discuss .LINK binge continues

[ThatNameGuy]

".LINK is no worse than .XYZ".....like the .com loyalists despising the .xyz insurgence, the .xyz loyalists despise the .link insurgence.

While most of the really good "single word" .link domains have been registered still a few remain. For example, the day after Thanksgiving I was able to register Thankfulness.link that happens to be no worse than Thankfulness.xyz or Thankfulness.com.

In the way of an update.....domains under management aka DUM has grown from 200,000 to 221,000 since May, and 1,500 of those I've registered. In addition, i have it from some reliable sources that "Good News is Coming"

 

[branding]

I see your point about Network.link vs. Networking.link, but I'm sure you're not familiar with all the potential uses for either?
That said, I only paid $118 for Networking.link, and it renews for the same amount.

Well, like stated. I can see it in use but you'll have to ask yourself, who will buy it for a decent enough number to make it worthwhile to invest in? Since its $118 a year... Say you sell it for mid $xxx, add 10 year renewals. That's a good budget to get you started looking for a decent .com at the aftermarket which renews at just $10/year with much more certainty when it comes to selling probability.

As I'm sure you know I own many more Premium names like Hollywood.link that I've been told should be more valuable than Networking.link. And because I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and opinions, what do you think, especially considering that Hollywood is over a TRILLION dollar industry. Thanks

I dunno... You tell me:
https://trademarks.justia.com/owners/hollywood-chamber-of-commerce-2490482/

 

[Sam1234]

Intuitively, LINK seems better than XYZ for a lot of things (combine with the name of any common product. but you will never compete with the XYZ marketing team, or the effect that fake sales and heavy money laundering have on general sentiment.

Seriously though, "thankfulness link"? For people who are looking for thankfulness? Who do you think would buy that?

 

[branding]

Then how was I to interpret this word for word quote from you; "Well, like stated. I can see it in use" did i somehow take that out of context branding?

Seriously branding....you also posted a link to some Hollywood TM's that were logo™ only marks. And what was the point you were trying to make? I must say that went over my head because I'm pretty familiar with TM and Patent law. I'm not a lawyer, but I have filed for, received and hold several TM's in my name.

Just reread my post and check how I split up where I quoted you and you'll get it I'm sure.

Regarding the TM. Yes, You've got that right. Now look at all the classes it's registered in and ask yourself, do I want to go there?

Hard pass.

Do you have a problem with monster branding? I met him personally once in Vegas, and we both happen to be Christians. His quote comparing .LINK to .XYZ pales in comparison to what others in the industry are saying about Swetha and .XYZ......would you prefer that I quote them or is it just monster you don't like?

You really should be keeping track of current events in this business Richard. Monster/E owes millions of dollars to domainers and are unable/unwilling to cough up the money.

So yes, both as a registrar and Christian he's lost any and all credibility in my book.

 

[Joe N]

Now back on topic....another friend of mine Marek Eckhaus from Prague owns the domain Sex.link, and I wonder if you or any of your friends can tell me if it's any worse or any better than Sex.com from a technical perspective?

I have a better question (let's see if you've been paying attention in your five years on here):

What other factors are even more important than technical usability when it comes to selling domain names?

I may invite him to join the LINK gTLD Users Group I just started on Linkedin. What do you think?

I think that then there would be at least two people in your user group who have never sold a domain name. Oh sorry... I mean two people who "don't divulge their sales publicly".

 

[branding]

Rob.".....correct me if I'm wrong branding, You're following me according to NP.....right? I don't know if you're a loan follower or part of the team...it's a pity really I would suggest that you unfollow me if you feel you're just wasting energy. Addiction is a strange behavior that maybe you can get help for. Maybe you could get some help at Counseling.link, unfortunately Counseling.com is closed for business or maybe it's just for sale

I have a lot of addictions, truth be told, but following people is not one of them. I follow exactly 0 people on SM, namepros included.

I don't even follow the brightest of people you have encountered in this thread.

I am however grateful for their contribution as their content resulted into me making better business decisions and ultimately making me more money.

As for following, I just don't care. I stumble upon these discussions by 'accident'.

 

[bmugford]

Those were a lot of words that had nothing to do with what I asked.

Why don't you find a partner first, then make a plan together, and then spend the $15K to get it off the ground?

Why do you keep repeating this same pattern of buying mountains of domains and then dropping them?

I feel like we have been hearing about this partner search for about 5 years now.
A partner is not going to be a miracle worker.

What do you expect a partner to do exactly to bring value to .link, or .online, or .homes before that?

Step 1 - Register lots of domains.
Step 2 - ?
Step 3 - Make lots of money.

All you have to do is figure out step 2.

I agree with Joe. It is probably time you open your pocketbook and pay to get whatever you want off the ground.

It is a waste of time and energy to just register domains, not list them for sale, then let them expire.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

What could of been Rich.......

With the budget you had/have you could of built an impressive portfolio of .com | 1 word .org | 1 word .io or any other decent extension..... even one or several outstanding one word .com domains for the money you have spent - you had/have the pockets to build a really strong portfolio.....

You know what they say about pride?......swallow it, stop fighting these perceived injustices, stop rebelling against what works to try and prove a point and do the simple things - I'm dam sure if you did this and followed the good advice that people have shared you will do very well.......which would be nice to see....

Buy a good domain and pay someone to set up a good website, if you don't want to use Afternic or Sedo... you can even get them to list your domains on there and set up Escrow and/or DAN for payments for you - invest in quality domains and then use LinkedIn and any other vehicle you want and put that marketing expertise to good use.....

People have spent a lot of time sharing their expertise with you - helped me learn a few things following these threads for the last few years....hopefully the penny drops at some point

Yeah, it is a lot easier to make sales when you go where demand is.

If your business model requires a paradigm shift to work, that is kind of swimming upstream for no reason.

Brad

 

[Beezy]

Anyone who is registering these one word domains in lesser extensions might be behooved to study...

In this case it's 2 word domains.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

I would love to see you actually follow through on one of these projects or development ideas.
Development is hard. It often takes a reason passion to do it.

(I'm assuming you mean a real passion.)

But yeah - Preach!!

I'm typing code into my website as we speak. It's a ride... one that I reckon might actually kill me. It is all consuming but a wild ride...

 

[Joe N]

On this point... having a partner is an awful idea as a business plan. I can't think of anything worse .

Indeed. Why give up your control just to save some money on development and data entry?

@ThatNameGuy - You of all people (with all your previous experience running businesses) should see the value in spending some money to hire a few of the right people to do the technical work you require to get something off the ground.

 

[jmcc]

I have been to Ireland multiple times. The only domain extensions I have ever seen advertised there are .IE and .COM.

It is a similar situation with other markets in Europe too, Brad,
The .IE is by far the most advertised. The .UK (There is a considerable TV market overlap between Ireland and the UK. Most of the UK TV channels are available on Irish cable TV (since the 1970s) and via satellite TV and off-air in some areas.) is probably the third most recognisable after .IE and .COM. The .EU is not widely used and the Irish hosted .EU websites have a lower web usage than .BIZ. The UK market (.UK) and the German market (.DE) have two of the largest ccTLDs in the world.

If someone thinks they are going to sell .LINK domains to an Irish market they are in for some serious disappointment. I mean, that is probably not isolated to Ireland though.

The .LINK is, according to the country of registrar breakdowns, US dominated. Much of its market, especially resale, will be in the US.

The entire problem here is you need a paradigm shift to new extensions, and even then to .LINK instead of the countless other options.

The most similar recent(ish) launch would have been that of .MOBI and it was intended to be the TLD for the mobile Internet. That gTLD has been in decline for a few years now. It was overtaken by technology and the launch of the Apple iPhone. There are only 346 Irish hosted .MOBI. Most of those are brand protection registrations. The 01 Jan 2023 count for .MOBI was 279,548.

.XYZ is really the only new extension with any consistent resale traction whatsoever.

Resale, perhaps. But in terms of usage it isn't good. It only has 101 Irish hosted. XYZ domain names. The .IRISH had 814 Irish hosted regs. Even that finds it difficult to compete with .IE even though the reg/renewal fees for a .IE can be up to 30 Euro/Dollars.

There is nothing really that unique about .LINK that would place it above other obscure extensions that never took off.

Like many of the 2012 round of new gTLDs, it is a solution in search of a problem. The Truckstop TLD nature makes it somewhat different but it really needed a lot of expensive marketing when it launched. It still does if it is to gain any market awareness. One possibility would be to try tie it in with IDN (Non-Latin character domain names) domain names as an easy redirect for those without the relevant charactersets on their keyboards. But that gets into other markets and requirements.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Joe N]

Good questions Will.....if you notice I happen to be on NP restriction and as such I can't change my signature domains. With regards to the ™ a former partner (lawyer) of mine happened to do some intellectual property law to include trademarking. While I've trademarked several names myself via Legal Zoom, he was going to do this for me but he unfortunately passed away a few years ago.

Moving on to Cheesecake Realty. Have you ever heard of Lemonade Insurance?.....see Lemonade.com and you'll see what Lemonade has to do with insurance (zero) very similar to what Amazon has to do with the packages that are delivered to your door. Anyway, cheesecake is an awesome gourmet desert that most realtors I know would love to have as their signature

All good questions Will, and you have yourself a Happy New Year!

Rich, for a guy who claims to be a master of naming, your lack of brand name awareness is mind-boggling.

Lemonade - Clearly a play on the expression "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Beautiful, clever, and extremely well-suited name for an insurance company.

Amazon - The largest river... the largest rainforest... the largest store. Bezos picked this name to represent being large and diverse. Another great name with a very clear link.

The question asked by @WillW is solid. How on Earth does cheesecake connect with real estate in a clever or brandable way? Could you invite one of the many realtors you know on here to explain why they would love to use it as a brand?

 

[Recons.Com]

Amazon - The largest river... the largest rainforest... the largest store. Bezos picked this name to represent being large and diverse. Another great name with a very clear link.

Another reason for the choice is that Bezos wanted "az" in it. To indicate the complete index of all books (and eventually other products). So much so that there logo is an arrow connecting a to z.

 

[jmcc]

With regards to the keyword "fresh", check out where FreshFruit.com lands. I happen to own FreshFruit.link, but whether it be Pineapples from Hawaii or Oranges from Florida you'll have to admit that "fruit" is a big deal, especially "fresh fruit"

The phrase 'fresh fruit' is popular. However, you seem to be going overboard with the whole Semantic Web idea. I've spent the last few days crunching the keyword data for approximately 788 million domain names. Good domain names tend to be registered across many TLDs.

A lot of TLDs see many one year wonders. These are domain names that are often registered at a discount, not renewed and never reregistered. Approximately 65% of 2021 .LINK registrations will not be renewed. While it is not the worst of the new gTLDs, the problem is that it hasn't the volume, and therfore brand awareness, of new gTLDs like .XYZ or .CLUB. A quick comparison between the 01 December 2017 and 01 December 2022 zone files for .LINK shows that 83.21% of 2017 domain names are not in the 2022 zone file. As a group, 80.88% of New gTLD domain names from December 2017 have been deleted. With .COM, the deletion % is 37.58%. While there has been an ownership change on .LINK, it is not quite in the same league as the legacy gTLDs. It is not as bad as .LOAN which went from 2,163,338 in December 2017 to just 2,247 registrations in 2022.

The last thing I'll share with you is that I just connected via Linkedin with a Jim Monteith whose business title shows he's been 15 years with "Linkedin Automated Outreach" Ironically he reached out to me so I can't tell you where it's headed, but I can assure you that .LINK will have something to do with it. Thanks again jmcc!

Don't think that he is from Linkedin.

The next round of new gTLDs could see Linkedin registering its own gTLD and selling example . linkedin type domain names.

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

Thanks for the detailed statistical analysis. Very interesting.

Man that drop on .loan is incredible.

Brad

Those are the Quick Delta 5 percentages. They measure the number of domain names from the old zone file that are still in the recent zone file. Of the 2M or so domain names from December 2017, only 2,247 of them were left in the December 2022 zone. Most of the registrations in .LOAN back then were on Chinese registrars. Alpnames was there too but about 1.8M were on Alibaba. They were discounted registrations and were not going to renew at full fee. The December 2022 count for .LOAN was 7,213 but the collapse in volume is still amazing.

The plural, .LOANS is an Identity Digital gTLD and didn't use discounting. Of its 3,462 December 2017 regs, 1,879 were still in the December 2022 zone. That's only a 45.73% deletion. The .LOANS count was 5,486.

TLDs are not unchanging monoliths and some of the new gTLDs can go through almost complete zone replacement in a year. That's an indication of speculative registrations and heavy discounting.

The ccTLDs and the legacy gTLDs tend to be better in terms of retention. When used badly, discounting can destroy web usage in a TLD. From running full TLD web usage surveys on the new gTLDs at the time, I think that .LOAN rarely had more than 3K developed websites. The rest were either inactive or Chinese gambling/porn affiliate landers.

Regards...jmcc

 

[JB Lions]

I don't know how old your Dad is sonny boy, but my partner who helped me start AcSel.org in 1978 had a computer science degree from LSU. When I brought him into the organization the name of our company was "Accounts Receivable Management Corporation" which yours truly changed to AcSel in 1982.

Regardless of your rhetoric, I'm just as creative and capable of starting and naming businesses as I was 50 years ago. In fact.....I'm Better

You know how many times you've mentioned AcSel.org? 32 times:

https://www.namepros.com/search/344812/?page=3&q=AcSel&o=date

Like I said, Groundhog Day. Take the time you spend telling the back in my day stories and work on today, get some decent landers for all your domains.

 

[jmcc]

I crunched the cross TLD figures for .LINK (and the new gTLDs and .COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO/MOBI/ASIA) from the 01 January 2023 zonefiles. It is basically the DNA of .LINK in that it counts the number of .LINK domain names also registered in .COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO/MOBI/ASIA and the number of domain names in each category that are still available in .LINK gTLD.

http://www.hosterstats.com/link-new-gtld.php

The most valuable domain names, and brand protection regs, tend to be registered across the gTLDs. The .MOBI and .ASIA have been declining in registrations and the .BIZ and .INFO have been losing ground due to the increased renewal fees but brand protection regs tend to be C/N/O/B/I.

Regards...jmcc

 

[bmugford]

Flipping domain names or warehousing them to create scarcity adds nothing to the industry and merely allows those engaged in this questionable practice to enrich themselves at the expense of consumers and businesses."

But Rich, isn't this what you are trying to do as well?

Aren't you buying domains to take them off the market, because you see value in them? Your plans are to eventually profit I assume.

Honestly, who cares what some person from Verisign said. They don't own .COM, they are simply allowed to operate it under a no-bid contract.

It is kind of hilarious Verisign talks about adding "nothing to the industry", when they simply raise prices because they can, by having a monopoly via a no-bid contract.

If the contract was put up for public bidding, there is no shortage of qualified companies who could operate it. The prices would likely come down drastically.

Their entire business model is built on a foundation of crony capitalism, not innovation.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

@ThatNameGuy - While we're talking about your latest initiative, do you have any updates for us on these ones?

"Simpli"

.Golf

Outbound marketing


.Club
"if you're trying to tell me the 250+ .Club domains that I recently purchased for $1 each, that appraise for tens of thousands of dollars, and that I also have a business model/plan for, you simpli don't understand anything about risk" (link)

"757"

.Homes

.Realty

.Online

 

[Joe N]

The post by @Joe N really illustrates how Rich has jumped from idea to idea and extension to extension, doing the same thing over and over again with the same results.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Brad

It's fascinating seeing them all together like that! And if he had taken one or two of those ideas individually and followed through, they could have had some chance at success.

The thing about these "outside the box" efforts in domaining is that you really need to commit time and effort to them to see if they bear fruit. How long was Swetha building her .xyz portfolio before it started taking off? Five years?

Same with the early pioneers of the industry. How many years did they spend holding on to names while people laughed at them?

@ThatNameGuy, you do indeed have some interesting ideas that are worth pursuing, but you seem to get easily distracted. Is it possible that in your former businesses, it was actually your partners who "made something happen" while you funded the projects and thought up new ideas?

 

[bmugford]

It wasn't long after I arrived here at NP that I was falsely accused of cyber squatting for which I never got an apology. I'm sure you recall the incident Joe, and one would think you might have apologized on behalf of the industry, but that was obviously above your pay grade.

Rich, it's comments like these that make me wonder if you have a full grip of your mental faculties. Firstly, what on Earth do Verisign's comment have to do with the years-old issue of you being butt-hurt over a single person's remarks? And second, when did I start representing the domain name industry to the extent that I would offer an apology on its behalf to an over-sensitive grown man who can't seem to fight his own battles (lame and unimportant as they may be)?

Rich, since I am the totally real and not fictional at all official domain ambassador, if you want to fill out the following form we can go ahead and get the official process started.

On a serious note, why should @Joe N be expected to apologize for the entire industry for some random event you were offended by years ago?

Just like Elsa said, Let It Go.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

@ThatNameGuy -

I think you've made it clear now that you are deliberately avoiding the questions meant to help all potential and existing .link investors/resellers following this topic. Your posts in this thread made it seem as if you were seasoned in this niche and that readers should follow your advice. I may have been mistaken by the context of your replies/posts, which led to my sincere attempt to learn more from you with the questions I outlined.

Taking a closer look, your posts appear to be more promotional, geared to try and get NamePros members to visit the domains you link drop in a majority (if not all your posts).

I would advise readers of this thread to not take any of your .link advice at this point (At least until you have some verifiable sales or development experience in the .link niche).

Please try not to mislead any newer .link investors/resellers.

I wish you the best in your .link ventures. Please consider some of the advice some more seasoned members have offered and don't be to quick to sweep the knowledge they offer under the rug.

Most of us are here to conduct serious business. I am not sure what @ThatNameGuy is here for other than just attention.

Every one of his threads goes the same direction...

1.) Talk about how great he is and all his past (irrelevant to domains) accomplishments.
2.) Namedrop to make him seem more important and credible.
3.) Quote others, often out of context, as if they are endorsing him or his business model.
4.) Spam a bunch of domains he owns.
5.) Talk about how everyone else is a "hoarder", but not the guy with 1500+ domains and limited (if any) sales.
6.) Talk about how messed up the domain industry is and repeat the one Verisign quote over, and over, and over, and over again.
7.) Rinse and Repeat.

There are people actually trying to help him, you know people who have had far more success in this field.

Brad

 

[Joe N]

Yes and here are a few more two word gems;

TeeShirts
Nextdoor
Hindsight
HomeSales

note....GD and DAN are asking upwards of 30K for the .xyz equivalent of these two word names. Also note that I paid just $2.39 for these names and they renew @ just $10. Good luck Robert27

Rich, don't forget that GD and DAN are not the ones listing those names. They simply provide the platform and marketplace. There are some very hopeful individuals behind each one of those listed prices. Don't fall into the newbie trap of thinking that a high asking price translates into any value whatsoever.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

I wouldn't register things based on whether they are no worse than .xyz... I would register them because I believe they're something someone else wants to buy.

 

[Joe N]

The math doesn't apply to Rich, because he's a visionary.

Yes, visionaries always have an expected STR of 100%*

*after their names are actually listed...