discuss .how showcase?

[pdevananth]

.how landrush period started...anyone have registered something?

 

[Taylor_C]

I agree with you that .how is better than those on that list and many more with the exception of .green, which I think is a great example of a new gTLD that will have a very bright future.

However just because .how is better than those provided doesn't mean it will succeed. In fact using the relationship of one tld to another is a metric that should not hold much weight when evaluating new gTLDs future success. Simply because we know there is no reason these new tlds need to succeed at all. Granted, thinking all new tlds will fail is an unrealistic expectation with all the money being pumped in and the backing from some of the tech giants.

What is the value proposition of .how? What value does it provides to domain owners?
It conveys the idea that the website is a "how to" or a guide of sorts.
This does seem useful, seeing as there are tons of websites already dedicated to such things.

I suspect where .how falls short, as do many other gTLDs is the target market. .how is an English word. The internet is global. Sure many people speak English, but how doesn't hold the same weight in countries where English is not the native language.

I suppose I would agree with you then that .how is good. I suppose the next question would be to identify if the popularity discrepancy between these new TLDs will be lenient enough to allow 'good gTLDs' to succeed.
I suspect that its an all or nothing game from our perspective. If the tld is not a 'game winner' I don't want to be holding onto any names with that extension.

 

[ChubbyDfat]

Just looking at nTLDstats and noticed that 458 (18.82%) of .HOW domains are parked.
That means that 81.18% are being utilized in some form or fashion.

@ Taylor_C
As far as the comment of .HOW not being the game winner and you do not want to be holding any names in an extension that is NOT the game winner, I am pretty sure I can call your bluff on that.
Utilizing current statistics I am sure we can both agree that .NET is NOT the game winner when compared in a field that .COM is competing however, I would hazard to bet that given the chance, you would opt to hold a premium domain name in .NET even though its clearly not the game winner.
Computer(dot)net
Sex(dot)net
Poker(dot)net
And the list can go on. I believe wholeheartedly that you would indeed hold onto any one of those names if given the chance even though .NET is a non game winner.

.HOW is a good extension with a current use within today's society. How to do pretty much anything is relevant in almost all facets of life today. We are in the information world and are constantly looking HOW to preform something, DYI (which is a how to guide), all manners of school work (again is a how to guide). It is nearly limitless in its uses *BUT* the big caveat is the monetization of the sites. How to sites do not lend as well to selling something as opposed to a commercial site.
So for that, the end users or domainer must be able to utilize site traffic to monetize the site. That is a staple that I fear many people (myself included) are not to familiar with and therefore shy away from it.

I made no qualms about stating that I know a bit about SEO and I can drive traffic to a site but I have no earthly idea how to monetize on that traffic. I am willing to bet that many are in the same boat as me and are more apt to pass over these types of domains for domains that have a MORE OBVIOUS end user (i.e. sales domains).

Just my thoughts.

Cheers

 

[RU]

I have only one .how domain, Registrar.How

 

[AMRO1001]

I bought more than 20 .How domains.

My intention to build websites on these domains, unless I get quite good offer for any of them.

blockwebsite
bowtie
buybitcoins
buyhouse
buystock
extramoney
findlove
fixcredit
gainweight
investmoney
latte
makefriends
paperairplane
paralegal
pharmacist
psychiatrist
repaircredit
sellhouse
socialworker
startblog
tradeforex
whitenteeth

 

[ChubbyDfat]

I bought more than 20 .How domains.

My intention to build websites on these domains, unless I get quite good offer for any of them.

blockwebsite
bowtie
buybitcoins
buyhouse
buystock
extramoney
findlove
fixcredit
gainweight
investmoney
latte
makefriends
paperairplane
paralegal
pharmacist
psychiatrist
repaircredit
sellhouse
socialworker
startblog
tradeforex
whitenteeth

Just an opinion but you may have gone a little overboard with your name purchases. One thing to keep in mind is that these are still NEW tlds. They have no proven track record nor will their value show up right away.
If you are fine with holding onto these names for a while (a couple of years), the far be it from me to question you however, you may want to consider trimming up your list a bit. Select only the ones that you want to work with and maybe try to get a grace delete on the others. Again, if you are OK with carrying these for several years then go with gusto.

Cheers

 

[AMRO1001]

Just an opinion but you may have gone a little overboard with your name purchases. One thing to keep in mind is that these are still NEW tlds. They have no proven track record nor will their value show up right away.
If you are fine with holding onto these names for a while (a couple of years), the far be it from me to question you however, you may want to consider trimming up your list a bit. Select only the ones that you want to work with and maybe try to get a grace delete on the others. Again, if you are OK with carrying these for several years then go with gusto.

Cheers

Yes I agree I bought more than enough, I bought the list above in February, so the grace period is over, I will build couple of websites this years, and it depends, if they rank well and produce income, I will renew all of them, if not I will drop some/most of them.

I think this domain have the potential to rank well to all the search queries starting with " How to ...", especially that this gTLD is by Google....

Thanks for the advice...

 

[ChubbyDfat]

So I am in a bit of a quandary here.
Several months ago... I have pulled all of my .HOW names from SEDO because they were being flagged as "MALWARE" by Google and there was threats from the registrar to cancel my domain names.
I guess there was something about SEDOs parking pages that Google did not like with the .HOW extension (an extension they own).
So I *thought* I had all my .HOW domain names removed. I have temporary holding sites on most of them.

I have not checked SEDO since. I only have 7 domains parked there. Its been long enough that I forgot my login information at SEDO... but that is a different story.

Anyway, long story short.
I have gone straight to end users for some of my domain names. The typical "I have a domain name, let me know if you are interested, we can work out a deal later" type of email.
I did not hear back from the end user via email, but I did get an offer via SEDO.

Somehow, "of course" the domain name that I find the perfect end user for is still listed over at SEDO.
Damn it... it is the only one that was left over there.

**Let this be a lesson to everyone... keep up on your listings**

So it is listed under "Make an offer" but also has a price tag. The offer was for the full price tag, which is a good offer BUT was an offer meant for a re-seller.

So what do you think? I am speaking in terms of etiquette here.
The "make an offer" allows me to come back with a price on my terms, BUT the listing did also show a price in which was met.

Again, the listing was not supposed to be there but it is my mistake for not making sure (refer to my above statement of "let this be a lesson for everyone...keep up on your listings".

What do you guys think?

Cheers

 

[Lexi]

i have 0

 

[ChubbyDfat]

I have an offer on one of my single letter .HOW domains. If it was one of the other single letter domains, I may have taken the offer and made 20x my money (in less then a year... good ROI), but this one so happens to be one that has a potential end user.

As I tried to state above, the name was not supposed to be listed (I thought I pulled them all from SEDO) but since I failed to check myself... I feel obligated to at least start the price volley.
So I made a counter offer and now the ball is in their court.

If there is a success, I will keep you updated.

Cheers

 

[pdevananth]

I have only 4
BigData.how
VirtualReality.how
Equity.how
Apply.how

and planning to sell asap..

 

[1NiteStand]

@ChubbyDfat,

If you list a price for the domain, and a potential buyer meets that price, should it matter if its a consumer or reseller?

Perhaps you could counter offer by saying "sorry, this price is for a reseller, your price is 25% plus" ?

Or you could just simple say "this price is outdated, and the listing on SEDO was supposed to have been delisted, but the name is currently available and the actual price is $xx,xxx"

The whole reseller vs consumer/end-user pricing game is a bit unfair actually, who's to say that resellers aren't endusers when they are using the names as products of their own.

 

[ChubbyDfat]

@ChubbyDfat,

If you list a price for the domain, and a potential buyer meets that price, should it matter if its a consumer or reseller?

Perhaps you could counter offer by saying "sorry, this price is for a reseller, your price is 25% plus" ?

Or you could just simple say "this price is outdated, and the listing on SEDO was supposed to have been delisted, but the name is currently available and the actual price is $xx,xxx"

The whole reseller vs consumer/end-user pricing game is a bit unfair actually, who's to say that resellers aren't endusers when they are using the names as products of their own.

Thank you, I have already turned around and made a counter offer a couple of days after I received the initial offer.

I made the mistake of not re-checking myself is the problem that I am trying to express.

Let me start of the beginning and see if I can clear this up. When I first purchased the domain names, I sat them at SEDO until I was ready to do something with them. In less then a month, I get notice from the registrar, that my domains (at SEDO) have been flagged as "malware" by Google and I need to clear that up or face the possible removal of my domain names.

Long story short, I got hold of SEDO and had them remove the "Zero Click" (which I saw a huge drop in payout) and decided to just remove the .HOW domains from SEDO all together.
I did just that (or at least I thought I did) back in February/March time frame and just put up simple sites on my domains.
About 2 months ago while doing a site update, I noticed a possible end user. I attempted to make contact with that end user via email (as stated above). Nearly 2 months go bye with no response, so I attempted one last email contact (this time with a .COM email address instead of my normal .CO so there is no confusion...just to be sure).
A few days later, I receive an email from SEDO stating that I have an offer on one of my single letter domains from the same country that the end user if from.

So of course (because I am an idiot at times) I happen to leave the one domain that I found a possible end user for still at SEDO with the original price (still at 20x my money) in which the offer was made for full price.

So I found myself faced with the decision of being an ASS and countering with a higher price because it just happens to be a domain in which I know I can get a high sum for or being true to my screw up and taking the full asking price even though it was NOT meant to be there.

I decided to be an ASS and put the ball in their court.

This was more of a "Dont make the same mistake" post then it is the possible sale of a domain post.

I will keep you updated either which way.
I am just kind of disappointed in myself for making a stupid mistake and then becoming an ASS to cover for my mistake.
20x the money is still good... but I am gunning for 200x the money.

I hope that makes sense.

Cheers

 

[ChubbyDfat]

So an update on this.

After making the last post (above), I decided to list one of my other single letter .HOW domains on SEDO.
I listed the key letter "R" for a "buy it now" price of $600 (20x the money I bought it for).

So I made another communication to the original offer on the first single letter domain and in that communication, I stated that I put up "R" with a buy it now price of the $600 they offered for my other single letter.

A few hours later, I receive notice that "R" has been accepted for the buy it now price of $600 (20x my money).

The question I have... is it the same people who made the offer on my other domain or is it one of the people who I sent an email out to (exact match domain) letting them know it is available??
We will find out when it all comes out in the wash and I will make another update.

So we can almost chalk up a sale for .HOW ...
I will let you know once we get everything turned around and transferred to make it a complete sale.

I consider this good news because it leaves my other single letter domains (2 left) still open and that one sale pays for my entire nTLD portfolio (as small as it is).

Anyway, just wanted to put this out there. Keep people posted on whats happening.
I dont see any sales for .HOW in namebio... so this may be the first one.

Hope that makes sense

Cheers

 

[brandnow]

Congrats on being the only sale for .How

 

[ChubbyDfat]

Congrats on being the only sale for .How

LOL... come with jokes. That is pretty funny (and sad) when you think of it.

On the other hand I am pretty sure I can probably make two more sales if I wanted but I am not ready to give them up so quickly. This is why I made "R" available at the offer price. Puts $ in my pocket while still allowing me to purse end users.

They are single letter domain names at reg. fee. Hard to find a single letter in the first place, not all registries make them available and even more difficult to (nearly impossible) to find them at cost.

I was fairly confident that I was going profit from these.
I am fairly confident that I can make profit on most of my names since (like you agree) I never pay more then reg. fee.
It is still all speculation. I am still hoping that the other single letter pans out with the end user I sent an email to. Given the nature of the company, I think that one would be the name to watch.

Thanks for the funny.

Cheers

 

[ChubbyDfat]

Just an update...

Its all but a 100% done deal. Sedo has received payment and the domain is in the process of being transferred. So in the next few days, payment will hit my account and I will consider the entire transaction finished.

However, I just want to point out something (food for thought if you will).

I saw a great sale listed on Namepros, you guys probably read it as well for a .TV name, which the owner sold for 12k euros (about 13k usd).
The thing that caught my attention on this was that the purchased the name as a drop for 1k (I am assuming euros???) and held onto it for a few years and sold it at a profit for 12k.

My mind automatically reads that has he has sold the domain for 12x his money and that is great money any any standard.

Now, this sale here is at $600 and on its face is nothing to write home about.
But to compare apples to apples, I have owned this name for about 8 months. I purchased it for $30 and I have now sold it for $600 (because I didn't want to sell the other name... but that is a different story).

So the way I look at this is, bought it for 30, sold it for 600 and I sold it for 20x my money. Its really not that bad when you look at it in those terms.

Just an FYI... had an offer on the other name for just under $1,200 through Sedo. I declined that one for other intended uses of the name.

There is something to be said about grabbing premium names at regular reg. fee.

Anyway, just wanted to share that bit of information and thought process with you.

Cheers

 

[Omriko]

I personally think the .how can be awesome (see about.com) .
Millions of searches for "how to"!
Anyway, here are mine:
GreenPower.how
registrar.how
register.how

 

[AMRO1001]

I personally think the .how can be awesome (see about.com) .
Millions of searches for "how to"!
Anyway, here are mine:
GreenPower.how
registrar.how
register.how

Yes, and some of the "How to" questions have a very high commercial value such as buystocks.how