question .best premium question

[ArielT]

Hi,

In Junuary of 2019 I registered a .best domain at the promo price the registrar had at that time $10

Now when going to renew it it says it is premium at $83

I contacted the registrar and they told me that the registry had a promo at that time for premiums at that price of $10. Is it correct?

But I would be sure that the domain didn't have a premium tag when I searched for it

What do you think?

 

[Cyril.Best]

Hi everybody,

Sorry for the wait for my answer, and I want first to wish you all a happy new year 2020 and all the .Best for this amazing new decade!

You made last year so special for us that it is my greatest wish that this coming year be the Best for you.

So, let me please first start with the .Best « haters »

When I read : "It appears that all the "haters" were right after all."

I want to say that I am not shocked by these words as I can totally understand the pros vs the cons of the .Best and our social network strategy and one’s more, we/I don’t want to convince everybody here about our .Best strategy. So, no problem with that.

We always tried to be honest and 100% transparent about everything related to the .best even when it’s not positive or if we make errors. And we did and will do again for sure so I am here to help and correct them as I/we always did.

I am more embarrassed with wrong & negative information.

When you said for instance: "And Cyril seems to have disappeared. I am shocked!!!......Brad"

First, Brad I am sorry if I missed you during the holiday season but I always answer the threads or questions related to the .Best in Namepros.

Of course, I can probably do it better/faster, but I am the CEO of 4 companies in the world and we have a lot of things to do right now with THE.Best social network final round so I would say that the fastest way to reach me in case of problem-related to the .Best is to send me directly an email to [email protected] and I will take the necessary time for you to answer or clarify any bad point related to the .Best if exists.

I was there and will be there in Namepros to inform, explain, clarify or correct any point related to the .Best if needed.

So, now let’s start and go back with our price change transition.

About "legacy" domains

I have already explained and commented all this a lot in different threads before but in case you missed it or still don’t know, we didn’t create the .Best registry : We made the acquisition of the .Best registry in July 2018 in order to attach .Best domains with THE.Best social network : www.the.best

At the time of our .Best registry acquisition, we had less than 3K live domains, all sold and renewed since 2014 at the rate of $70 wholesale with a renewal rate up to 70% each year since 2014.

See : https://ntldstats.com/tld/best

Moreover, right after our .Best acquisition, we worked hard with our « legacy » registrars to convinced them to lower the .Best standard pricing for our new .Best domain registrants.

This hard-work enables us to find a .Best deal after the Namescon 2019 (end of January 2019) and we informed/notified all our .Best registrars on 5th Feb 2019 that :

- For any .best registered at standard rates on Feb 5, 2019 or later, the new renewal rate will be of $15 wholesale.

- For any .best registered earlier than that date (price change legal notification), the wholesale rate will remain at $70 = the value that the renewal for the TLD had been historically.

- The effective new price change should be effective on 5th August 2019 (as we had to respect a strict legal notice period of 6 months with our .Best Registry-Registrars contract)

So, the renewal price at the time you registered a .Best domain has never increase !

We only changed the status (not the renewal price) of the legacy domains (=domains registered before 5th feb 2019) in order to classify/identify the domains registered before 5th Feb 2019 for our registrars.

Means, that the renewal rate of .Best « legacy domain » is not higher than what you were informed at the time you registered each .Best domain!

About our .Best pricing strategy

We are the only registry that decreased its wholesale standard registration and renewal rates by about 78% on 2019 !

That was a promise that we made 5th Feb 2019 after informing all our .Best registrars and that became effective in August 2019 with even a fair retro-discount of 6 months for all our registrants that had registered a .Best domains between 5th Feb 2019 and 5th August 2019 (time where the renewal price was still at $70 wholesale with all our .Best registrars)

Means that in a time when most prices edged up :

- Uniregistry increased their prices : https://news.gandi.net/en/2017/09/uniregistry-price-increase/

- .CLUB announces three years of price increases : http://domainincite.com/23829-club-announces-three-years-of-price-increases

- Donuts increased their price : https://www.eurodns.com/blog/donuts-extensions-price-increase-october-2019

- .com will increase their price : https://domainnamewire.com/2019/10/25/icann-is-about-to-give-verisign-its-com-price-increases

- price caps were removed from a legacy extension : https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...omain-price-caps-despite-lopsided-opposition/

The .BEST registry reduced its wholesale standard and renewal price by +78% !

Of course, we could probably do it better in terms of pricing, so please let me explain why this .Best standard price is still a competitive price compare to the market for a domain investor.

First, let me reminds you that during the BlackFriday + December 2019, we set-up some deals and promotions with some registrars on renewals to enable all our registrants to renew any .Best domain with a 50% discount ! (Even premium domains).

Means that if you renewed your .Best domains during this period (BlackFriday + December 2019) at some .Best selected registrars (Dynadot, Domain cost club , …), you could renewed your .Best domain :

At a wholesale standard renewal price of $7.5 / year (=cheaper than a .com)

Even .Best premiums, you can renewed them with 50% discount in advance !

So for a .best domain investor during Black Friday + December 2019, you had the possibility to get a .best domain for : $1 standard first year registration + $7.5 per year renewal !

Moreover, I strongly encourage you to not judge the value of a registry only on its renewal price.

I don’t want to make any assumption or comparison with any other tld/registry but as a comparison with the real estate industry, I would say that the price of an apartment in Champs-Elysées in Paris is not exactly the same that Boulevard de la chapelle in Paris - nothing again Boulevard de la chapelle residents but you get it (Works also with 5th Av in NYC and any other NYC street ).

So, it’s not because it is cheaper, that it is better in terms of investment.

So, as an investor, I only judge the value of my investment (a domain here) on its possible ROI.

I want to set-up this immediately that for me the ROI of a domain (no matter the TLD) is directly linked to its possible usage.

The fact that the .com is today the primary TLD in the aftermarket is not « only » related to the +140M .com live domains but more to the 50M .com live websites = end-users.

Of course, .com and cctlds are the kings in terms of « website usage » so I would say that if you have a short-term ROI objective, you should primary focus on those TLDs.

But, if you are also investing in ngtlds on a mid/long-term process, you should only invest in TLDs focusing and developing their own usage.

And usage at scale if possible to increase the value of the domain !

Coz usage is the only game to create a liquid market on the long term and it is quite impossible to create an effective aftermarket for domainers if there is no usage = market of their domains.

This is why all our strategy, efforts, energy and blood since +2 years are concentrated on the usage of the .Best domains through THE.Best social network.

Coz the innovation of THE.Best social network is that :

We created a « new usage » for a domain : « not as a website » but as a « social media account »

- A social media account to reward +3B existing social media users.
- A social media account to protect +7M existing trademark.
- A social media account to advertize +180M businesses.

Of course, the road is still and will be a long way to success, and we do not pretend to imitate TikTok amazing scale in the next two years (with 1.5B app download) but the social market is huge and more important the .Best trend is growing month after month.

Not only in terms of registrations (as we went from 3K to almost 90K live .Best domains in almost a year), but also in domain checked with our registrars as you problably don’t know this stat but the domain checked for .Best domains (stats that we recently get from centralnic – our backend operator) went from :

150K domains check / month (June 2018) to 1.5M domains check / month (December 2019)

About « hotels.Best » and « hotel.Best »

We/I always said and reported that we did not accept the $1M proposal that we received for « hotels.best » + « hotel.best » domains because we « still » thought/think that it was far from the $11M deal for « hotels.com » concluded in 2001.

By the way, the deal is publicly open to anybody that wants to come and visit us in our .Best office in Paris, or meet us at INTA in Singapore in April 2020 or GDD summit in Paris in May 2020 (of course under NDA).

FYI, in 2001 the « hotels.com company » purchased the name Hotels.com for around $11m and even if at that time this was thought to be “a crazy sum of money”, now David Roche (CEO for hotels.com) still thinks that it was a bargain!

So of course, i can totally understand pros vs cons because this is of course a lot of money and a fantasy for many domainers but we thought that this was also not the right time to sell a high-value .best domain because the reality is that we are not still DAY 1!

I mean, we are now close to 90k .Best live domains but trust me, the game has not yet started for us !

But DAY 1 is pretty close: 100K .Best live domains + the launch of THE.BEST social network !

About THE.Best social network :

I can totally understand the critics about the long waiting for the launch of THE.Best social network.

So now, let me give you a few information about our planning and also the reason of this long wait.

The primary reason for this long waiting period is that it is part of our .Best marketing strategy. And, we assume it 100%.

Why? Because it’s not the same hype for the media and press when launching an unknow project with zero users VS .Best launching a social network innovation with +100K domains that can be directly connected to THE.Best social network.

FYI, THE.Best app is now ready and we just started the early adopter's onboarding process beginning 2020. Pre-registration/Information website for .Best influencers : www.the.best

i.e - Examples of reviewers social media accounts:

www.cyril.best, www.adrien.best, www.alexandra.best, www.julian.best, www.perrine.best, www.fabrice.best, www.heloise.best, www.stephane.best, www.honore.best, www.parisien.best, www.karim.best, www.steeven.best, www.christophe.best, ...

Moreover, THE.Best business model is absolutely not based on selling domains or making money on end-users or domainers!

We will even reward our social media users for their .Best contributions/reviews inside THE.Best social network.

Our business model is 100% brand-oriented by selling protection, monitoring and advertising services to brands. i.e Information website for .Best Brands protection: www.brands.best

---

THE.Best App is ready and available in French and English!

It will be available for all « .Best domain owners first » when on stores after reaching 100K live .Best domains !

Our plan is to be live for around the end of March 2020 (as we are now close to 90K .Best live domains) and will present THE.best social network to Brands at the INTA Singapore (end of April 2020).

Pre-register now (https://the.best/register/) if you want to get & test THE.Best app before the others and be part of the .Best community.

Wish you again all the .Best for your future trade and business in 2020 !

Cyril

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

Coz the innovation of THE.Best social network is that :

We created a « new usage » for a domain : « not as a website » but as a « social media account »

- A social media account to reward +3B existing social media users.
- A social media account to protect +7M existing trademark.
- A social media account to advertize +180M businesses.

Pure fantasy. It's a review site. Let me test-drive it. What are the numbers today? 14 users? You and your colleagues/friends.

I created a vehicle sales platform last year for a large company in Ireland. It has 25,000 users, not the 4B that sell cars on the net.

I built a tech-doc system in the last 5 weeks and it has 450,000 users worldwide, not the 100B documentation users that download technical documentation on the net.

Also Developer and CTO for various e-commerce platforms selling for up to $30M year.

Then you question my knowledge. You can read my profile on LI.

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

It is now all too obvious Cyril was posting heavily to promote the big dot-best sale last March/April. It also appears he talked about an alleged pending sale (never confirmed and names still go to landing page) of hotels.best and hotel.best for 1 million $ as part of his marketing campaign.

Oh I really want to know more about this.

$1M sales?

Ok I bought about 8 .best domains and the prices are not what irritate me. It's the promise of a network they haven't launched or even built.

An apple is not a banana. A car is not a house. A review site is not a social media site, even if it has links to social media sites.

I wonder how many others here feel like they were deceived into buying in to an exciting new social media platform.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

What sense in this battle???
Hotel(s) like Casino etc. can be sold in any normal TLD for BIG money...
Such names are not used as benchmark apriori.

 

[ArielT]

@Cyril.Best, thank you for the detailed post, It's appreciated

But regarding the change from standar to "premium", I still disagree because in my view, the reduced price is a logical inherent benefit for the registrants prior the change in price

What would have happened if the price would have been increased instead? would a new category extra-standar would be created for older registrations to keep a lower price? I'm sure not

I know most don't care about this specific matter because yes, not a big deal, but what can be taken of this is that consumers have to complain they don't agree business practices

In summary:

Standar fee domains should remain standar

Also I don't understand how ICANN or whichever allowed premium from the beginning or after drop.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Because it is a part of ICANN nTLD Program... I have no doubts.
Read it on ICANN website...

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

From what I see - only .com/.net/.org fees are regulated strictly by ICANN...
All other TLDs can do what they want.

 

[namemarket]

.....Moreover, THE.Best business model is absolutely not based on selling domains or making money on end-users or domainers! We will even reward our social media users for their .Best contributions/reviews inside THE.Best social network. Our business model is 100% brand-oriented by selling protection, monitoring and advertising services to brands. i.e Information website for .Best Brands protection: www.brands.best.....Cyril

The primary reason I registered so many .best names was to do SEO work and build-up traffic etc (which I did a lot of hard work on) to make money in the near future from both ad clicks revenue thanks to good keywords, and domain sales however now you are saying that is absolutely not the plan! If I would have known that last March/April I am sure would not have reg'd more than a few, possibly none.

I am sorry Cyril but I am completely lost and totally confused on how in the world my taking time to post product or service reviews on your The.Best website, or using your Brands.Best site can possibly help increase MY traffic (not your traffic), MY offers to buy and overall value of MY dot-best domains! Maybe I am missing something? Please correct me if I am.

BTW, how much money will I get for each review I do? I need to know that to decide if it is worth all the time and effort posting product reviews.

P.S. I did the bold face type on the main issues you have disclosed.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Kathy was sold today on Sedo for $270 - if no changes within last minutes of auction...
Just real .BEST stats.

 

[namemarket]

.....THE.Best business model is absolutely not based on selling domains....Cyril

If that is correct why the high $18 regular renewal cost and $80 for older registrations? If you truly don't want to make money selling domains why charge so much? Why not charge your overall net cost and little more, whatever that actually is (I am guessing approx' $2 or $3).

 

[Cyril.Best]

If that is correct why the high $18 regular renewal cost and $80 for older registrations? If you truly don't want to make money selling domains why charge so much? Why not charge your overall net cost and little more, whatever that actually is (I am guessing approx' $2 or $3).

First don't mix-it up : .Best is the registry and THE.Best is the social network.

I know it is confusing (sorry for that) but it's 2 different companies and also 2 different business model.

I repeat : THE.Best social network business model is absolutely not based on selling domains.

Secondly, why not lowering the older registrations on .Best registry ?

Simply coz those registrations were sold by registrars at a time (we were not here) and where .Best registrars invest in marketing to promote the registration of .Best at $70 wholesale !

Don't miscunderstand, we are not domain sellers - the registrars are.

And btw it's not because we set a lower price that the registrars are supposed to lower their registration price. The price that we set is the wholesale price = the price for our registrar not the retail price that you pay.

See for instance the pricing difference between godaddy and domaincostclub. The wholesale price is the same but the retail price is different.

The difference is Godaddy is advertising the superbowl to promote its offer so and the end someone should also pay for this marketing. This is what is called the CPA.

And one's more during Black Fiday+full december 2019, all renewals were 50% at many registrars : dynadot, domain cost club, ... making the .Best renewal at $7.5 wholesale that was cheaper than a .com renewal during that period.

A lot of domainers did and benefit of this promotional period to renew their .Best domains in advance for many years !

 

[Yusupbabay]

Hi everybody,

Sorry for the wait for my answer, and I want first to wish you all a happy new year 2020 and all the .Best for this amazing new decade!

You made last year so special for us that it is my greatest wish that this coming year be the Best for you.

So, let me please first start with the .Best « haters »

When I read : "It appears that all the "haters" were right after all."

I want to say that I am not shocked by these words as I can totally understand the pros vs the cons of the .Best and our social network strategy and one’s more, we/I don’t want to convince everybody here about our .Best strategy. So, no problem with that.

We always tried to be honest and 100% transparent about everything related to the .best even when it’s not positive or if we make errors. And we did and will do again for sure so I am here to help and correct them as I/we always did.

I am more embarrassed with wrong & negative information.

When you said for instance: "And Cyril seems to have disappeared. I am shocked!!!......Brad"

First, Brad I am sorry if I missed you during the holiday season but I always answer the threads or questions related to the .Best in Namepros.

Of course, I can probably do it better/faster, but I am the CEO of 4 companies in the world and we have a lot of things to do right now with THE.Best social network final round so I would say that the fastest way to reach me in case of problem-related to the .Best is to send me directly an email to [email protected] and I will take the necessary time for you to answer or clarify any bad point related to the .Best if exists.

I was there and will be there in Namepros to inform, explain, clarify or correct any point related to the .Best if needed.

So, now let’s start and go back with our price change transition.

About "legacy" domains

I have already explained and commented all this a lot in different threads before but in case you missed it or still don’t know, we didn’t create the .Best registry : We made the acquisition of the .Best registry in July 2018 in order to attach .Best domains with THE.Best social network : www.the.best

At the time of our .Best registry acquisition, we had less than 3K live domains, all sold and renewed since 2014 at the rate of $70 wholesale with a renewal rate up to 70% each year since 2014.

See : https://ntldstats.com/tld/best

Moreover, right after our .Best acquisition, we worked hard with our « legacy » registrars to convinced them to lower the .Best standard pricing for our new .Best domain registrants.

This hard-work enables us to find a .Best deal after the Namescon 2019 (end of January 2019) and we informed/notified all our .Best registrars on 5th Feb 2019 that :

- For any .best registered at standard rates on Feb 5, 2019 or later, the new renewal rate will be of $15 wholesale.

- For any .best registered earlier than that date (price change legal notification), the wholesale rate will remain at $70 = the value that the renewal for the TLD had been historically.

- The effective new price change should be effective on 5th August 2019 (as we had to respect a strict legal notice period of 6 months with our .Best Registry-Registrars contract)

So, the renewal price at the time you registered a .Best domain has never increase !

We only changed the status (not the renewal price) of the legacy domains (=domains registered before 5th feb 2019) in order to classify/identify the domains registered before 5th Feb 2019 for our registrars.

Means, that the renewal rate of .Best « legacy domain » is not higher than what you were informed at the time you registered each .Best domain!

About our .Best pricing strategy

We are the only registry that decreased its wholesale standard registration and renewal rates by about 78% on 2019 !

That was a promise that we made 5th Feb 2019 after informing all our .Best registrars and that became effective in August 2019 with even a fair retro-discount of 6 months for all our registrants that had registered a .Best domains between 5th Feb 2019 and 5th August 2019 (time where the renewal price was still at $70 wholesale with all our .Best registrars)

Means that in a time when most prices edged up :

- Uniregistry increased their prices : https://news.gandi.net/en/2017/09/uniregistry-price-increase/

- .CLUB announces three years of price increases : http://domainincite.com/23829-club-announces-three-years-of-price-increases

- Donuts increased their price : https://www.eurodns.com/blog/donuts-extensions-price-increase-october-2019

- .com will increase their price : https://domainnamewire.com/2019/10/25/icann-is-about-to-give-verisign-its-com-price-increases

- price caps were removed from a legacy extension : https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...omain-price-caps-despite-lopsided-opposition/

The .BEST registry reduced its wholesale standard and renewal price by +78% !

Of course, we could probably do it better in terms of pricing, so please let me explain why this .Best standard price is still a competitive price compare to the market for a domain investor.

First, let me reminds you that during the BlackFriday + December 2019, we set-up some deals and promotions with some registrars on renewals to enable all our registrants to renew any .Best domain with a 50% discount ! (Even premium domains).

Means that if you renewed your .Best domains during this period (BlackFriday + December 2019) at some .Best selected registrars (Dynadot, Domain cost club , …), you could renewed your .Best domain :

At a wholesale standard renewal price of $7.5 / year (=cheaper than a .com)

Even .Best premiums, you can renewed them with 50% discount in advance !

So for a .best domain investor during Black Friday + December 2019, you had the possibility to get a .best domain for : $1 standard first year registration + $7.5 per year renewal !

Moreover, I strongly encourage you to not judge the value of a registry only on its renewal price.

I don’t want to make any assumption or comparison with any other tld/registry but as a comparison with the real estate industry, I would say that the price of an apartment in Champs-Elysées in Paris is not exactly the same that Boulevard de la chapelle in Paris - nothing again Boulevard de la chapelle residents but you get it (Works also with 5th Av in NYC and any other NYC street ).

So, it’s not because it is cheaper, that it is better in terms of investment.

So, as an investor, I only judge the value of my investment (a domain here) on its possible ROI.

I want to set-up this immediately that for me the ROI of a domain (no matter the TLD) is directly linked to its possible usage.

The fact that the .com is today the primary TLD in the aftermarket is not « only » related to the +140M .com live domains but more to the 50M .com live websites = end-users.

Of course, .com and cctlds are the kings in terms of « website usage » so I would say that if you have a short-term ROI objective, you should primary focus on those TLDs.

But, if you are also investing in ngtlds on a mid/long-term process, you should only invest in TLDs focusing and developing their own usage.

And usage at scale if possible to increase the value of the domain !

Coz usage is the only game to create a liquid market on the long term and it is quite impossible to create an effective aftermarket for domainers if there is no usage = market of their domains.

This is why all our strategy, efforts, energy and blood since +2 years are concentrated on the usage of the .Best domains through THE.Best social network.

Coz the innovation of THE.Best social network is that :

We created a « new usage » for a domain : « not as a website » but as a « social media account »

- A social media account to reward +3B existing social media users.
- A social media account to protect +7M existing trademark.
- A social media account to advertize +180M businesses.

Of course, the road is still and will be a long way to success, and we do not pretend to imitate TikTok amazing scale in the next two years (with 1.5B app download) but the social market is huge and more important the .Best trend is growing month after month.

Not only in terms of registrations (as we went from 3K to almost 90K live .Best domains in almost a year), but also in domain checked with our registrars as you problably don’t know this stat but the domain checked for .Best domains (stats that we recently get from centralnic – our backend operator) went from :

150K domains check / month (June 2018) to 1.5M domains check / month (December 2019)

About « hotels.Best » and « hotel.Best »

We/I always said and reported that we did not accept the $1M proposal that we received for « hotels.best » + « hotel.best » domains because we « still » thought/think that it was far from the $11M deal for « hotels.com » concluded in 2001.

By the way, the deal is publicly open to anybody that wants to come and visit us in our .Best office in Paris, or meet us at INTA in Singapore in April 2020 or GDD summit in Paris in May 2020 (of course under NDA).

FYI, in 2001 the « hotels.com company » purchased the name Hotels.com for around $11m and even if at that time this was thought to be “a crazy sum of money”, now David Roche (CEO for hotels.com) still thinks that it was a bargain!

So of course, i can totally understand pros vs cons because this is of course a lot of money and a fantasy for many domainers but we thought that this was also not the right time to sell a high-value .best domain because the reality is that we are not still DAY 1!

I mean, we are now close to 90k .Best live domains but trust me, the game has not yet started for us !

But DAY 1 is pretty close: 100K .Best live domains + the launch of THE.BEST social network !

About THE.Best social network :

I can totally understand the critics about the long waiting for the launch of THE.Best social network.

So now, let me give you a few information about our planning and also the reason of this long wait.

The primary reason for this long waiting period is that it is part of our .Best marketing strategy. And, we assume it 100%.

Why? Because it’s not the same hype for the media and press when launching an unknow project with zero users VS .Best launching a social network innovation with +100K domains that can be directly connected to THE.Best social network.

FYI, THE.Best app is now ready and we just started the early adopter's onboarding process beginning 2020. Pre-registration/Information website for .Best influencers : www.the.best

i.e - Examples of reviewers social media accounts:

www.cyril.best, www.adrien.best, www.alexandra.best, www.julian.best, www.perrine.best, www.fabrice.best, www.heloise.best, www.stephane.best, www.honore.best, www.parisien.best, www.karim.best, www.steeven.best, www.christophe.best, ...

Moreover, THE.Best business model is absolutely not based on selling domains or making money on end-users or domainers!

We will even reward our social media users for their .Best contributions/reviews inside THE.Best social network.

Our business model is 100% brand-oriented by selling protection, monitoring and advertising services to brands. i.e Information website for .Best Brands protection: www.brands.best

---

THE.Best App is ready and available in French and English!

It will be available for all « .Best domain owners first » when on stores after reaching 100K live .Best domains !

Our plan is to be live for around the end of March 2020 (as we are now close to 90K .Best live domains) and will present THE.best social network to Brands at the INTA Singapore (end of April 2020).

Pre-register now (https://the.best/register/) if you want to get & test THE.Best app before the others and be part of the .Best community.

Wish you again all the .Best for your future trade and business in 2020 !

Cyril

Hi @Cyril.Best
I registered at https://the.best, and I got a reply to this email.

 

[Cyril.Best]

The primary reason I registered so many .best names was to do SEO work and build-up traffic etc (which I did a lot of hard work on) to make money in the near future from both ad clicks revenue thanks to good keywords, and domain sales however now you are saying that is absolutely not the plan! If I would have known that last March/April I am sure would not have reg'd more than a few, possibly none.

I am sorry Cyril but I am completely lost and totally confused on how in the world my taking time to post product or service reviews on your The.Best website, or using your Brands.Best site can possibly help increase MY traffic (not your traffic), MY offers to buy and overall value of MY dot-best domains! Maybe I am missing something? Please correct me if I am.

BTW, how much money will I get for each review I do? I need to know that to decide if it is worth all the time and effort posting product reviews.

P.S. I did the bold face type on the main issues you have disclosed.

As I mention in my previous answer don't mix the .Best registry with THE.Best social network.

THE.Best social network is a social network app that will be available in stores in few weeks now !

Of course, .Best domain names that you bought can be used to create a website or a PBN to create organic/SEO traffic and make your own monetization of your .Best domains as for all the existing domains in the world.

But, what you have to understand (I am sure you get it) is that a domain name can have multiple usage.

It can be used to create a website, an email, a crypto wallet, identify IOT, ...

And in THE.Best social network (app) business case : you will be able to used it as a social media account.

Means that when joining THE.Best social network with your .Best domain as an identifier, you will get an app :

- to create reviews,
- follow other influencers,
- follow brands,
- share your own reviews with your social community
- get rewards*

* depending on the number of views, ad clicks, leads or brand content sponsored reviews you will get.

All your reviews are public, and you can share them with your community on your existing social networks.

See my account for instance on : www.cyril.best

And one shared review : https://twitter.com/FremontCyril/status/1217426107697451010?s=20

This sharing creates an amount of organic traffic that makes the monetization of your .Best domain.

Same as youtube, the more you get views (of your reviews), the more you earn.

 

[Cyril.Best]

Hi @Cyril.Best
I registered at https://the.best, and I got a reply to this email.

Show attachment 141875

Yes that's great !

We just started the onboarding process this January 2020 of our pre-registered .Best members, so that you will be contacted by email in the next coming weeks as mentioned in the email you received by our .Best team. FYI, Early-adopters onboarding is from January to March 2020.

 

[Cyril.Best]

@Cyril.Best, thank you for the detailed post, It's appreciated

But regarding the change from standar to "premium", I still disagree because in my view, the reduced price is a logical inherent benefit for the registrants prior the change in price

What would have happened if the price would have been increased instead? would a new category extra-standar would be created for older registrations to keep a lower price? I'm sure not

I know most don't care about this specific matter because yes, not a big deal, but what can be taken of this is that consumers have to complain they don't agree business practices

In summary:

Standar fee domains should remain standar

Also I don't understand how ICANN or whichever allowed premium from the beginning or after drop.

Hi Ariel,

First, I can totally understand your point of view as a domain registrant, I respect it and I am sorry for any confusion this price change has created.

Trust me, if we had the opportunity to lower the .Best pricing of all registered domains, we would do as we totally understood that this price change situation will create some frustration.

But what you have to understand is that we are not the domain seller.

I Mean that whatever wholesale price we can set: both for standard or premiums, the registrars are able to make their own markup on it and without any limitation.

The situation is that we inherit at our .Best acquisition from a package of almost 3K legacy domains that were registered since 2014 and renewed at $70 wholesale (means +150$ retail price with some registrars) in July 2018.

As I mentioned before, we worked hard with our registrars right after our .Best acquisition to lower the .Best pricing for all our registrants during 6 months (From July 2018 to January 2019).

Situation was that not all registrars were confortable to lower the .Best price on legacy domains simply coz they invested a lot in marketing since 2014 to promote the .Best and get new registrations - so that they had to reimburse their marketing effort and have a ROI - and this I can totally understand it too.

Honestly, some would even like us to have the .Best official price change date (on 5 august 2019) and only apply the new price reduction for all new domain registration starting 5 august 2019. That would affect +20K domains!

So the fair deal, we hardly negotiated with our registrars for our registrants was to have the legal notification date to our registrars to apply this price change/reduction for standard domains (means 5 Feb 2019). That would "only" affects 5k legacy domains (even if 1 domain is already too much - I agree).

So now, let me tell you what is the planning on this legacy domains :

First, and in order to lower the renewal price for all our registrants, we set a 50% promotion with some selected registrars during the last Black Friday + December 2019 month to enable all .Best registrants to lower their renewal rate both on standard and premium names.

This renewal operation was a success with our registrars (a lot of domainers benefit from this period to renew in advance their .Best domains) so that we are already at work with some registrars to re-conduct this kind of marketing operation on renewals during 2020.

Secondly, we have not give up on the idea to convince all our registrars to lower also the price of the legacy domains at the end. But of course, we need to get more .Best registrations in order to convince them to lower the price on the mid term. T

THE.Best social network will help also as it will bootstrap our .Best registrations and provide new revenues to our registrars.

Lastly, and like I said earlier this problem "only" affects 5K domains. +70% were already renewed.

So in fact the real problem only affects 1K domains (as we are 3 weeks now from 5th feb 2019).

So as a gesture of goodwill, the only thing I can do for those who are in that specific case is to help you negotiate a 1to1 deal directly with your registrar.

If you need help or assistance in this to renew your .Best legacy portfolio, just send me an email to [email protected] and let me know all information about the .Best domains you want to renew and for how long. I would suggest that you choose the longest possible renewal period in order to get the best discount from the registrar.

Hope this helps - Let me know.

All the .Best for your business in 2020

Cyril

 

[ArielT]

@Cyril.Best

ok, no problem, I understand and thanks for the help offered, it's appreciated

 

[Cyril.Best]

Pure fantasy. It's a review site. Let me test-drive it. What are the numbers today? 14 users? You and your colleagues/friends.

I created a vehicle sales platform last year for a large company in Ireland. It has 25,000 users, not the 4B that sell cars on the net.

I built a tech-doc system in the last 5 weeks and it has 450,000 users worldwide, not the 100B documentation users that download technical documentation on the net.

Also Developer and CTO for various e-commerce platforms selling for up to $30M year.

Then you question my knowledge. You can read my profile on LI.

James,

I am glad for you that you finally get/buy some .Best domains

That will make it easier for you to join and test THE.Best social network APP in the next coming weeks.

As for THE.Best social network, I am sorry to hear for our .Best Dev team that you take it as a pure fantasy. We don't. But it's probably because you missed all the infos, videos and demos of THE.Best social network that were already presented all over 2019 at the NAMESCON, INTA, ICANN, WEBSUMMIT ...

Also, I am sorry that you did not get that THE.Best is primary a social network app (and not a review website as you mentioned) as IG, TikTok are also primary a social network app and not a website. (It's 2020 my friend)

I am always interested to get feedbacks from our users so don't hesitate to get back to us with your comments once you get THE.Best app in your hand.

As for your dev, congrats for your work - just make sure your websites (i.e JurisPrudential.com) are accessible and not considered as scam/phishing websites by Norton. Just sayin

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

As for your dev, congrats for your work - just make sure your websites (i.e JurisPrudential.com) are accessible and not considered as scam/phishing websites by Norton. Just sayin

Jurisprudential is nothing more than a template with a for sale sign. Norton is garbage, too heavy, monitors every file every second and sends info to outside parties. Be smart and get ESET instead.

 

[namemarket]

Kathy was sold today on Sedo for $270 - if no changes within last minutes of auction...Just real .BEST stats.

That rare 3 figure sale is good news but if the buyers name is actually "Kathy Best" (as I suspect) and she only got it for the last name match then not such a good example of value.

P.S. to Cyril: How much money will I get for each review I do and who pays me? I need to know that to decide if it is worth all the time and effort posting product reviews. Thank you.

 

[Cyril.Best]

The gain for each review vary from multiple factors :

- the number of views of your reviews
- the country of the people visiting of your reviews
- the number of clicks on the ads on your reviews
- the CPM on the ads (to avoid clickbait)
- the number of leads generated from your reviews
- the number of brands that want to sponsor your reviews
- ...

For instance, on the first monetization tests that we conducted (since a year now) and on average (it all depends on each visitor region), but you can earn :

- between $1-$3 per CPM,
- between $10c to $50c per click on ads,
- between $0.5 to $10 per lead,
- between $50c to $10 per brand-sponsored reviews.

This is just an average estimation coz of course it all depends of your reviews, traffic quality/quantity and of course on the fact that your reviews and true and honest reviews.

As the owner of the domain and the content, you are also the legal responsible of your content (as for any other website)!

That is also a main difference between THE.Best "Decentralized" social network (1 user = 1 domain/website) and any other existing "centralized" social media. (Btw, in case you don't know but twitter is also working on an open and decentralized standard for its social media : https://twitter.com/FremontCyril/status/1205604486099722242)

Moreover, the more honest and quality reviews you wrote, the more brands will be likely to sponsor your reviews.

Coz brands have also a tool/service to directly sponsor your reviews.

By the way, a honest and quality review doesn't mean a positive review only. Negative reviews can also be honest. The quality of a review relies on honest arguments and true facts (good or bad).

Brands are also able to sponsor the bad reviews of their competitors so whatever the review is (positive or negative), it can help you earn more rewards.

As for the rewards, the key to be successful on the social play is the same that for any other existing social media platform: you have to be consistent and publish great content on a regular basis to get more and more followers, traffic and rewards at the end. Sharing your reviews on your existing social media with your community is also another quick way to get traffic and more rewards. It has been proven that personal review and recommandation usually receive better engagement.

Lastly, know that all your reviews will also gain more and more seo/organic traffic naturally in time as for any other domain/website with new regular content.

FYI, I will publish soon a usage comparison sheet between Monetize a .Best domain (sole website) vs Monetize a .Best domain (inside THE.Best social network).

Hope it helps you better understand how much money you can make with a .best domain on THE.Best social network.

All the .Best !

Cyril

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Thanks for the additional background on THE.Best social network and how to earn from it. I look forward to the following later addition to come.

FYI, I will publish soon a usage comparison sheet between Monetize a .Best domain (sole website) vs Monetize a .Best domain (inside THE.Best social network).

I wonder whether the attention to .best when the network is fully launched will be good for investment in .best as domains outside the network, or might there be misunderstanding by some that .best domains can only be used for this. Perhaps not an issue, but it is something that crossed my mind.

I have not signed up yet, but plan to try out the network and monetization. I am just trying to figure out which of many interests I have might best fit in and work.

Bob

 

[Cyril.Best]

Thanks for the additional background on THE.Best social network and how to earn from it. I look forward to the following later addition to come.


I wonder whether the attention to .best when the network is fully launched will be good for investment in .best as domains outside the network, or might there be misunderstanding by some that .best domains can only be used for this. Perhaps not an issue, but it is something that crossed my mind.

I have not signed up yet, but plan to try out the network and monetization. I am just trying to figure out which of many interests I have might best fit in and work.

Bob

Hi Bob,

I totally understand your point. This is something that we thought and tried to anticipate in our strategy.

The question is : When THE.Best social network will become bigger than the .Best registry ?

Of course, we cannot predict the future but we think that .Best registered domains outside the network will also increase in value following THE.Best social network usage and scale.

The main reason is that THE.Best social network will of course get the main user attention (as it will "time after time" represents the main usage of our .best domains) but it will also help to bootstrap the distribution of .best domains, and by the same effect reduce the number of good available names for the influencers/brands and so increase the value of the good names.

A domain needs 2 things to increase its value : A huge number of registered domains (to reduce the number of available names) and a usage of the registered ones to create a liquid market.

.com has around 140M domains registered but more important : 30% of its domains with a real website.

This is why most ngtlds that only focus on registration number of their domains and not on the usage of their TLD will fail in time. It happened and it will happen again. Look what happened to .ltd yesterday for instance: https://ntldstats.com/tld/ltd

Moreover, People/Influencers are already daily trading social network names so I predict the same here for most influencers and brands.

The other difference in terms of trading will be the size of the trading market : There is 100M domain registrants (domains buyers) and +3B social media users. So the potential to trade a domain to a social media user should be bigger but domain investor have to shift their mindset to get the business opportunity coz the market and the buyers are different.

Without counting that brands and businesses will also need a .best domain to reply to their reviews, post their best products on their .best page, protect their trademark or advertize social media user reviews.

Coz this is all our business model : Reward +3B social media users for their reviews, and provide monitoring, protection and advertising services to +180M local businesses to help them increase their reputation and sales.

On the long term, we think that 30% of the business around the .best domains will be done directly by the domainers (as for the .com) but that's another story.

Hope it helps to better understand our social network strategy.

Amitiés,

Cyril

 

[Pay.My.id]

I hope that .Best grow forever and totally care to all clients in the world

 

[namemarket]

The gain for each review vary from multiple factors :
- the number of views of your reviews
- the country of the people visiting of your reviews
- the number of clicks on the ads on your reviews
- the CPM on the ads (to avoid clickbait)
- the number of leads generated from your reviews
- the number of brands that want to sponsor your reviews
- ...
For instance, on the first monetization tests that we conducted (since a year now) and on average (it all depends on each visitor region), but you can earn :
- between $1-$3 per CPM,
- between $10c to $50c per click on ads,
- between $0.5 to $10 per lead,
- between $50c to $10 per brand-sponsored reviews......

Thanks for your reply Cyril. The income possibilities and scenarios are quite interesting.

Do we need to first open an Adsense account or whatever ad firm you suggest to run the ads and get clicks?

I am also sorry to be confused on where my product reviews are posted? Are they posted by us on your THE.BEST website, or are you saying we should host and develop our own minisite for one of our .best domains and post the reviews and ppc ads on our own site?

 

[Cyril.Best]

Thanks for your reply Cyril. The income possibilities and scenarios are quite interesting.

Do we need to first open an Adsense account or whatever ad firm you suggest to run the ads and get clicks?

I am also sorry to be confused on where my product reviews are posted? Are they posted by us on your THE.BEST website, or are you saying we should host and develop our own minisite for one of our .best domains and post the reviews and ppc ads on our own site?

For Adsense, this is a very interesting question. Indeed, at the beginning, we were supposed to be the sole payer for our influencers and so manage all the monetization, but now we think to create a first stage in the monetization with google adsense so that you can get paid directly by google for the CPM/CPC.

Moreover, this will reduce our workload at the launch of the social network and help to create a stage between the best influencers and the others : I mean, as for all social networks, we know that 20% of the influencers will drive 80% of the traffic.

Where my product reviews are posted?

You create reviews within THE.Best social media App and they are posted directly on your .bestdomain/website. You do not need any hosting, ssl, we take care of everything !

You just need to focus on creating content as for all existing social networks.

Difference is that not only your reviews will be accessible through THE.Best mobile feed for the others but also on your .Best domain/website. Every review that you create is 100% public !

So basically, you will have nothing to do except having a .Best domain and link it (DNS) to join THE.Best social network.