discuss Education Gap...How many non domainers know about nTLD's?

[ThatNameGuy]

An educated guess might be 5% based on polling.

It's just been nine months since I reg'd my first nTLD. Since then I've reg'd literally hundreds more while polling hundreds of non domainers who have never heard of the new domain extensions.

I don't just ask someone if they ever heard of new domain extensions like; .golf, .loans, .app, .live, .boats etc., but I also make it my business to educate them on how they work just like .com's, and how easy they are to buy, use and develop. Most of the reactions I get are, Wow!, I didn't know that.

I knew within the first 45 days I got into this, the onus would be on me to educate end users if I were to be successful. Collectively registries, registrars and domainers like you and me need to work together educate end users and the public.

Finally, I've acknowledged all along that .com is, and "may" always be "king", but there's a lot of room to close the huge gap that exists between the two

 

[likeslikes]

It's funny I randomly asked a few co-workers if they'd heard of .io the other day and none of them had. I figured at least one of them would know it.

 

[bmugford]

An educated guess might be 5% based on polling.

It is certainly a low %, but it is not just new gTLD. Most regular people have never heard of .biz, .info and other extensions that have existed for 15+ years.

It is because they basically never run across them in the real world. Almost all the popular websites use legacy extensions (Com/Net/Org) or ccTLD. For every website that launches on a new extension, many more launch on .COM so that lead is only growing still.

Also, education is only one aspect. Even if you educate people that new extensions exist, you must then convince them to pay a premium price for one. The vast majority of people don't really have a need for a domain or care about them in general.

Brad

 

[garptrader]

Bulloney
What do you think would happen to any brick and mortar retailer (Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Macy's) that only managed to sell one percent of their inventory annually?

The potential offset of domain investments is that the markup can be considerably higher than in other industries.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Garptrader,

It's pretty obvious what would happen to any brick and mortar retailer that only sells one percent of their inventory annually, but to compare brick and mortar retailers to the domain industry is comparing apples and oranges.

I hear you and others saying that even if you're able to "educate" end users about ngTLD's the cost would be prohibitive, and end users couldn't afford them anyway? If I thought that were the case, I wouldn't be wasting my time here. I'm sure you've heard of a loss leader.....even Rick Schwartz the so called domain king understands So lets take the two names I mentioned earlier, "Shipping Tips" and "Everlasting Capital". First, these domains represent industries that can afford them and can justify their use. These domains sell for less than $10, but for this exercise lets just say they're ten bucks. Assuming you give 10% of your inventory away each year as a loss leader, and 80% of them actually use them because it's required in their agreement. Now lets assume that 50% of the 80% are still using them at the end of a year and had agreed to pay the industry "average" of $1,500 per domain.....Jackpot!

According to my calculation, 4% of a domainers inventory would turn over every year instead of just 1%. Granted, in this scenario not only is "education key", but execution is key as well.

Please keep in mind this is just one scenario for selling more ngTLD's profitably. Thanks

 

[garptrader]

Anyone want to guess how many aftermarket (investor held) new TLD domains there are? Namestat.Org currently shows about 22 million registrations. My guess is at least 75-90% are investor held. Industry average portfolio turn is certainly low single digits but probably not much better than 1% for newer extensions. Even if there are only 15 million aftermarket new TLD domains if 1% are selling we would have 150k aftermarket sales a year. Give them two weeks vacation and you should have about three thousand aftermarket new TLD sales EVERY WEEK. Of course not all will be published and not all will qualify for reporting on DNJournal. Registry sales do not benefit any domain investor and many are suspect. So excluding those reported by the registries i only see one which sold through Afternic. Is that not a HUGE disconnect?

 

[Joe N]

Assuming you give 10% of your inventory away each year as a loss leader, and 80% of them actually use them because it's required in their agreement. Now lets assume that 50% of the 80% are still using them at the end of a year and had agreed to pay the industry "average" of $1,500 per domain.....Jackpot!

According to my calculation, 4% of a domainers inventory would turn over every year instead of just 1%. Granted, in this scenario not only is "education key", but execution is key as well.

This is an interesting notion, Rich.

What incentive would a business have for agreeing to those terms? Why would they invest their time into developing a ngTLD, and then pay a premium for it after a year, rather than just paying the $1,500 up front for a quality .com name? One could even argue that they'd still be ahead of the game if they spent a considerable amount more on the .com name, since they would be saved the additional expense of having to promote the existence/authority of the ngTLD to their customers.

I'm not seeing the added value.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

This is an interesting notion, Rich.

What incentive would a business have for agreeing to those terms? Why would they invest their time into developing a ngTLD, and then pay a premium for it after a year, rather than just paying the $1,500 up front for a quality .com name? One could even argue that they'd still be ahead of the game if they spent a considerable amount more on the .com name, since they would be saved the additional expense of having to promote the existence/authority of the ngTLD to their customers.

I'm not seeing the added value.

You know me...the glass is ALWAYS half full. With regards to an ngTLD, i'm assuming the .com is already taken, but not being used or trade marked. I'd do the very same thing with the .com like Rick Schwartz comments. The incentive a business would have is two fold...first, it requires zero up front cash, and second, the business will have 12 months in which to see if the domain name adds value. If it doesn't, they simply give it back. You ask "why would they invest their time into developing a ngTLD" Why would anyone invest their time in developing a new name? If they don't like the name, or see value in it, they simply won't be a customer.

If you're not seeing the added value whether it's a .com or an ngTLD, I'd recommend a different business.

 

[xynames]

The main fallacy with thinking that these oddball / new extensions are worth something, is thinking that...because no one has yet picked up these given domains, that no one has thought of picking them up...in other words, thinking that the normal rules of supply and demand somehow do not apply to these extensions.

The fact is, that anything that is available today for picking up off the ground is there for a reason...it is simply not valuable. At least not yet, and maybe not ever.

You can't think something into value...after all the marketing is said and done, either people are buying it or they are not.

 

[Joe N]

You know me...the glass is ALWAYS half full. With regards to an ngTLD, i'm assuming the .com is already taken, but not being used or trade marked. I'd do the very same thing with the .com like Rick Schwartz comments. The incentive a business would have is two fold...first, it requires zero up front cash, and second, the business will have 12 months in which to see if the domain name adds value. If it doesn't, they simply give it back. You ask "why would they invest their time into developing a ngTLD" Why would anyone invest their time in developing a new name? If they don't like the name, or see value in it, they simply won't be a customer.

If you're not seeing the added value whether it's a .com or an ngTLD, I'd recommend a different business.

I do see the value added in the .com name. The .com already carries global consumer authority.

Although you'd be offering the ngTLD for free and allowing them a year's grace before buying, I think the big roadblock will be that the company will not have any interest in spending the time/money needed to develop the site, because it's not .com, and because the name has no traffic.

If they were intent on conducting this experiment with a ngTLD, they'd purchase a different $10 name where they didn't have to commit to an extra outlay of $X,XXX a year later.

 

[ecalc]

Godaddy, the AmazonWalmart of domain retail, pushes ngTLDs harder than a Caterpillar D11:

Despite the best efforts of marketers, educators et al, natural selection dictates the order of things.

The first quarter of 2018 closed with approximately 333.8 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains, growing by approximately 3.2 million, or 1.0 percent, year over year. The .com and .net TLDs had a combined increase of approximately 4.6 million domain name registrations, or 3.2 percent, year over year. ngTLDs decreased by approximately 5.3 million domain name registrations, or 20.7 percent, year over year.

source: Verisign Q1 2018 domain name industry brief

 

[ThatNameGuy]

I do see the value added in the .com name. The .com already carries global consumer authority.

Although you'd be offering the ngTLD for free and allowing them a year's grace before buying, I think the big roadblock will be that the company will not have any interest in spending the time/money needed to develop the site, because it's not .com, and because the name has no traffic.

If they were intent on conducting this experiment with a ngTLD, they'd purchase a different $10 name where they didn't have to commit to an extra outlay of $X,XXX a year later.

Joe...let me give you a real life example, one of the businesses I use to own was called Contact USA. I started the business around 1990, and I purchased the domain ContactUSA.com for it (I believe from Network Solutions) around 1995 and developed a website for the name. Contact USA went out of
business in 2001 due to Circuit City (our largest client by far) based out of Richmond Virginia going out of business. The name of my company was perfect for what we did, and guess who named the company?
Someone else picked up the name, and when accessing ConcatUSA.com it leads to a one page site displaying an American Flag. Since the .com is taken, I'd purchase Contact.USA in a midget minute if USA were an extension, but it's not However, I checked to see if Contact.US was available and it wasn't either....whoever owns Contact.US owns ContactUS.com that does lead to their website. My point here is, I would have bought either Contact.USA, or Contact.US for $1,500 plus if that's the name I wanted and couldn't get the .com. Maybe it's because I'm educated about ngTLD's

Finally, Joe you and the .com crowd probably couldn't sell a single ngTLD because you don't believe in them, or apparently understand them. However, as an educated business guy who believes in ngTLD's, I'm pretty confident I'll be successful despite what the crowd thinks. I'm a trend setter Joe, I always have been and I always will be. Thanks for your comments....they only make me more determined. Cheers!

 

[Joe N]

Joe...let me give you a real life example, one of the businesses I use to own was called Contact USA. I started the business around 1990, and I purchased the domain ContactUSA.com for it (I believe from Network Solutions) around 1995 and developed a website for the name. Contact USA went out of
business in 2001 due to Circuit City (our largest client by far) based out of Richmond Virginia going out of business. The name of my company was perfect for what we did, and guess who named the company?
Someone else picked up the name, and when accessing ConcatUSA.com it leads to a one page site displaying an American Flag. Since the .com is taken, I'd purchase Contact.USA in a midget minute if USA were an extension, but it's not However, I checked to see if Contact.US was available and it wasn't either....whoever owns Contact.US owns ContactUS.com that does lead to their website. My point here is, I would have bought either Contact.USA, or Contact.US for $1,500 plus if that's the name I wanted and couldn't get the .com. Maybe it's because I'm educated about ngTLD's

Finally, Joe you and the .com crowd probably couldn't sell a single ngTLD because you don't believe in them, or apparently understand them. However, as an educated business guy who believes in ngTLD's, I'm pretty confident I'll be successful despite what the crowd thinks. I'm a trend setter Joe, I always have been and I always will be. Thanks for your comments....they only make me more determined. Cheers!

I get what you're saying, but the example doesn't match what you're proposing... Your example company doesn't already have a website, but in your plan you're talking about approaching existing businesses with existing sites (likely on the .com extension) and trying to sell them a ngTLD. That's a giant leap for people that have never heard of these things.

And yes, I know education is a part of the plan, but if I were your potential customer I'd be very skeptical of the education due to your personal bias (and motivation). It's like the car salesman trying to convince me that I reeeeeally need the extended warranty.

 

[Kate]

May I ask if you have an active business running on a nTLD at the moment ?

Because the news outlets and sponsored blogs that run advertorials for nTLD are usually all using .com domains, so people are not taking the message seriously since they can see that the proponents of nTLDs are not drinking their own medicine.

If I were an end user and you were trying to sell me nTLDs, I would want you to show me some tangible business results, success stories, preferably in which you were personally involved. If your business and other related sites are all on .com why should I even listen to your promotional efforts ?
Leading by example is the bare minimum to achieve a measure of credibility.

 

[DomainRecap]

'Also, the intended purpose of nTLDs is to increase the supply of available keywords, so that end users could avoid buying names on the aftermarket. That's the theory, the reality is quite different thanks to Icann and registries... If you have to pay a premium for an alternative extension, then you are back to square one, and if you have a budget then you could as well buy the best .com within your budget.

This is the inherent flaw with new gTLDs - they were introduced to a) make ICANN money and b) to provide cheap .COM alternatives, but as you said, it hasn't worked out that way. Buyers don't like them to begin with, and will run screaming away once you put a price tag on it.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

I get what you're saying, but the example doesn't match what you're proposing... Your example company doesn't already have a website, but in your plan you're talking about approaching existing businesses with existing sites (likely on the .com extension) and trying to sell them a ngTLD. That's a giant leap for people that have never heard of these things.

And yes, I know education is a part of the plan, but if I were your potential customer I'd be very skeptical of the education due to your personal bias (and motivation). It's like the car salesman trying to convince me that I reeeeeally need the extended warranty.

No Joe...I never said my plan was to go to companies that already have a website and try to sell them a ngTLD. Take for example, if I have a booth at the worlds largest amateur golf tournament, I'd be sharing .golf and all my other domains mostly with people who don't have a website. And as for my personal bias, when you believe in something like I do, I'm selling the real thing, not an extended warranty. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't believe in it.

 

[bmugford]

Lots of business theory. People who are going to do stuff do it, they don't just keep talking about what they are going to do.

Produce some actual results and people will find you more credible. Until then it is just a bunch of talk.

You don't need a paradigm shift to sell .COM. The demand is there now.

Best of luck. Some of the largest companies out there have not been able to change consumer behavior.

Brad

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Brad....why do you even bother? How many businesses have you started? How many businesses have you named? How many of them have been successful? Apparently the .com folks haven't been listening. The domain/name business isn't rocket science...far from it. Like Kate said, old timers in this business are "riders", and not trend setters. Not a single old timer has come close to deterring my plans. I just got into this business nine months ago, and my plans are coming together. Sorry if they're not coming together as fast as you would like I'd suggest you take a break from my theory, and come back in six to nine months for a dose of reality. Cheers!

 

[JB Lions]

Brad....why do you even bother? How many businesses have you started? How many businesses have you named? How many of them have been successful? Apparently the .com folks haven't been listening. The domain/name business isn't rocket science...far from it. Like Kate said, old timers in this business are "riders", and not trend setters. Not a single old timer has come close to deterring my plans. I just got into this business nine months ago, and my plans are coming together. Sorry if they're not coming together as fast as you would like I'd suggest you take a break from my theory, and come back in six to nine months for a dose of reality. Cheers!

Not 6-9 months, next month - http://myrtlebeachworldamateur.com/what-is-world-am/tournament-agenda/

Looking forward to you sharing the results of your booth.

 

[bmugford]

Brad....why do you even bother? How many businesses have you started? How many businesses have you named? How many of them have been successful?

There are plenty of people with a great track record in business who have flamed out with domains. Being good at one thing doesn't mean you are going to be good at another.

You remind me of a start-up who uses lingo like disrupting markets, paradigm shift, game changer, etc. It is just a bunch of fluff.

The real visionaries and trend setters do it. The others just keep talking about doing it.

All that matters are results. One again, best of luck.

Brad

 

[Joe N]

No Joe...I never said my plan was to go to companies that already have a website and try to sell them a ngTLD. Take for example, if I have a booth at the worlds largest amateur golf tournament, I'd be sharing .golf and all my other domains mostly with people who don't have a website. And as for my personal bias, when you believe in something like I do, I'm selling the real thing, not an extended warranty. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't believe in it.

Rich, I get the impression you're one of those people who, when offered a choice between a handful of money and a haystack with a gold coin inside, would choose the haystack. You like the challenge, not the path of least resistance. And there's value in that! Every industry needs someone to push the boundaries.

I'm an easy money guy, but I respect your zeal. Also rooting for you and looking forward to seeing some results.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

There are plenty of people with a great track record in business who have flamed out with domains. Being good at one thing doesn't mean you are going to be good at another.

You remind me of a start-up who uses lingo like disrupting markets, paradigm shift, game changer, etc. It is just a bunch of fluff.

The real visionaries and trend setters do it. The others just keep talking about doing it.

All that matters are results. One again, best of luck.

Brad

Care to share ONE of the "plenty of people" who had been successful in other businesses and flamed out in the domain business? I'd really like to meet/speak to them especially if they flamed out due to attempting to sell and or develop ngTLD's. Who knows, I might even learn something

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Not 6-9 months, next month - http://myrtlebeachworldamateur.com/what-is-world-am/tournament-agenda/

Looking forward to you sharing the results of your booth.

JB...there's a chance I may not be able to make it to Myrtle Beach due to another family commitment like a nephews wedding. You may not be a family man, but you follow me so closely, I'm beginning to feel like you're part of the family Stay tuned....Rome wasn't built in a day!

 

[JB Lions]

JB...there's a chance I may not be able to make it to Myrtle Beach due to another family commitment like a nephews wedding. You may not be a family man, but you follow me so closely, I'm beginning to feel like you're part of the family Stay tuned....Rome wasn't built in a day!

I'm sure you can make it. Nephews wedding is just 1 day, booth rental is 4 days. I'm looking forward to the results next month.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

I'm sure you can make it. Nephews wedding is just 1 day, booth rental is 4 days. I'm looking forward to the results next month.

Thanks for the advice brother JB, I'm playing in a golf tournament the next two days at BBCC where I'm a lifetime member. Ever hear of Harrier Golf? HarrierGolf .com? Harrier.Golf?, Hash House Harriers? I'm sure you'll miss me over the next few days, but I'd suggest you spend some time researching my next project that ties directly into my .golf portfolio that appraisers for over a quarter of a million dollars. Hears a link that may give you and Brad a hint to what I'm up to: http://www.gthhh.com/ Cheers
374, member: 985974"]Rich, I get the impression you're one of those people who, when offered a choice between a handful of money and a haystack with a gold coin inside, would choose the haystack. You like the challenge, not the path of least resistance. And there's value in that! Every industry needs someone to push the boundaries.

I'm an easy money guy, but I respect your zeal. Also rooting for you and looking forward to seeing some results.[/QUOTE]

 

[Ollie3000]

Google is the key to ngtlds. If they do as they said back in 2015 and rank these in exactly the same way they do with .com then I see a bright future for some of the good extensions. People will see domains ranking next to .com in searches and thus educating the masses.

I like your passion @Bulloney and I hope it produces some good results.