discuss Can .VIP Gain Brand Traction in 2017

[botlawyer]

In my opinion, there are thousands of business, in hundreds of spaces, that would hugely benefit from brands built on a dot-VIP domain name.

- There are 1.2 billion indexed items on Google with "VIP"
- Areas such as travel, events, music, fashion, and personal care are ripe for using a dot-VIP domain name
- China is going to massively embrace quality dot-VIP domain names (see the great presentation by Simon Cousins posted on the Allegravita site)

Thoughts?

 

[dordomai]

In my opinion, there are thousands of business, in hundreds of spaces, that would hugely benefit from brands built on a dot-VIP domain name.

- There are 1.2 billion indexed items on Google with "VIP"
- Areas such as travel, events, music, fashion, and personal care are ripe for using a dot-VIP domain name
- China is going to massively embrace quality dot-VIP domain names (see the great presentation by Simon Cousins posted on the Allegravita site)

Thoughts?

we have had better strings that didn't do well sales wise so I don't see why VIP should be any different.

Most of the regs and hype is coming from China. That means if you want to profit from it you need to buy domains for the Chinese market not English language domains.

If you don't speak Chinese and/or understand the local market not sure if a good idea to buy Chinese domains.

Otherwise without the Chinese regs it is probably not a terrible extension performance-wise but certainly as great as the current hype would suggest. At least from the perspective of a western domain buyer.

That being said, maybe brands could benefit from this but why this one and not the many other good ones
that we have?

Basically I think the logical flaw is that western people think it may be a good investment because it is special in China. Western people however need to buy domains for western end-users or learn Chinese.

As Warren Buffet, the world's greatest investor said, you need to stay within your circle of competence.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-circle-of-competence-theory-2013-12?IR=T

It does not matter how great it is in Asia if Europeans/American buyers don't agree.

 

[disaac81]

In my opinion, there are thousands of business, in hundreds of spaces, that would hugely benefit from brands built on a dot-VIP domain name.

- There are 1.2 billion indexed items on Google with "VIP"
- Areas such as travel, events, music, fashion, and personal care are ripe for using a dot-VIP domain name
- China is going to massively embrace quality dot-VIP domain names (see the great presentation by Simon Cousins posted on the Allegravita site)

Thoughts?

Short answer: No.

Long Answer: No.

 

[botlawyer]

@disaac81 No one is contradicting dot-com's dominance.

@Bullock There is no "volatility" in buying some quality dot-VIP names, and holding them for either the right partnership opportunity, building-out a destination site for this target market, or selling it/them when the right buyer comes along.

I've been involved in the financial markets my entire life, and everything about dot-VIP tells me that buying quality names at this point in time is analogous to buying Google's stock a decade or so ago. The only difference is that the percentage gains you'll experience from a 'great' dot-VIP investment will be much higher than GOOG.

The two factors that make me convinced of that are (i) the UNIVERSAL appeal and comprehension of "VIP", and (ii) the fact that there are only a few hundred thousand names that would work well using this extension.

 

[botlawyer]

@dordomai Whether .VIP will be popular within a year (or so) will entirely depend on whether or not (quality) sites are launched, which leverage the extension. I plan to launch at least one in 2017, and would be pretty surprised if there aren't hundreds of other entrepreneurs who already have similar plans in the works.

Dot-VIP's success will have nothing to do with whether or not companies '...offer VIP versions of their product...." There are hundreds of spaces that are intrinsically conducive to "VIP" branding/association - and there's no need to put together a list because we all already know what those spaces are.

But, in addition, there are generic categories that will also work very well with a dot-VIP extension. One example would be SHAVING.VIP (and SHAVE.VIP). I own both of those, and in light of the recent explosion of interest in that vertical it's not a stretch to imagine success for a business to differentiate itself in the shaving space by offering high(er) end products - versus much of the rest of the players who are trying to outdo each other with cheaper alternatives to the big brands, like Gillette and Schick.

So my point is that you don't have to be limited to selling luxury products in conjunction with a brand built atop a dot-VIP extension.

 

[dordomai]

I don't think it is universal at all. The VIP niche is broad in the sense that it covers many industries but it is still rather limited in it's usage. It doesn't make sense with most keywords or even most products.

This is a much a generic extension as .best is one. :Best is actually more generic I would say. .online or .site is generic.

The fact that China has more regs has nothing to do with being ahead IMO. It's being bought in China for reasons that don't apply to the west. It's not that they are buying it for the same reasons the West does just earlier.

The reasons might not even be positive e.g Chinese newcomers have been very vulnerable to hype and pump schemes and willing to burn a lot of money for domains with questionable prospects.

 

[dordomai]

Absolutely! Love em. You see "VIP" acronym around people's neck, badges and IDs. And it's been used before .com, net and org.

horses have been used long before .com too but that doesn't make .horse a good investment.

 

[Kate]

These TLDs have universal meaning too: .info .pro .travel .jobs .museum .photo .online .club etc
Is it a good idea to invest in them then ?

 

[Brands.International]

@ botlawyer ... you are so optimistic
@lolwarrior

Well, .VIP is an acronym international well-known that evoques luxury, high standard quality, exclusive services, and so on. It is acknowledged that haute gamme has a consistent hard-core of customers with some peaks as Arabs, Russians, Chineses.

For this reason I've bought some .VIPs , but at this stage we don't know truely if this extension may be adopted by great firms playng in the upper market. IMO, from this depends the success of .VIP.

Volatility refers, generally speaking, to all nTLD.

You have got some very nice .VIP names, congrats!

Well, imo, if possible, buy some more now. If we would wait until general market "confirms" that .VIP will be used by great firms, all opportunities will be long time gone. Big profits can be done only when somebody buy early, it is same story with domains, stock, real estate, etc..and yes, there are some risky elements, but this is life

 

[ZapNano]

P

You have got some very nice .VIP names, congrats!

Well, imo, if possible, buy some more now. If we would wait until general market "confirms" that .VIP will be used by great firms, all opportunities will be long time gone. Big profits can be done only when somebody buy early, it is same story with domains, stock, real estate, etc..and yes, there are some risky elements, but this is life

Big, small, medium etc organization; gov, inc and corporate; they already have used .VIP. However, they don't registered the name. Once they start falling behind, then they will start searching for the one...

 

[botlawyer]

Instead these examples can make sense in an other way:

Literally: CARS dot VIP

Figuratively: CARS for VIP

Ditto

HOMES dot VIP

HOMES for VIP

Exactly. There's zero doubt that 99% of people (who are familiar with the english language) will instantly understand that a site built atop [CARS] dot-VIP is a destination for either high-end cars, or cars for people who are (or think) they're important.

 

[Brands.International]

@dordomai - 99.9% of people does not know about .VIP at the moment, it is only 4 months old TLD..still everybody who will do research will see that all good English keywords are long time taken..most of them were regged in first few hours of GA. There are lot of people who instantly recognized opportunity.

.VIP has very good chance to be massively adopted by western end users, it is exactly because it makes lot of sense and people speaking different languages immediately recognize this acronym.

Chinese buyouts are also there, and in majority now, no doubts about it! But they are interested in their stuff (short domains and pinyin keywords), they have good reasons for it too, as was explained on several places on this forum.

Anyway, I think that this debate - about whether to invest in .VIP or not - is now quite theoretical..the largest chunk of opportunity passed 4 months ago. Now you can still make some registrations, but not for category killers any more. I assume if somebody was lucky enough to register something like Hotels.Vip, they will not let it go next year just to save 20-30 bucks on renewal, because they are reading on this forum that registries will fail

 

[Kate]

Frankly, I would never compare dot-VIP to dot-TOP.

Both are mostly used in China, this is what I meant. China is the market.

And if you are referring to dot-TOP when you talk about "better TLDs...struggling," with all due respect I would laugh at that comparison.

No, I was thinking about TLDs like for example .pro or .online. They will fit with more keywords than .vip. But even those TLDs are still bad imo.

@dordomai - 99.9% of people does not know about .VIP at the moment, it is only 4 months old TLD..

99.9% of people still do not know about 15-year old TLDs. Just saying With hundreds of new strings now available, no reason why .vip would be better known than others.

.VIP has very good chance to be massively adopted by western end users, it is exactly because it makes lot of sense and people speaking different languages immediately recognize this acronym.

Nope. And the problem is not the semantic relevance. Plenty of TLDs with universal meaning are not being successful.

There is one thing that is important to understand: China is not a real free market, that is true also when it comes to domain names. The Chinese government, like everybody knows, exercises a tight control on the Chinese Internet through censorship, an army of online policemen/snitches and the GFW (Great Firewall).
They also push for adoption of certain TLDs designated as approved for local use. That's the reason why certain TLDs like .top or .ren get an artificial boost in China. And even if locals are buying handregs, that doesn't mean they will happily pay aftermarket price.

The bottom line is that China is a specific market with peculiar (political) conditions. My advice is to tread carefully if you don't know the local conditions well. Actually my advice is to stick to your comfort zone, and don't fall for the hype.

 

[Bullock]

The charme of .VIP is his subliminal message: exclusive services/products/membership for Very Important Person/People.

Tha's the marketing strategy suitable all over the world!

 

[botlawyer]

@Bullock Absolutely correct - and one only needs to look at this image you posted to instantly comprehend - no matter what country you're from, or language you speak - the uniqueness and exclusiveness of having a dot-VIP brand.

This reminds me of raw land: There are very few house hunters who are capable of envisioning a gorgeous home, with beautiful landscaping, on an undeveloped piece of property. But once the heavy equipment comes in, the landscaping has begun, the flowers are planted, and the house is built -- then EVERYONE understands the potential that they couldn't see beforehand. The exact same thing will happen with dot-VIP after a few 'great' sites are built using this extension; and only THEN will investors be rushing to acquire quality dot-VIP names in the secondary market.

The other thing that is easy to ignore at this preliminary stage is the PR value that sites built atop dot-VIP will have. It's easy to foresee news stories about the [INSERT WORD].VIP website, which was intentionally designed to focus on a high-end demographic. The domain name alone will attract journalists to WANT TO write stories about the brand/site.

 

[Brands.International]

In my opinion, there are thousands of business, in hundreds of spaces, that would hugely benefit from brands built on a dot-VIP domain name.

- There are 1.2 billion indexed items on Google with "VIP"
- Areas such as travel, events, music, fashion, and personal care are ripe for using a dot-VIP domain name
- China is going to massively embrace quality dot-VIP domain names (see the great presentation by Simon Cousins posted on the Allegravita site)

Thoughts?

.VIP is one of the most trending domain, see it here, details about TLD itself see here. It is only 4 months old, since it first went go GA in Jun 2016. Still, there are already more then 400 k registrations. Seems like at the moment China is well ahead of West, but I think western countries will catch up. There is almost no general awareness of this TLD among end users, because it is still so young. In my opinion it represents perfect investment opportunity at the moment, as I am sure lot of end users (and I mean now western, not only Chinese) will want to use .VIP for their operations in future. .VIP is very universal, no GEO restrictions whatsoever. Companies can use this extension for any operation which delivers (or at least promises to deliver) premium (VIP) treatment/services for its customers.

In addition, almost everybody in western countries recognize this acronym. In China, it has slightly different meaning, rather then "very important person", it means "welcomed guess" as we can learn from the video.

I believe that in future, .VIP will be one of the most successful new gTLDs (together with .ONLINE, .BLOG and .WEB), because all those 4 extensions are so universal (although each carry a slightly different meaning, .VIP - premium services, .ONLINE - online, .BLOG - blogging, and.WEB - is really universal).

So it is nice we discuss it here. Fact is, however, that as of today, all good keywords you can imagine are already registered by domainers/investors (or are now commanding high premium fees from registry)..so it is little bit late to this party

 

[ZapNano]

@dordomai, my gosh do you live in a farm. I see you love animals, that's great. But for God sake, .VIP and .horse has zero near comparison.
How old are you?

 

[ZapNano]

.VIP has long making money already, before it became an extension. The .com was never made money before it became an extension. Educational Opportunity for you; thanks ZapNano.

 

[Bullock]

@ botlawyer ... you are so optimistic
@lolwarrior

Well, .VIP is an acronym international well-known that evoques luxury, high standard quality, exclusive services, and so on. It is acknowledged that haute gamme has a consistent hard-core of customers with some peaks as Arabs, Russians, Chineses.

For this reason I've bought some .VIPs , but at this stage we don't know truely if this extension may be adopted by great firms playng in the upper market. IMO, from this depends the success of .VIP.

Volatility refers, generally speaking, to all nTLD.

 

[Bullock]

You have got some very nice .VIP names, congrats!

Thanks bro, they are all discounted reg fees!!

 

[domainerfella]

http://dn.domains/so-did-you-invest-in-vip/

 

[disaac81]

But homes for vip makes no sense at all... the extension just does not fit with many things.

 

[Bullock]

 

[dordomai]

Can .VIP Gain Brand Traction in 2017

answer is: of course not.

Even strings with a much broader meaning struggle to gain traction. .VIP won't be popular within a year.

.vip is limited because most products or services don't offer VIP versions of their product and won't start doing so just because a new string got released.

.vip isn't that special, people believe it is because some Chinese got tricked into buying a lot of it.

 

[botlawyer]

Better TLDs are still struggling. The problem is not whether there are developed sites, the problem is critical mass. This TLD, like .top, is heavily Chinese. So I wouldn't use it unless I am Chinese or trying to reach a Chinese audience. Still, I wouldn't treat it as an investment.

Frankly, I would never compare dot-VIP to dot-TOP.

I don't even get why anyone would waste a penny on a dot-TOP name. Just my opinion, but what value does dot-TOP bring to the minds of an online consumer from a branding perspective?

Case-in-point using some killer dictionary words: PROPERTY.TOP - what the heck does that mean, or even imply? CAR.TOP - does that refer to the roof of the car? TRAVEL.TOP - does that mean 'this destination site will help you book a mountain climbing tour' ?

And if you are referring to dot-TOP when you talk about "better TLDs...struggling," with all due respect I would laugh at that comparison.