Lots of extensions have pulled enough stunts that it hurt the entire space, especially with Domain investors who help these internal eco systems stay afloat with multiple registrations until they can grow organically.
The accelerated price hikes on extensions that are on life support, does not give the registrants confidence. We have to treat erealstste as such, you want to build your business on land that you think will increase in value as you build, and develop your business. Now with new gtlds it seems increasingly so that you are being squeezed by the local building authority with extra ordinary fees, so what do you do, get up, and move your business to a jurisdiction where fees are more neutral.
I’m not saying people can’t continue to make money in such extensions, but as they continue to change hands, delete, and drop, they are getting repriced as higher premiums, or reserved completely. If people are not developing, and marketing such extensions they will never even be known to exist which is what is happening now. Most domainers don’t know what extensions are live, how are consumers, or potential end users. As more people maybe tend to start off with a promo $4.99 gtld extension, the minute they gain funding, or traction, or access to their .com or equivalent they jump ship for the more secure brand. Google userbase.com who jumped ship from .dev, to .com the moment they were able to pay $25k for the .com when it became available within their budget.
Now when we go back and see where .info, and .biz premium name prices were in the past, and how hard they have fallen, I mean you can get one word .info, and .biz names for under $100, and these are short descriptive extensions, it’s not a good sign for the gtld sector. Now, I’m not saying smart domainers can’t make a profit in the sector, but the registries are choosing to be the domainers themselves, and most squeezing most of you out, so really the ones who are persistent keep finding a bit of profit within the cracks, but as they fill, most domainers will essentially be squeezed out of this space with high fees, and renewals, and lack of consumer demand as we have seen with the original OP, who is willing to probably pay 4-5x the .com renewal, but the greed of the registry will take essentially a $.30 cent cost, and refuse a $25-$30 annual revenue stream. As this person leaves the .best space, they have many options, and opinions they will share with others, and they will not help the space going forward, as their sentiment has turned negative.
Look at darling .xyz, and all those people who paid big money for some of those end user sales, and renewals, those valuations are down, and they are dropping registrations at a record rate. We are taking about a registry that had a $.10 cent registration promo, not sure if they had $.01 promo either; but I believe they did, and it didn’t help much down the road, the market is not accepting of it.
