.Art Domains

[atinc]

What are the .Art domains registered by namePros members here?

 

[1Darko]

What a scam the .art registry has going. They let customers, like me, preregister names at like $11.99 or something, at AlpNames, then today I got an email that the name was, "mis-priced" and now was re-priced at premium. So in effect, they took every name that someone was interested in, and jacked the price up to premium! They used customer interest as a gauge of what to hold back as premium, under the guise of a paid pre-registration program! Total BS!!

Someone sometime said: It's all rigged! hehe

 

[1Darko]

Someone sometime said: It's all rigged! hehe

You have to play it like poker, don't show your cards!

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

What are the .art domains registered by namePros members here?

ARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTARTART.ART
artartartartartartartartartartartartartartartartartartartartart.art

- highest number of 'art' a domain name can consist of
- 63 characters, highest number of characters a domain name can consist of
- ends with the TLD .art at the same time

No .art domain contains more 'art'.
It's the 'highest art' of all time.

+

HIGHEST.ART
highest.art

 

[Rhythm8]

And I thought I was crazy

 

[slader23]

The majority of end users aren't interested in the kind of keywords that Domainers are. They want their real name, their trading name and many of those are non-premium. I should know, as I've been browsing through the .art zone file daily for the past few weeks.

What are low registration numbers? There's a thread on DomainNameWire regarding .ART where Drew doesn't believe that .ART will achieve 5,000 registrations in one year. Clearly, he hadn't been studying the data which suggested at least 8,000 domains excluding General Availability and without all the major Registrars on board. With General Availability, there was a recorded 1,355 domains registered within just a few minutes of launch. We'll all know more tomorrow when the zone files are published, so appears to be a very healthy take on G.A. Day #1 and I wouldn't be surprised if the zone expands from 2.3k to 4k registrations in 24 hours. It'll certainly smash the scepticism of only 5k registrations in 12 months.

You talk about greed but my observations are that many here are middle men, resellers, taking a cut of a mark-up in pricing. I'm confused by how you define greed. Ulvi Kasimov (.ARTs founder/investor) is rumoured to have invested $25M into .ART - that's quite some investment, vision and risk on his part. I would have thought that greed is about taking than giving. He's given quite a lot and as a businessman, will expect a return on that investment.



With any start-up, there's going to be a learning curve and only natural that some of those will have under-estimated their business model where don't 50% of all start-ups normally fail within 2 years? The domain industry shouldn't be any different. But will the extension and namespace have failed? Very unlikely, as they'll just get absorbed into another Registry's more successful business model. No one size fits all.




Basic supply and demand. I have read quite a few threads recently to claims of nTLDs failing when they're barely out of the gates. Most of that negativity seems to stem from the fact of disgruntled Domainers not being able to register the premium names they hoped to gain at bargain basement $20-$30 prices. The reality is that the game is forever changing, therefore others need to adapt too, else you're going to be left standing. As I've already touched upon, the investors are already rich - the namespace will, over time, simply make them richer and be great business for those who not only invest their money but their precious time too and put their purchases to good use.

If you want quality domains, then yes, expect to pay 4 figures. If you're not prepared to spend 4 figures, then it's perhaps worth considering a different venture. nTLD's are not .coms, so attitudes and approach need to change. Most established artists can sell a piece of artwork for £2,000. I know that by just selling one of mine, will cover a relevant killer category keyword for that artwork so what's the problem?

In terms of survey, then as an artist, I don't have a problem with the pricing having understood .ART's approach to the marketplace, their revision in pricing structure for various phases of registrations and their pro-active approach to creating a microcosm of relevant content and early adopter partnerships, where owning a .ART domain leaves no ambiguity of what you're expecting to find.

I would write more but I'm actually trying to build two .art websites at the same time (despite it being 3am) than just sitting on them...

Do you work for .art? Just curious. I'm not being negative those are just the facts. Supply and demand will dictate the success of any business and without a clear understanding of how pricing affects consumer sentiment it doesn't matter how much you invest, you are going to lose money.


Rather than assume sentiment, surveying the preferences of consumers will give a clear picture of how things should be priced. This fixation on "premium" is ridiculous. Survey your target market and see how much they're willing to pay for something deemed premium and class them based on the lower and upper limit of the range you have given(ex would you be willing to pay $50-$ 500? $100-1000?, $200-2000? etc). Knowing how much the average person is willing to pay is infinitely more important than knowing how valuable something is. Unless your established and well known, using an algorithm to price your domain names in an untested domain extension is a bad business move and bad for PR as well. In this specific business example big data is being used the wrong way, in fact it is completely sub-optimal.

The average artist will be unable to afford A SINGLE ENGLISH WORD....that is absolutely ridiculous. I have no idea who wrote the business model for .art but damn.....it's probably the worst one I've ever seen.

You'll probably have a few egotistical artists that make more money than average praising the extension and showing off their domains but that does nothing to prove the viability of the business model. Retention rates and registration volume will either make or break .ART and the current market reaction is not good. Artists were complaining when preregistration or "Early Access" cost them 757% more than the average price of a domain. "3.5 Million" premiums....I wonder how the art community will react to that? My guess is not good.

I don't think to .ART will last. Not because it isn't a good extension...it is a very good one but I believe the ineptitude of the management in addition to their poor understanding of consumer sentiment which is reflected in the pricing model will prove to be detrimental to the survival of the extension.

Kind of sad in a way...an extension meant for artists is actually pricing out the majority of artists....

 

[BrandingModel.com]

Huge waste of investment choosing .Art IMO

 

[canvasboutique]

I'll read replies in a minute but I've just downloaded the zone file for .ART and there were 2,720 registrations yesterday. My script could miss one or two but that's the number that it's just spewed out to me. More than doubling the entire zone file in one day.

I'm going to spend a little while seeing what people have registered than just guessing...

 

[canvasboutique]

Do you work for .art? Just curious. I'm not being negative those are just the facts.

No. They are they facts. I'm just very informed, skilled and knowledgeable at what I do.

Rather than assume sentiment, surveying the preferences of consumers will give a clear picture of how things should be priced. This fixation on "premium" is ridiculous.

There probably needs to be another word adopted than "premium", to reflect the spread of what's considered premium. It currently appears to be "anything other than the base flate registration fee". (my own words)

The average artist will be unable to afford A SINGLE ENGLISH WORD....that is absolutely ridiculous. I have no idea who wrote the business model for .art but damn.....it's probably the worst one I've ever seen.

I knew that type of comment would come, which I why I already posted 2 domain names registered in G.A. using...wait for it...a SINGLE ENGLISH WORD. Just because someone's vocabulary doesn't extend to such words doesn't mean they're discounted.

I don't think to .ART will last. Not because it isn't a good extension...it is a very good one but I believe the ineptitude of the management in addition to their poor understanding of consumer sentiment which is reflected in the pricing model will prove to be detrimental to the survival of the extension.

Just an opinion. I've been posting facts.

 

[dordomai]

I think that Frank Schilling was correct when he said more registries would adopt his new pricing model.

Technically .art don't have a single high renewal price for all their domains but with 3.5 million premiums probably mostly in the high $xx-low xxx range they are more less following his pricing formula. They could simply have set all domains to a default price instead of using a fancy model to price them. don't think it would have made much of a difference.

The .xyz registry are doing the same now.

Daniel Negari CEO of XYZ, announced that it has acquired it’s 10th new gTLD .Storage.

The new gTLD .Storage was applied for by Self Storage Company, LLC to be operated as a restricted domain extension. Self Storage Company, LLC won the domain name in a private auction against Donuts who also applied for the extension.

According to Mr Negari domain names will be price at $500 wholesale for registrations and renewals and virtually every domain name will be available in including single letters, double letters, Geo domains, as well as premium keywords. Super premium keywords previously priced for $100,000.

high xx - to mid xxx could be the sweet spot for niche TLDs. A niche TLD will struggle to accumulate many registrations, for TM holders it will still be a negligible amount and some businesses might be willing to pay annuals premiums in the range.

even if they have just 5000 regs at $300 they would be making $1.5 million/year.

it will not help with awareness and won't help make the TLD popular but it would create an income stream for the registry.

 

[canvasboutique]

End users are prepared to pay for what they want and need. The prices are likely a deterrent to Domainers.

I'll give an example. Canvas.Art was priced just over £5k+VAT. That was snapped up during PAP by an end user. Spread over 10 years with low renewals (total investment ~£6.5k) - that's a cracking deal at ~£650/year for a big premium name.

I could be mistaken but my observations are that people here want to buy premium nTLDs at $20 and sell them (realistically) for $2k-$5k, although I have seen some crazy asking prices of $50k+. You believe that 4 figure value is right to you that domain names are "worth" that much but you're not prepared to buy them yourself for anywhere near that price, where I believe that a registry thinks no different in terms of the value - it's just that you're either going to have to accept lower profit margins, take higher risk, make real investments, lose liquidity or find another market.

But where's the real value? Content is and always will be king.

End users will pay 4 figures for a solid single keyword, 5 figures for those commercial businesses, where money is no obstacle. My 10 year old daughter can afford $XX registrations and I would hope many of you aren't competing with her but upping your game. But most end users don't care when they can simply register [firstname][lastname].art or [tradingname].art for $15

 

[canvasboutique]

Just posted at .ART's Twitter :

During the first 24 hours, over 3’000 domain names were purchased. Of those about 95% were standard, e.g., personal names of people and organizations, while the rest belonged to the .ART inventory of word and word combinations. While the personal names are mostly sold at standard prices, starting from $15, the .ART inventory names are valued individually by a proprietary mathematical “big data” algorithm. This totaled over $150’000 amount of sales in first 24 hours.

.ART closed its Preferred Access Period with over 300 live sites. The starting price has been $300 and there were about 2500 registrations for a total retail volume of sales over $600’000. Nearly half of these were from the .ART inventory. Among them, .ART has also gifted approximately 500 domain names to art school students and not-for-profit cultural institutions.

So, that's ~$750,000 in sales by the end of the first day of General Availability beating targets that Domainers said the Registry couldn't achieve in 12 months

 

[atinc]

Just posted at .ART's Twitter :



So, that's ~$750,000 in sales by the end of the first day of General Availability beating targets that Domainers said the Registry couldn't achieve in 12 months

Do you know how much the registry invested for .art?

 

[canvasboutique]

Do you know how much the registry invested for .art?

Only what's been published in various articles. I'm pretty sure that I posted it previously in this thread. $25M?
And yes, that's a lot to recoup, which makes me laugh when people suggest that a Registry is greedy, when it's domainers looking to profit from the mark-up from a Registry's heavy investment.

 

[atinc]

Only what's been published in various articles. I'm pretty sure that I posted it previously in this thread. $25M?
And yes, that's a lot to recoup, which makes me laugh when people suggest that a Registry is greedy, when it's domainers looking to profit from the mark-up from a Registry's heavy investment.

Well they could have made more than a million dollar at the first day if they didn`t reserve too many names.
Make a godaddy search, which I believe the leader as a domain provider, there are no domains available than typos for .art
If you want to make money you need to let domainers make money too. You can`t have the whole piece of the cake. You need to share and grow with domainers...If not I let you what will happen if this goes like this.
Waste of money, waste of time waste of energy.

 

[Recons.Com]

.art is great extension, imo.

a) any city/town etc. name makes great sense with .art
b) lots of art schools, teachers and just artists, including photographers, painters etc.

That all adds up to millions of potential end users.

And it is only 3 letters, as all gtlds should be...

 

[canvasboutique]

Well they could have made more than a million dollar at the first day if they didn`t reserve too many names.
Make a godaddy search, which I believe the leader as a domain provider, there are no domains available than typos for .art
If you want to make money you need to let domainers make money too. You can`t have the whole piece of the cake. You need to share and grow with domainers...If not I let you what will happen if this goes like this.
Waste of money, waste of time waste of energy.

Agreed, they could have potentially made more but I'm not privy to their business model, where I'm pretty sure they're in it for the long term than short term where cheaper prices favour Domainers, not a Registry or Registrar or end users. The Press release I read and posted earlier suggests (as I previously mentioned but wasn't aware of the stats and couldn't be bothered to filter real names out of the zone files) that 95% of end users just want their name.

It's probably worth saying that I already knew about Godaddy. They aren't presently offering premium names, only standard registrations. I registered ContinuousLine with GD yesterday for just over £10. It's more than suitable for the job.

Why do you have to have Domainers make money? You don't explain. The middle men are the Registrars.
How many middle men do there need to be? Why can't end users just buy directly from a Registrar? I've already demonstrated that end users are and have paid premium asking prices. You should have bought canvas.art for $6k and flip for $9k (it's going to hurt wallets and your liquidity but there's profit right there), as I'm confident that was one that would likely be listed at retail for 5 figures. There's $3k profit for being a bit bold instead of hoping to get lucky with $20. I'm a strong believer that money talks and b/s walks.

If a Registry wants to make money then they need to form (real world) partnerships, hit sales targets with their premiums (and if .ART have over-priced then I'm sure it's only a matter of time before they vary prices) and have a steady flow of standard registrations - only they'll know their business where we can only second guess and with little to no experience of what it takes to run a Registry. It's all too easy to sit back and criticise. Indeed, I called Instra a few weeks ago to see if there was any "wiggle room" on some premium pricing - of course there is! They increase their visibility and profits by ensuring that end users get the domains they want/need, so that the namespace is not only valued but has relevant content. It's that active content that will ensure a reliable source of income and of mutual benefit.

A Registry predominantly full of parked pages and inflated asking prices makes absolutely no sense to me...and a real waste, defeating the purpose of a domain name and creating a barrier to entry.

 

[canvasboutique]

.art is great extension, imo.

a) any city/town etc. name makes great sense with .art
b) lots of art schools, teachers and just artists, including photographers, painters etc.

That all adds up to millions of potential end users.

And it is only 3 letters, as all gtlds should be...

I've been writing to a fellow artist who says that his friend owns two galleries near New York - I won't list the County, respecting his privacy. Anyway, his friend wanted to buy [CountyName].art for $300 but deliberated over making that commitment. In the end, he decided to buy it only to discover someone else had registered it. Typical. As I live in the UK, I've previously ran a search on major UK Cities and yes...they're all premiums, where you're looking at $xxx - $x,xxx pricing. Many here will disagree but I believe that's about right for cities and counties, where galleries of varying sizes, photographers and artists are scattered all around and can afford to pay for those prices.

Where there's extension competition in the form of others like .design. I would be hard pushed to think of any that have better recognition and reach than .art.

 

[atinc]

Why do you have to have Domainers make money? You don't explain.

Because domainers holding way more domains than the end users.
Because domainers are the real customers of registries.
Because losing domainers and only targeting end users will destroy all the plans you have for this beautiful extension.

 

[Recons.Com]

premium pricing is mostly still an idiotic decision...

I can understand 1000-5000 that registry wants to reserve, but assigning premium to every small city, county and a rare name is plainly stupid.

Registry should strive for wide adoption and those drops of renewals for mass registrations will be much more than few premium sales will provide ever.

 

[canvasboutique]

Because domainers holding way more domains than the end users.
Because domainers are the real customers of registries.
Because losing domainers and only targeting end users will destroy all the plans you have for this beautiful extension.

Thanks for the reply. It's good to know that I'm not the real customer here.

I don't mean to be rude and I won't list examples from the .ART zone file from yesterday (so I'm not criticising any particular registrant) but I can recognize most domainers purchases a mile away. Desperation when substituting numbers for letter. eg: micr0soft or affixing common words (online, the, my etc) to category terms. It's no wonder the total number for ALL nTLD registrations have taken a temporary dip from 29.3M to 27.7M as a result of renewals and all the junk that's been bought in the past. End users may also have junk names but they're using and keeping them.

Domainers have absolutely no impact on my plans or I imagine the plans of others who simply...don't get it. Indeed, circumventing them saves a whole lot of headaches and inflated pricing. I sense the disgruntlement in this thread is because domainers are being pushed out.

 

[slader23]

Thanks for the reply. It's good to know that I'm not the real customer here.

I don't mean to be rude and I won't list examples from the .ART zone file from yesterday (so I'm not criticising any particular registrant) but I can recognize most domainers purchases a mile away. Desperation when substituting numbers for letter. eg: micr0soft or affixing common words (online, the, my etc) to category terms. It's no wonder the total number for ALL nTLD registrations have taken a temporary dip from 29.3M to 27.7M as a result of renewals and all the junk that's been bought in the past. End users may also have junk names but they're using and keeping them.

Domainers have absolutely no impact on my plans or I imagine the plans of others who simply...don't get it. Indeed, circumventing them saves a whole lot of headaches and inflated pricing. I sense the disgruntlement in this thread is because domainers are being pushed out.

This isn't disgruntlement, I see it for what it is. Circumventing domainers will not relieve any headaches, it'll just give you more headaches when registration volume stagnates and the majority of your target market is priced out. The guys that ran .broker and .trading tried the same thing and ended up having to slash prices across the board by 70%.

If your not a domainer, what are you doing on a domainers forum? You sure you don't work for .art, seems like your pretty knowledgeable about them. You've even said the same things on donainnamewire.com's article about them. Perhaps your a secret agent :D

http://domainnamewire.com/2017/04/27/art-will-3-5-million-premium-domain-names/

 

[Kate]

What a scam the .art registry has going. They let customers, like me, preregister names at like $11.99 or something, at AlpNames, then today I got an email that the name was, "mis-priced" and now was re-priced at premium. So in effect, they took every name that someone was interested in, and jacked the price up to premium! They used customer interest as a gauge of what to hold back as premium, under the guise of a paid pre-registration program! Total BS!!

Can you post the mail ? It's surprising this kind of stuff continues to happen years after nGTLDs went live.

 

[Recons.Com]

Wow! This registry is a cyber squatter at worst...

Just enter a popular first name or last name. It will show it as prem or taken and offer other "premiums" that are names of artists and I assume price is based on fame/popularity/searches on the name.

So they basically take someone's name and hold him hostage to pay according to his own personal popularity while the name should have no other legitimate use for anyone else...

 

[dgmweb]

I registered one today for a personal art project.

I did attempt to register landscape.art this morning, and Namecheap showed it as available for the $12.99 reg fee. I added it to cart but on checkout, the order failed with a "domain not available" message. I had a live chat with their support who told me it was reserved by the registry. If that's the case then it should not have shown "available".

Just a FYI if anyone runs into issues with that on NC. GoDaddy's search actually tells you the name is taken. I hope NC updates their search results to reflect the domain's true status.

 

[DNWon]

Can you post the mail ? It's surprising this kind of stuff continues to happen years after nGTLDs went live.

Below is the whole email. The new price for the domain is now $160 per year!

AlpNames Support Team <[email protected]>
To
[email protected]
May 10 at 10:01 AM


Your Request for Domain Name xxxxxxxx.art has failed.

Order Details
Order ID: 75967XXX
Domain Name: xxxxxxxx.art
No of Years: 1
Invoice Total: USD 14.39
Reason for Failure: Pricing mismatch
Support
For any support with respect to your relationship with us you can always contact us directly using the following Information.

Technical Support:
Tech Support URL: http://support.alpnames.com/scripts/inline_chat.php?cwid=53476674&email=

Sales Contact:
Email Address: [email protected]
Tel No.: +44.2031379683

Billing Contact:
Email Address: [email protected]
Tel No.: +44.2031379683

[email protected],
AlpNames Support Team