gTLD registrations have peaked. With a rocky road ahead, how long until the crash?

Worrying stats from nTLDstats.com - for the last two weeks, new gTLD registrations have been almost static, and are actually starting to decline. Where previously we saw 10k, 15k, 20k new registrations per day, for a sustained period now registrations have ground to a halt. In the two weeks to date we should have expected to see an increase of almost 350,000 domains, but in fact we've seen a LOSS of 7,644.

This is something that I've expected to see happen for months as the inflated figures of various registries begin to adjust - i.e. the low/no-cost "puff" registrations are dropped. .XYZ tried to combat this earlier in the year with their huge promotional event, but you can only do a bargain basement sale once or twice before people lose confidence.

I see this as a sign that the market has reached saturation. Registries have failed to communicate the real benefits of new TLDs while businesses and individuals are failing to adopt them. The number of active sites using new gTLDs seems to be tiny compared to the number of domains registered. This causes a huge problem for investors as the whole gTLD sector risks becoming contaminated.

Christa Taylor/dotTBA's analysis of the first six months of new gTLD performance on Circle ID brought to light some stark realities: a huge number of registries are operating at a loss, and if registrations continue to fall away, the writing is on the wall for many of these registries. I'm confident that we will see a number of registries cease operations in the next 6 to 12 months.

Total number of gTLD registrations:

July 12th: 22,951,202
July 24th: 22,943,558
Increase/decrease = -7,644 (0.03% decrease)

Even with only a 1.5% increase over the period (which is less than similar periods) we should have seen around 345,000 domains being added, bringing the total to around 23,295,470 so this is a startling difference.

Comparing similar periods from previous months:

June 12th: 22,071,306
June 24th: 22,531,238
Increase/decrease = +459,932 (2.28% increase)

May 12th: 17,513,791
May 24th: 18,016,647
Increase/decrease = +502,856 (2.87% increase)

April 12th: 16,726,767
April 24th: 17,030,054
Increase/decrease: +303,287 (1.81% increase)

Compare Christmas/New Year 2015/2016 (which might be expected to be a quiet period)

December 22nd: 10,987,060
January 3rd: 11,241,742
Increase/decrease = +254,682 (2.31% increase)

Same period last year:

July 12th 2015: 6,570,729
July 24th 2015: 6,676,608
Increase/decrease: +105,879 (1.61% increase)

 

The mistake is in taking all new gTLDs as single set. Some of these gTLDs have been in operation for less than a year and others for almost two years. The individual trends the gTLDs are the ones to consider.

Regards...jmcc

 

I think what will happen next will not be pretty. I believe that keyword.com prices will be up in the next 1-2 years.

 

solve all your worries and problems and buy com only.
you will then become fully and forever immune to such threads and news.

 

Heh. What do you think is going to happen with all those Chips over the next few months?

Regards...jmcc

 

Individual trends are important absolutely - and possibly THE most worrying thing about this is that when you drill down and look at the numbers, .xyz has taken a big hit - shedding over 70k domains in just a few days. .club have also suffered a downturn, dropping around 7,000 in a few days.

If two of the "poster" new gTLDs with huge marketing campaigns are suffering this sort of reversal in fortune, there's no hope for the smaller ones. Speculative and/or impulse registrations are clearly dropping away as people realise that .whatever is not the path to profit that they thought.

In addition, .science and .party (both Famous Four operated) have been performing particularly badly - .party has lost more than 14.3% of its entire registrations in the 7 day period of July 18th to July 24th. Interestingly, .science lost almost exactly the same percentage of registrations over exactly the same period.

Of course, you could look at the downturn and say ".xyz have dropped more domains that most registries have even registered"...

 

Ngtlds aren't going anywhere. .com will be diluted and considered just another extension in a few years. Don't spend your money on .com. Way overvalued imo.

 

And there is a lot more to come. The problem with freebies and discounted registrations is that the renewal rate for freebies, in particular, is approximately 5%. That means that 95% or so of those freebie registrations will not be renewed and will be dropped. The .xyz registry and other registries understand this and try to balance paid registrations with discounted regisrations. There is always a spike in deletions when these discounted registrations come up for renewal.

Regards...jmcc

 

Come on, lets keep this real !

With over 1,000 new gTLDs released and .com is still growing stronger !

 

I am sure he was joking.

 

Oh no, this is not a joke !

 

I read it many times and analyzed carefully.. it is with utmost certainty I am able to declare he utilized very advanced form of irony and humor. these things can be subtle sometimes. luckily I own a subtle mind.

 

I have analyzed this members posts and can verify that he/she is very much a lover of new gTLDs.

I own an analytic mind

 

For example, why would you own greenenergy.com if you could own green.energy. The "com" isn't needed anymore.

 

Nothing has changed since .mobi .asia .tel .xxx etc.
Same game, different players. Many hopeful, few winners.

New domainers don't realize that History keeps repeating itself, and even experienced domains are falling for the trap. New extensions = background noise.
Inflating the numbers does no good, only domainers are impressed by numbers. End users are hardly paying attention. Maybe they know better ?

 

Conclusion of this report:
Domainers start being less optimistic and buy/renew less new TLDs.

 

First reason that comes to mind is that no one has ever heard of ".energy"

People trust .com. And nothing that has happened so far with any ngTLDs has even hinted at that changing.

 

This is pretty compelling to me.

 

Without understanding the Mathematics behind it, it is just numerology. Many of those domains have no working websites and will drop without ever being used.

Regards...jmcc

 

Registrations make money for registrars, not resellers.

Let's see a chart comparing ngTLD aftermarket sales to .com aftermarket sales. Is the former starting to take a bite out of the latter?

 

why?

because "greenenergy.com" was originally registered by some lucky person back in 1997 for reg fee

compared to "green.energy" which had premium yearly registration cost in $,$$$ range.


as an example "green.live" has a $3,000 premium yearly registration fee @ enom.

and that's just one reason.


imo....

 

$1 regs

 

My very own "numerology"...
2xx nTLD-domains since 2014 without any sales... just 2 low offers for whole period.

 

so many domainers are terrible at viewing domain names from the consumer's point of view. If you ask 10 random people to visit mysite.ntld, 9 will say "dot what the hell is that?"