this for 10 years more than me for sure you're right, there's no way to get it wrong, this seems familiar. I have dealed with one guy being in stockmarket and investing in realestate from the 90's, and he was doing it the big way, with tens and hundreds of millions, you could not tell him anything because he was doing it for years and he was always right, but in 2007 when he lost everything you could not catch him to answer any question after that, seems familiar, no?
We have different life experiences and you, from behind a desk are trying to tell me how the business owners should act, when I'm dealing with them on a daily basis. Maybe you should redo your data from 7 year ago and try and ask some actual business owners about the ngtlds and he market, maybe it will change your mind. Also being so affected if anything goes wrong with .com, I understand why you are trying so much to convince everybody and yourself that everything will be ok, but maybe it will easier for you to make the step forward when it's happening.

 

[dordomai]

We have different life experiences and you, from behind a desk are trying to tell me how the business owners should act, when I'm dealing with them on a daily basis. Maybe you should redo your data from 7 year ago and try and ask some actual business owners about the ngtlds and he market, maybe it will change your mind. Also being so affected if anything goes wrong with .com, I understand why you are trying so much to convince everybody and yourself that everything will be ok, but maybe it will easier for you to make the step forward when it's happening.

personally I have never heard that people in the startup scene would be cheerleaders for the new extensions, some like .io though. if the startups are not interested others won't be either.

What experience do you have?

My impression was that your experience comes from selling matching .coms to ccTLD holders. This group as a whole won't be too interested in .coms

so this would not tell us much.

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

popcorn time. I was watching this thread with interest. Now I am watching for entertainment.
To OP my answer...yes

 

[obocar]

I doubt it.

 

[dordomai]

From what I have seen nGTLDs are NOT popular in the EU. I don't know why one would claim otherwise.

 

[boker]

From what I have seen nGTLDs are NOT popular in the EU. I don't know why one would claim otherwise.

Ok, let's make a simple test. You were saying that you are based in Italy. Try to spend a few hours of your time by meeting some business owners who are in any way connected to online, so that they have to use a tld( not florist or something like that) and ask them about ngtlds and if they could use one.

 

[obocar]

For majority of new gtld's, there is no way to affect .com. Mainly, they are more expensive than .com, either at reg time or at renewal. The new gtld's that I bought- i thought they were good because of the cheap reg fee. When the renwal fee is 2 to 3 times of the .com, I no longer see it as an investment but a liability. As a matter of fact, I don't like that new gtld lower their price just to get me to reg, only to jack up the price a year after. Because a lot of new gtld's do that, they take away trust and create fear. Uncertainty.

But there are always few gtld's that will do good.
They probably won't do anything to .com.

 

[boker]

For majority of new gtld's, there is no way to affect .com. Mainly, they are more expensive than .com, either at reg time or at renewal. The new gtld's that I bought- i thought they were good because of the cheap reg fee. When the renwal fee is 2 to 3 times of the .com, I no longer see it as an investment but a liability. As a matter of fact, I don't like that new gtld lower their price just to get me to reg, only to jack up the price a year after. Because a lot of new gtld's do that, they take away trust and create fear. Uncertainty.

But there are always few gtld's that will do good.
They probably won't do anything to .com.

You are viewing this as a domainer...nobody is saying that they are the best deal for a domainer, you should think as an end user, who doesn't matter if they pay 10$ in one year and 30-40$ in the next year. Also, there are companies who paid xxxxx for a ngtld when the com was for sale at low xxxx and parked or not revolving or even available, so that should say something about how end users are viewing them.

 

[obocar]

You are viewing this as a domainer...nobody is saying that they are the best deal for a domainer, you should think as an end user, who doesn't matter if they pay 10$ in one year and 30-40$ in the next year. Also, there are companies who paid xxxxx for a ngtlds when the com was for sale at low xxxx and parked or not revolving or even availbale, so that should say something about how end users are viewing them.

Don't you thinknthe end user of non .com will eventually come buy a .com. Then, good money for a the .com owner, hopefully a domainer.

No one knows, what is what makes sense to me.

I thought mobi would eventually rise. Now, no one cares about .mobi. Most consumers don't know what .mobi is.

 

[dordomai]

I thought mobi would eventually rise. Now, no one cares about .mobi. Most consumers don't know what .mobi is.

welcome to the future of nGTLDs.

 

[boker]

I don't think because I've stated earlier that there isn't any traffic leakage to .com, just if it was a developed website before. I own several .com's where the .cctld's are developed, some owned by big companies, with over 500 employees, but I don't have more than 10-20 unique visitors a months, in some cases they have less traffic than where there aren't any other tld's developed, so looks like the leakage is not true, maybe somebody has some traffic stats that could prove me wrong. Mobi is dead now and nothing will change it, exactly how info and biz will be soon and after that is like a very used car, that nobody want's it anymore.

 

[dordomai]

I don't think because I've stated earlier that there isn't any traffic leakage to .com, just if it was a developed website before. I own several .com's where the .cctld's are developed, some owned by big companies, with over 500 employees, but I don't have more than 10-20 unique visitors a months, in some cases they have less traffic than where there aren't any other tld's developed, so looks like the leakage is not true, maybe somebody has some traffic stats that could prove me wrong. Mobi is dead now and nothing will change it, exactly how info and biz will be soon and after that is like a very used car, that nobody want's it anymore.

There is a primary extension that consumers tend to use. In the US it is .com in Germany it is .de in Russia it is .ru, in China it is .com

If you have a business on an extension other than the primary extension, people will mistype and visit brand+primary extension instead of brand+weaker extension.

So what you say makes little sense if the business that is supposed to leak is on the stronger extension.

stronger will not leak much to weaker but weaker will leak to stronger. You have the weaker extension the one that is losing to the other and claim leakage does not exist.

Also how much traffic do these websites have? Even larger businesses can have little traffic depending on the website and business they have.

In my opinion your data is that you bought a few .coms that you wanted to sell to the ccTLD holder. The ccTLD holder wasn't interested since they already had the stronger URL.

Based on that and the fact that you didn't get any traffic you (wrongly) concluded that .com wasn't popular anymore, traffic leakage does not exist and then you drew the wrong conclusion thinking that somehow magically the not selling .com would result in major nGTLD sales.

Mobi is dead now and nothing will change it, exactly how info and biz will be soon and after that is like a very used car, that nobody want's it anymore.

some years back these were supposed to be the future of the internet. Why do you think the newly released will fare so much better? is .today so much better than .info? Is .porn so much better than .xxx? Is .video so much better than .tv?

 

[boker]

There is a primary extension that consumers tend to use. In the US it is .com in Germany it is .de in Russia it is .ru, in China it is .com

If you have a business on an extension other than the primary extension, people will mistype and visit brand+primary extension instead of brand+weaker extension.

So what you say makes little sense if the business that is supposed to leak is on the stronger extension.

stronger will not leak much to weaker but weaker will leak to stronger. You have the weaker extension the one that is losing to the other and claim leakage does not exist.

Also how much traffic do these websites have. Even larger businesses can have little traffic depending on the website and business they have.

In my opinion your data is that you bought a few .coms that you wanted to sell to the ccTLD holder. The ccTLD holder wasn't interested since they already had the stronger URL.

Based on that and the fact that you didn't get any traffic you (wrongly) concluded that .com wasn't popular anymore, traffic leakage does not exist and then you drew the wrong conclusion thinking that somehow magically the not selling .com would result in major nGTLD sales.

So, one of them is a bank in an African country and they have offices in 7 countries-using a cctld, one is a big transport company with hundreds of trucks and they use the hyphen exact match in .com, one is and import export company from Europe, using a cctld, one is company with multiple shops in US, using something like examplellc.com and or some others where I have example.com and they use example+ keyword, but the official name of the company is just example. Some other using com.au and I have the exact match .com so for not even one of them I can't see any extra traffic. The only example, I talked about it in another thread is pypi.org, where python.org build a new software using pypi, and because we could not agree on a price, they have started to build it on pypi.io...and was some traffic leakage of about 30 unique visitors per day, but compared with the traffic of python.org was just peanuts, and they came to pypi.org because everybody knew about python using org and the com is still parked and they said that they are not interested in .com

 

[dordomai]

So, one of them is a bank in an African country and they have offices in 7 countries-using a cctld, one is a big transport company with hundreds of trucks and they use the hyphen exact match in .com, one is and import export company from Europe, using a cctld, one is company with multiple shops in US, using something like examplellc.com and or some others where I have example.com and they use example+ keyword, but the official name of the company is just example. Some other using com.au and I have the exact match .com so for not even one of them I can't see any extra traffic. The only example, I talked about it in another thread is pypi.org, where python.org build a new software using pypi, and because we could not agree on a price, they have started to build it on pypi.io...and was some traffic leakage of about 30 unique visitors per day, but compared with the traffic of python.org was just peanuts, and they came to pypi.org because everybody knew about python using org and the com is still parked and they said they are not interested in .com

python is a non-profit project and they are on .org why would they want .com?

Is that why you think .com is dying?

 

[boker]

python is a non-profit project and they are on .org why would they want .com?

Is that why you think .com is dying?

No, I just gived you the only example where there was some traffic leakage, I've owned pypi.org and they build a new software on pypi.io, doesn't have anything to do with .com

 

[Dynadot]

I personally think com/net/org will always be king, if only because they have seniority. Though other extensions may take over w/in the top 10

Samuel L Dotson

 

[dordomai]

I personally think com/net/org will always be king, if only because they have seniority. Though other extensions may take over w/in the top 10

Samuel L Dotson

Dotson? Lol. I agree..

 

[Kate]

I think that somewhere in 3-5 years, 50% of the aftermarket sales will be done by gtlds, 30% of the sales by .com, and 20% of sales done by cctlds and some individual old legacy gtlds(.net, .org).

I think this is very optimistic.
There has to be a healthy primary market for a secondary market to take shape.
Ntld are already tanking, while .com and ccTLDs continue to grow.
So I can't see how the share of nTLDs in domain sales is going to increase any time soon. Maybe I am missing something.

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.

I am wondering where the traction will come from. Small businesses using nTLDs are not going to have much of an impact. nTLDs will be seen as some kind of .biz 2.0, ok for small fry but not desirable for serious projects.

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.

 

[boker]

I think this is very optimistic.
There has to be a healthy primary market for a secondary market to take shape.
Ntld are already tanking, while .com and ccTLDs continue to grow.
So I can't see how the share of nTLDs in domain sales is going to increase any time soon. Maybe I am missing something.

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.

I am wondering where the traction will come from. Small businesses using nTLDs are not going to have much of an impact. nTLDs will be seen as some kind of .biz 2.0, ok for small fry but not desirable for serious projects.

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 think that the best they can reach is somewhere around .club value or just marginally better and this just for the top 10% of them, but even so it's enough to create a critical base so that they will work for some small and medium companies and because around 90% of the EU business is done by small and medium companies, ngtlds could fit them perfectly.

Also, I think that it should be a difference between ngtlds and brand tlds, because the last one's will not be used by companies, mostly they are bought just for marketing and brand protection.

 

[JB Lions]

People who are commenting here and assuming that gTLDs or other extensions do not affect .com market have no idea about basic economics or how the markets work.

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.

 

[boker]

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.

Yes, but there were some italian based like .uno, 'srl and there are ngtlds which fit every big market and there are also the general one's like club, media, shop, online and others.

 

[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

 

[boker]

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

Yes, but probably this is valid more in US, for example in Ireland you can't find to many of them and even the one's that have survived are busier in weekend, not really during the week, so not really making massive money like before, and this apply in at least a few other EU countries. So, they have survived, like .com, but it's not the same like before and the alternatives are used as well more often.