new gtlds Headless.Domainer in a Topless.Bar

[betthelot]

Now I got your attention. I'm going to burst some myths about the new gTLDs. Its been nearly 2 years since the launch and what have we learnt.

The Registries (UniRegister, Rightside, Donuts, Tucows, Mind + Machines......)

1. ALL of them over estimated demand.
Remember, Mind+Machines saying in 2013, dot COM will be dead in 10 years. Their share price has halved since early 2014.
Frank Shilling said dot COM is going to be like AM radio in 20 years. Does anyone still believe that. Said in DNJ after the first year that he had been over enthusiastic about demand.
Donuts said renewals would be 80%, didnt happen, so they stopped giving out the data.
Rightside, again stock price has halved since early 2014. This month they said, to calm investors, that they will be spending $2million dollars on marketing to make up for the lag in lower than expected registrations.
Tucows Colin said they will get 1,000,000 registrations in first year. Was nearer 300,000. Great company, great marketing but way over estimated demand.
And Verisign stock, the registry for good old .com has increased 50% since the launch of the new gTLDs!

2. The Registries PROPAGANDA. (biased or misleading information)
@DanielNegari gave away names to inflate registration numbers and now is selling them at a loss, for 40 cents at some registrars. Anyone can sell a $10 bill for $9. Of course hes looking to make money on the renewals. All ccc.xyz have been brought out. Who the hell is going to buy 6j3.xyz on the aftermarket. Only one person, a headless.domainer in a topless.bar.

Frank Shilling the Evangelist of the new gTLDs. Smart guy but Im here for the domainer, so I will call him out.
Remember the build up to the launching of the new gTLDs, he was going to make all of the dot link names available at the basic registration price. So you domainers can get an amazing name at reg fee. Didn't happen. The good names he either reserved or registered them himself, to be sold at a premium. 360˚about turn or just misleading?
This is important Frank always says this
Big brands placed their internet presence on .com as it meant commerce, smaller brands and companies followed them into .com
Now we are going to see the same thing to the right of the dot , as big brands leads the way with smaller brands and other companies to follow leading to tens of thousands of new gTLDs.
Its a certainty.
Its Not Going To Happen. BMW will use .BMW and the much touted FOX NEWS will use NEWS.FOX. So what, it means nothing to us domainers. When the public see News.Fox, first they wont remember if its Fox.News or News.Fox and just go to FoxNews.com. They certainly are not going to be thinking this means there is a .online or a .link or a .xyz as I am from the next generation. Now the public see youtu.be or no_url_shorteners and just think its a clever hack but will still go to youtube.com and no_url_shorteners (Yes they had to changed their destination home page from the Lebanon ccTLD .ly to .com in 2011).
This is domainers number 1 hurdle when it comes to selling these new gTLDs, other than to headless.domainers, convincing a business to go with Furniture.Shop when there is a competitor on FurnitureShop.com.
number 2 hurdle is convincing them to put their online presence in the hands of an unknown, untrusted and unestablished TLD.
number 3 hurdle is telling them not to worry about emails going to [email protected] rather than [email protected].
BMW and FOX are fine they got the .com.
These are the 3 reasons why there has been little or no aftermarket sales by domainers to End Users.

3. Confusion - Imagine an enduser seeing .photography, .photo, .photos, .pics, .pictures, .camera .digital, or because he believes he is a genius goes for photography.guru or is it .ninja.
Its overwhelming and confusing so hes sticks with .com because that's what he knows and trust.
No no, lets say that he is that elusive enduser and likes the look of wedding.pics and you being the skilled salesman has got him over the 3 hurdles above. What is he going to offer, with so many options available $1000, why should he offer more. Then you hit him with the bombshell the renewals are $200 a year on this beauty.

4. Fools Gold - As the Evangelists keep saying they look good, they look natural. Yes to us domainers they do but to the general public they look like a hack, a shortner, a tinyURL, they will automatically believe you have the .com. Its ingrained in the public psyche. They dont look at them and think great I dont need to type .com, they really dont care.
This is going to be the hardest and I say an impossible task, is getting the general public to stop thinking only of .com or ccTLD and see and understand the new gTLDs, if you cant do that, businesses will shun the new gTLDs and keep using .coms. They only look good to us.

No doubt there will be domainers that make money from these new gTLDs but most will lose money. I see on here awful names and the charge into .xyz or .top but outside NNN.xyz or Keyword.xyz or LLL.xyz there is virtual no chance of an enduser sale and you are relying on the headless.domainer in a topless.bar.

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

...
If you still blindly believe 'its a matter of time' either your part of the .top registry or there is no hope for you.
...

In the case of .top it's a matter of time.

• That's not 'blindly believing' - thats simply foresight in my view.
• No, I am not from the .top registry.
• Yes, there is no hope for me (to take away my conviction).

 

[betthelot]

In the case of .top it's a matter of time.

Love your enthusiasm but there is no hope. Keep a tab of the renewal spend, that may bring some clarity of mind.
Good luck, you are definitely king of .top

 

[betthelot]

$25 - $3500. Average is just below $500.

Well done. You didnt answer my question twice, if the sales were to domainers. I can only assume they were all to domainers or virtually all to domainers. Good job nevertheless.

 

[Fancy.domains]

Well done. You didnt answer my question twice, if the sales were to domainers. I can only assume they were all to domainers or virtually all to domainers. Good job nevertheless.

I have answered it before on Namepros, but I can sure do it again. For these, I know the buyer is a company:

A .CLUB to a Dutch sport tech company
A .CASH to a American company in the adult industry
A .WALES to a information portal about Wales
A .YOGA to a British sport equipment company
A .BEER to a small British brewery / Beer brand
A .WORK to a British cloud storing company
A .EXPERT to a conference organizer (country unknown)
A .WORK to a german programming / IT company

 

[betthelot]

I have answered it before on Namepros, but I can sure do it again. For these, I know the buyer is a company:

A .CLUB to a Dutch sport tech company
A .CASH to a American company in the adult industry
A .WALES to a information portal about Wales
A .YOGA to a British sport equipment company
A .BEER to a small British brewery / Beer brand
A .WORK to a British cloud storing company
A .EXPERT to a conference organizer (country unknown)
A .WORK to a german programming / IT company

Impressive.
Didnt know there was a .expert to go with guru nijia pro, list just gets longer.

 

[sumosan]

Frank Shilling the Evangelist of the new gTLDs. Smart guy but Im here for the domainer, so I will call him out.

Frank Schilling is definitely a smart guy, but he is not sincere. He is not your friend. He is just another salesman. He did not hesitate to partner with Daniel Negari who inflated numbers to deceive domainers. That says a lot. Both guys will make a fortune and people who believe in them will lose a lot of money.

 

[Traveler]

Like it or not, the new gtlds are here to stay and more are on the way. Overtime they will be used more and more and gain traction. There will be a tipping point when the masses realize that anything can be to the right of the dot. It could be 5 years, 10 years, but it will happen. When it does, it will happen fast.

Having said that, most of the names I see on the threads here are garbage, even in the .com they mostly would be reg fee. The new gtlds are so overhyped right now to the point that people are registering not even second tier names, but names that never sold as a .com and will never sell as a new gtld.

 

[betthelot]

Like it or not, the new gtlds are here to stay and more are on the way. Overtime they will be used more and more and gain traction. There will most likely be a tipping point when the masses realize that anything can be to the right of the dot. It could be 5 years, 10 years, but it will happen.

Brilliant! You used the other term that failing businesses always use TIPPING POINT.
I was going to say earlier that they Evangelists will say its just a matter of reaching the tipping point but I could not find anyone who said it!

There is no guarantee that there is a tipping point from which time it goes mainstream. It looking like its just going to bomb at this stage. Into the third year and not even a blip on the PUBLIC radar.

Im waiting for the final term failing businesses always use. ECONOMY; once the economy picks up sales will be great.

TIME - TIPPING POINT - ECONOMY

 

[Traveler]

Brilliant! You used the other term that failing businesses always use TIPPING POINT.
.

Nothing against you, but there will most likely be a tipping point. I would rather things stayed the same, that would make things easier on me. I just see it coming and if I am wrong, great for me and everyone else invested in the .com. Everything will be as usual, but I will be buying a select few of great keyword combos if I can get them.

For instance dive.center, I really like that one. It makes sense, looks good on a business card and for reg fee. Now you could say that is worthless, I would disagree. Would you really not want dive.center in your portfolio? Just to see how this all pans out.

 

[JB Lions]

You can find even big companies which are using .top
Here are some few examples:

ROLLS-ROYCE
www.rolls-royce.top
https://who.is/whois/rolls-royce.top
Currently they use it as forwarding domain to their .com website.

OTTO
www.otto.top
https://who.is/whois/otto.top
Currently they use it as forwarding domain to their .com website.

ALIBABA
www.hitao.top
https://who.is/whois/hitao.top
Currently they use it as domain for their website.

+++

The .top domains which I have weren't held back because they are german and I was an 'early bird' - that's the reason. If you would know german language you would see how premium my german names are

+++

I wasn't talking about .blackfriday or .tattoo - I talked about .top

Your examples just show part of the struggle. That 2 out of the 3 big companies are just using them as forwarders to their .com. Common practice of buying up their name in different extensions.

As far as Frank and new gltds, and this has been gone over many times. A lot of newbies are pointing to Frank and what he says about new gtlds, want to be like him, admire him etc. And I think he's one of the best, if not best domainer. His opinions on new gltds should be obvious tho since he's selling them, they're going to be positive. He has employees to think about. But he made the chunk of his money primarily selling what? I'm guessing .coms. Anybody active in the Aftermarket knows he still buys .coms all day long. And when DNS releases sales, like this - http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2015/20150218.htm

.com dominant.

 

[DNScholar]

I think both sides of the discussion are right, but correctly it all pan out around 2020.

 

[betthelot]

For instance dive.center, I really like that one. It makes sense, looks good on a business card and for reg fee. Now you could say that is worthless, I would disagree.

Traveler, yes they look good. Thats why I call them fools gold. No serious business will buy it because of losing business and emails to DiveCenter.com. Ofcourse there is a market to the small business but they not going to pay much when they have so much choice like Dive.club. We are not seeing the big sales and a healthy aftermerket because looking good is not enough they also need to work.
Not losing traffic to a competitor
Emails not going astray to [email protected]
Advertising and marketing spend getting less return on the buck as traffic goes to DiveCenter.com or the ccTLD, DiveCenter.co.uk

Good luck to you - its a $500 name. Its just not the big seismic shift we were told it would be.

 

[betthelot]

I think both sides of the discussion are right, but correctly it all pan out around 2020.

Cant both be right we are at opposite end of the scale. Im saying the reason the Registries are now only saying give it time because they have flopped and its all they got left to argue with. We would have noticed a healthy aftermarket by now if as Frank Schilling predicted in 2014
Fortunes turn and are made in a second and this year fortune will favor those who participate. This coming year (more than any in the history of the domain name business).

It hasnt happened because businesses with money dont think they are a good buy.

 

[Fancy.domains]

Good luck to you - its a $500 name. Its just not the big seismic shift we were told it would be.

Much worse new gTLDs have been sold for 5 - 10K. I would personally price this name for (at least) $3K. The .COM version is probably a 5-figure name. Diveshop /dot/ com just sold for 20K.

 

[betthelot]

Much worse new gTLDs have been sold for 5 - 10K. I would personally price this name for (at least) $3K. The .COM version is probably a 5-figure name. Diveshop /dot/ com just sold for 20K.

Kohsamui I know you are the super salesman. BUT
DiveShop.com is worth so much more. Online ecommerce.
DiveCenter.com is at buy it now for $7k so no way is it AT LEAST $3k. Godaddy Premium

 

[Traveler]

Good luck to you - its a $500 name. Its just not the big seismic shift we told it would be.

How about cycle.works? Got it for reg fee, would you not want that in your portfolio? I get where you are coming from, but I think you may be missing an opportunity.

 

[betthelot]

How about cycle.works? Got it for reg fee, would you not want that in your portfolio? I get where you are coming from, but I think you may be missing an opportunity.

I like it - I just would not put a business on it. I may be missing an opportunity but I think there are much better opportunities in this space. Short .coms have been my play for years.
The risk/reward on the new gTLDs are awful in my book and looking worse as time goes on

 

[Traveler]

I like it - I just would not put a business on it. I may be missing an opportunity but I think there are much better opportunities in this space. Short .coms have been my play for years.
The risk/reward on the new gTLDs are awful in my book and looking worse as time goes on

I have made a site on a new gtld http://good.buzz/

Is that a mistake? I like the name and am going to run with it without paying a stupid price for that .com

 

[betthelot]

I have made a site on a new gtld http://good.buzz/

Is that a mistake? I like the name and am going to run with it without paying a stupid price for that .com

You are the perfect customer for such a new gTLD. Dont want to risk too much money, toe in the water but wants the name to look good and resonant. When it is a financial success and not just a life style social thing, you will then pay big bucks for GoodBuzz.com or another .com
This is exactly what they are great for and thats why domainers will have trouble making any serious money from them.

 

[Fancy.domains]

DiveCenter.com is at buy it now for $7k

As I can see it from here, the BIN is $10K?!

Never mind, Oil /dot/ center sold for £11,000 back in 2014, so you never know. However, .CENTER have not performed that good at the aftermarket (yet?).

I agree that the .COM version is worth a LOT more, at least for now and probably for many years to come. But, how it will be in 2025 or 2030, I have no idea. That it what makes this business exciting. I think no one could predict the LLLL chip craze even five years ago...

 

[kgul]

For the human beign new gtld & all new extensions are good or bad actually i dont know. I just want to ask 2 questions. 1st one is about trademark isue... In my opinion it will be more compicated...There will be more mycompany.rental mycompany.rentals mycompany.company rental.company etc... who will determine the rules. One name one trademark and 32500 extensions (lol) I think in future also there will be trademark for extensions 2nd one is about seo as we know search engines are controlling whole market now. then car.rentals has 2 keywords. cars. ... & rentals. ... so how will engines affected this ? Are they already affected ? i think not yet.. So how will ? note : sorry for my english

 

[betthelot]

However, .CENTER have not performed that good at the aftermarket (yet?).
I agree that the .COM version is worth a LOT more, at least for now and probably for many years to come. But, how it will be in 2025 or 2030, I have no idea.

We have had 2020 and now 2025, 2030. Any advances? Next we will hear its for my children not for me. One thing that is great about the new gTLDs they give people hope by the bucketful.

 

[Fancy.domains]

2nd one is about seo as we know search engines are controlling whole market now. then car.rentals has 2 keywords. cars. ... & rentals. ... so how will engines affected this ? Are they already affected ? i think not yet.. So how will ? note : sorry for my english

New gTLDs have proven (in so-called A/B tests) that they perform well in Google.

Some reading:

1. https://globerunner.com/com-vs-new-gtld/ (a little old though)
2. http://searchengineland.com/google-explains-how-they-handle-the-new-top-level-domains-tlds-225671
3. http://www.afilias.info/blogs/roland-laplante/new-gtlds-show-promising-seo-performance

 

[DNScholar]

I came to a conclusion that .COM will rule and all these new gtlds will act as a supporting extensions to .COM. The rationale behind this logic is lot of money went into creating ngtlds so neither will back down.

 

[deez007]

I think you have certainly made some good points about the new TLD's and you are spot on with most of the new TLD's being highly hyped up and over estimated in terms of value.

I do think that it's also important not to throw all the new TLD's in to the same category/basket. I actually think that out of all the blah blah blah new TLD's like .ninja / .xyz / etc... the two that stand out the most to me that could and will very likely start to increase in value are .online and .club , reason being is purely on the brand-ability of these domains. I mean for example. BMW.online - I think it can actually work from a branding point of view. Companies could start doing thinks like have their main website on their normal .com domain and their monthly/weekly newsletter or magazine on their .online domain and maybe like in the case of bmw they could have a "owners club" for existing BMW owners and that could be done on their .club domain.

There is no way of predicting whats going to happen and even so called experts don't really know for sure whats going to happen, nor can they predict what the market is going to do. I've learned that domaining is much like stocks/forex/economy as much as their are experts around all over the show they really don't know whats going to happen for sure.

This is why I think that .online and .club domains have a chance of actually taking off, is it guaranteed? HELL NO!! nothing in life is guaranteed. I do feel there is strong chance of them doing exceptionally well in due time. All it takes if for companies and people to start considering the possibilities and branding potential of TLD's like .online and .club - much like I have illustrated in the above BMW example. Thats just an example that I though of in a few seconds while typing this post ...I'm sure that once people start thinking out the box it will start catching on. The beauty here is that we don't need everyone to start climbing on board. The beauty of this is all it takes is for one or two large brands to climb on board... like BMW for example. Lets say they adopt the example I used above then once they start advertising their .online / .club domains and webportals and other big brands see this as well as their competitors....guess what happens? They are all essentially "sheep" and they will simply follow suit. Sorta like the "Monkey See, Monkey Do" mentality.