new gtlds Even experts are investing in new gTLDs

[Arpit131]

Konstantinos Zournas of OnlineDomain shares his investment in new gTLDs that amounts to approximately $50,000.
He shares on his blog, that he has bought 565 new gTLDs so far, for a total of $50,000 which averages to about $88 per domain name.
He has sold two new gTLDs : 360.agency for $2,500 and city.tips for 8,500 Euros.

Check out what the experts like him are buying and selling.
The article may be found here.

As per my personal experience, I happened to speak to some people who recently started in Domaining, got lured by the new gTLDs and their highest flips are among the new gTLDs that they have sold for over $2,000.
I see some bright light here, for them. Perhaps they would do even better when they switch to .COMs! Good Luck to them.

How many flips have you made in new gTLDs?
Any experience that you would like to share with the community?

 

[wot]

Haven't you noticed this before now? Been a benchmark for 'many' for awhile now. Go figure..

I had a domain blog and I was an expert, now I no longer have the the blog and I am now an ex pert!

 

[JB Lions]

Konstantinos Zournas of OnlineDomain shares his investment in new gTLDs that amounts to approximately $50,000.
He shares on his blog, that he has bought 565 new gTLDs so far, for a total of $50,000 which averages to about $88 per domain name.
He has sold two new gTLDs : 360.agency for $2,500 and city.tips for 8,500 Euros.

Check out what the experts like him are buying and selling.
The article may be found here.

As per my personal experience, I happened to speak to some people who recently started in Domaining, got lured by the new gTLDs and their highest flips are among the new gTLDs that they have sold for over $2,000.
I see some bright light here, for them. Perhaps they would do even better when they switch to .COMs! Good Luck to them.

How many flips have you made in new gTLDs?
Any experience that you would like to share with the community?

How do you see bright light in losing money? If he believed in that bright light, his buying would reflect that. He's buying less and less as time goes on, not more. Over the last 7 months, only a little over 4 domains a month. That's very telling. Read the comments over there. Selling only 2 out of 565 domains. When your renewal costs are more than your sales, that's not exactly a good plan. I don't see anything good in the stats posted.

 

[BostonDomainer]

I invested heavily in the .network with some of the top keywords suitable for the extension.

Putting money into new gTLD's is pure speculation (not investing) at this point.

...and when that "point" comes... you're too late. Pure speculation, as you put it, is investing; it simply means one has a higher risk tolerance.

 

[D. Wells]

So if an "expert" jumps off a bridge I'm suppose to jump too? Domainers get too caught up in what the so-called "experts" are doing....

 

[vivaldi]

Anyone into this knows of all the high profiles who speculate in new g's. And I do wonder why he didn't post some of his best ones.

If you want to earn big money you need to take risks, simple as that.

 

[Kate]

Pure speculation, as you put it, is investing; it simply means one has a higher risk tolerance.

There is fine line between investing and speculation
The problem is that domainers are gambling, it's not the same thing.

Those who bought premium .com's in the 90's only to drop them after one year since there were few sales can't be happy. Do you think everyone are so stupid that they expect a good ROI after one year in this?

I think many domainers are actually hoping to resell their names fast enough, simply because they don't have adequate funding for the next 5 years and will not be able to sustain losses.
Holding a portfolio will drain your wallet when you are making few or no sales.

I would even make a case for selling early, if you can.
What we have seen with other extensions, is that they don't appreciate over time, it's the opposite.
The best time to sell is early, when they are freshly released and there is initial excitement (and hype).
See what happened with .mobi: domains formerly valued in the 6-figure range have become worthless.

But today, there is no enthusiasm for the new extensions. No hype.
I think the outlook is grim.
If consumers are not interested now, it's unlikely the mood will change significantly over time.
People should have been buying new TLDs like crazy if it's such a brilliant idea...
Why hope for a secondary market when there is no primary market.

An investor I knew advised putting 20% of your money into each of five different "buckets" of risk. On one end was your super safe, cash equivalent fund such as CD's. At the other end was your "Roll the dice" money.

This kind of advice doesn't apply well to domaining, because domain names are illiquid assets vs the financial instruments that can be traded, bought, sold, redeemed more or less efficiently.

Simply put: there are few TLDs that are investment-grade. And I mean .com and mature ccTLDs. Not new extensions.
The rest is speculation gambling.

 

[wot]

What the new gtlds certainly seem to have done is suck up the money that was the domainer to domainer market making a huge dent in secondary sales.

 

[Fancy.domains]

Hello,

In my opinion a good domain is always a good domain and a good domain will always be able to sell. Some will sell for $XXX. Other's for six, seven or even eight figures.

- Show.biz is an excellent domain. Showing.biz is not.
- Craft.beer is an excellent domain. Car.beer is not.

At least in my opinion.

The difference with .COM is that it works with almost any keyword(s) and that the value of a .COM is so much higher in general. At marketplaces such as Sedo it is easy to see that many people have overrated the value of their new gTLDs. I have done this myself at times. Many of them will never be sold in the aftermarket at all.

It is pointless to compare an aged and trusted extension like .COM with super-niched and totally new such as .YOGA, .POKER or .ESTATE.

 

[NameYourself]

As far as high profile, if you're meaning the person who wrote the blog post:

February-March 2014 (2 months): 335 domains
April-May 2014 (2 months): 139 domains
June-September 2014 (4 months): 60 domains
October 2014 - April 2015 (7 months): 31 domains

Averaged out per month:
167.5 domains a month
69.5 domains a month
15 domains a month
4.4 domains a month

Notice how that's trending down? Big time. Going from 167 new domains a month to 4, looks like a loss of enthusiasm to me.

If these statistics are true, I find it very indicative of this individual's outlook. One of the biggest mistakes a domain investor can make is not fully realizing the full cost of a domain investment, taking into account the total of all future years' renewal fees. This can really add up with .coms (and they only cost $8.50/yr). I can only imagine with most of these priced around $30ish/yr for non-premium ones how fast that will add up.

The thing is, on the premiums, ones you even pay an extra several hundred or so to reg in early registration (+ an additional inflated renewal fee) the mounting costs will be amplified even higher, not to mention when you shell out so much initially for it, dropping such names or finally selling at a loss at some point will be even harder because you have so much more already vested in.

The reason for the slow down with the investor within the article, even myself is because of the recent trend of massive high reg fees. During the first launches you could reg a premium at the normal reg fee. Sure some went to auction but many didn't.

Now, one year later, another example, you can't reg even reg a .video LLL for less than $150 US per year and if you search a decent term it really jumps.

This tells me the registries themselves are the investors and slowly but surely they are closing the gap between anything that might be a profit margin for the secondary domainer, shifting as much of those profits as is predictable directly into their own hands. As someone on here mentioned, the registries are getting smarter. Don't forget they can always up their prices for top names, once they no longer need the initial investment that was so eagerly supplied by domainers. That's worst case scenario, IF a market develops for a tld and is capable of becoming successful. If a big enough one doesn't, then it switches back to lower and lower prices so domainers can buy in again. If that happens, its because they couldn't make the end user sales themselves.

 

[dordomai]

Sure, but about 350,000 of those were given away to Network Solutions customers for free, without they even ordering them. Another 200,000 were almost free at Asian registries.

i think it was more than that. The top two asian registries were they were given away almost free have 300.000 registrations alone and there may have been other asian registries running these promotions.

They have 16,674 Godaddy(30+% market share) registrations. so it appears that the average Joe in the US doesn't buy these. Most are from asia. If you go to the asian registrars you can see that most of them feature .xyz on their homepage where it appears to be priced very low i would say. Yuan and Yen are worth far less than USD. (I use Google translate, don't rely on that) So far when i was able to find the price it was usually almost free but don't take my word for it and do your own research or talk to someone who understands the language.

here is a list of most of the top .xyz asian registrars with current pricing:

Chengdu West Dimension Digital Technology Co., Ltd. (west263.com)(45,946 regs)
current price: 8 CNY (1.29 USD)

Xin Net Technology Corporation (xinnet.com)(174,195 regs) current price: 12 CNY (1.93 USD)

GMO Internet (onamae.com) (138,705 regs) Can't figure this out but i read they had cost $2.

Alibaba Cloud Computing Ltd. d/b/a HiChina (net.cn) (26,412 regs) current price:12 CNY (1.93 USD)

Foshan YiDong Network Co., LTD (72e.net) (14,239 regs) current price: 8 CNY (1.29 USD)

Todaynic (23,948)- Another asian registrar. Can't figure that price out.

Total over 400k registrations from asian registrars. It looks like it's mostly an asia play at present.

A LOT over the last 2 or 3 months from my knowledge. But right before the deep discounts at Chinese and Japanese registrars.. there was still something like 700,000+ registrations.

personally it wouldn't surprise me if it were 1/10 of that figure. My uneducated guess is that without deep discounts and Netsol and other Voodoo it's less than 100k. I would guess 50-75k. I don't think they stand a chance against .web. Perhaps they will be more successful in asia. I don't think .web will be too popular there. It will take more than giving away $1-2 dollar domains though.

if you look at the largest US based registrars:

Godaddy (Global Market share 30%) 17k regs
Enom (Global Market share 8%) 5.6k regs
Tucows(Global Market share 7%) 4.6k regs

They have 45% market share combined and a total of 27k .XYZ registrations.

Compare that with .club - 227k regs, 4th largest nTLD:

Godaddy 71,417
Enom 30k
Tucows 6.5k
Total: 107k

or with .guru - 71k regs, 11th largest nTLD:

Godaddy 41,240
Enom 6k
Tucows 2.5k
Total: 50k

.XYZ has a very aggressive marketing strategy and they should get credit for that. Time will tell if it will work out for them. Still i can't believe that some are accepting the reported numbers at face value. Domainers should know better than that.

I just visited Gandi.net a large european registar and noticed that they run .XYZ promos there. .link and .science do the same thing.

gandi.net/domain/price/info?currency=USD

Gandi.net is not a discount registrar, a .com costs $15.5 there.

.XYZ. costs $5
science approx. $3.6
link $6

They sell themselves at 70-80% discount compared to other extensions that is why they get registrations and not because of the extension. Folks register them because they are cheap.

 

[cocaseco]

Kind of hard to pay the rent with one though.

All true, but I see domaining as a lot more like gambling and just like in gambling you shouldn't be betting your rent money or your kids food. but if you have the nut covered and feel lucky, go for it. Somebody is going to win on the new gTLD's. Beyond that the only other thing we know is the you can't win if you don't play.

As for the guy decreasing his sales of course they would decline as the time went on, so did the domain quality. Day 1 lot of opportunity, day 200 not so much. Besides he sold less than half a percent of his portfolio and he has recouped 16% of his investment. He doesn't need to sell all 500+ of his domains. At the current run rates if he sells only 14 more domains, He has recouped his investment and still has over 500 names on the balance sheet. That same balance sheet that he can borrow against to potentially fund more domains etc. To pay the reg fees alone, he simply needs to sell a few each year. The guy has a record of selling domains, so I don't think the thought of selling just slightly more than one domain a month for the next year unnerves him. In all likelihood he will do better than this scenario and will have positive cash flow from these gTLD's alone for many years. If in the end he still has to dumb 400 of them, he made a better return than many investments today, and the balance will be the basis for an operating loss deduction for the better years.

 

[silentg]

So someone has to own a blog to become a gtld / domain expert?

 

[biggie]

hope....

,mobi > everyone will use .mobi on mobile phones, not, never happened

,ws > great, means website

.pw > oh, great for professional website

.asia > big region, plenty potential end-users

.co > big overstock sale, will replace .com, not, didn't happen

add 300's more .whatevers to the mix and hope for the future is still the same....

 

[garptrader]

My personal experience over the last six months - have sold more domains which were not .COM than I sold which were .COM - even though I hold more .COM domains than non-.COM. I do not own any new TLD domains but perhaps one can say there is some willingness to acquire domains which are not .COMs if the price is right. The key takeaway though is that all of those sales are low $XXX and if you find yourself paying premium renewals on a portfolio of new TLD domains hoping some end user is going to pay five figures for them, you are probably delusional. People buy alt TLDs because they don't want to pay a lot of money for a domain and the moment you quote a high price they now have a LOT of alternatives. Try typing in your domain's primary keyword/s into Godaddy Auction's search tool and see how many competing alternatives exist. How does your domain's price / quality compare? Now put yourself in the shoes of a potential buyer with dozens or maybe hundreds of options? Why would they choose your domain and pay $XXXX for it?

 

[NameFit]

Hi - I have followed this thread very religiously and I feel that we are missing an important angle here - user/consumer/visitor. What makes an extension/domain popular is he visitor and his/her word of mouth and not the site owner. They are the ones who drive the popularity.

Let me bring up a user scenario. I go driving out, on a van, I seen signs for

gocars.com
then I drive further, then I see go.cars
then I I see cars.ninja
then I see autocars.com
then on radio I hear cars.auto
then on TV I see ad for auto.cars

What do yo think is going through my mind. I think I am going cars.nuts!

Do you think I will remember any of these names, so what will be my starting point when I get to my computer? I have couple of options -

i) I can search in google just 'cars' or 'auto' and I will see what Google wants me to see and not what I want to see
ii) type-in directly the site name in browser, where do you think I will start?

I will leave it to you since you are the user!

 

[interassets]

I personally think it's a great move on his part. In a few years that portfolio will be worth a lot more!

 

[BostonDomainer]

... and if they can't even sell .com they should definitely refrain from buying new extensions for resale.

.

I love this point because it's true. If you can't sell a .com, this isn't for you. It's the newcomers in the industry who will suffer and it's because of a lack of experience. A lot entered the new gtld with already bad .com names and have no idea what they are doing. When I see names like Cloud.bike registered (no offense to the owner) you know something is wrong. I started domaining in 2003. I've had my share of learning experiences in diving in new extensions or cctlds too early or too late and plain 'ole not knowing what the heck I was doing. Now I know what sales strategy to apply, what keywords will likely move, how to price realistically yet reap a nice profit, what to avoid, when to sell, exit strategy and so on. I learned from my .whatever mistakes which allowed me to be able to capitalize big on the .mobi craze that came in 2006 (and subsequently ended). It was simple, in and out with strong premium names. People thought just because it was backed by "experts" such as Google, Vodafone, Visa, Microsoft, Ericcson etc that it would succeed.... well we all know the rest. Experts don't drive the domain industry though they certainly can influence its in the short term- demand drives an industry. Right now the demand for new gtlds is among domainers and a few into technology and a few risk-loving ventures- that is not a very large base. So take caution, listen to the people who aren't wet behind the ears on the forum.

I still believe this is a great investment opportunity IF you are not risk averse, IF you can afford to ride the wave, IF you have some years under your belt, and IF you had a solid business plan. One strategy I employed for leverage was to buy the .com (or is I already owned it) to get the new gtld. One example is Open.Network owned the .com, suites the extension perfectly, BANG execute. A .com new gtld pairing was a no-brainer strategy. So hopefully some readers on here take something in from these posts. Good fortunes to all.

 

[RogueWriter]

The insane crowding of new ones will only increase coms values.

I disagree, the plethora of new extensions will hurt the second tier .com market in the long run and leave the top .com relatively unaffected, imo.

 

[mhdoc]

An investor I knew advised putting 20% of your money into each of five different "buckets" of risk. On one end was your super safe, cash equivalent fund such as CD's. At the other end was your "Roll the dice" money.

The problem I saw was people didn't understand risk well. They thought they were moving from the least risky bucket to the next higher risk level. Looking at what they invested in, I thought they jumped all the way to most risky.

I also saw a banker quoted as saying bankers get rich by lending where the perceived risk is much higher than the actual risk.

I think all of these apply to domain "investing" these days and everone has to figure out which work for them. It certainly makes for interesting times.

 

[brandnow]

I agree that buying ngtlds are a form of gambling.

Fortunately, I am not a high roller when it comes to risky investments. I have found it better to invest slowly and wisely and really limit your budget. I have been so tempted to purchase "good" ngtld domains with renewal costs. Thank goodness I have resisted, and instead focused on inexpensive and premium quality ones that I plan to hang on to for 10+ years if need be.

I think some domaineers are being outright scammed or tricked by these new registries into wasting boatloads of money on insanely high renewal fees for regular domains on some extensions and out of this world costs for so-called "premium" names. But just like buying cigarettes, if you're an adult then you can choose to make your own decisions to buy or not. :D

 

[cocaseco]

So someone has to own a blog to become a gtld / domain expert?

Or sleep at a Holiday Inn Express....your choice.

 

[DomainVP]

A good gTLD is worth the investment...
A bad gTLD is not...

It's interesting how much this topic stirs the nest.

There will never be a gTLD worth more than .COM unless it benefits SERP, like domain hacks do.

 

[mad409]

The reason for the slow down with the investor within the article, even myself is because of the recent trend of massive high reg fees. During the first launches you could reg a premium at the normal reg fee. Sure some went to auction but many didn't.

Now, one year later, another example, you can't reg even reg a .video LLL for less than $150 US per year and if you search a decent term it really jumps. Another example:

app.video
3,375.00 USD
Renew: 3,375.00 USD

Those who got in early and are holding like myself have made a better long term investment than anyone that's suckered into these new high purchase and renewal fees.

So as explained within the article his drop in purchases is the same as many, up charging has gotten out of hand. As always JMO...

 

[Fancy.domains]

Hello,

How can anyone of us KNOW whether new gTLDs will be (more-or-less) valuable or accepted by end-users in the future? Not many of us could predict the future for .COM and .NET in 1995! Most of us did not even care... Or am I wrong?

I have been writing about it before, but I have sold +20 new gTLDs to both domainers and end-users. I will continue to do that