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"

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Yikes, Rich. Sure hope that was a joke.


It's better than most of your names for sure. GOAT would be better.

Sure GOAT would have been better, but it was $116 (was already taken) and GOATS was just $2.39

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Yikes, Rich. Sure hope that was a joke.


It's better than most of your names for sure. GOAT would be better.

Joe....that wasn't a joke about Muhamad Atta living in Virginia Beach....according to the FBI he even cashed a $10,000 check at my local bank. Anyway, back to .LINK, what are some of your thoughts on JMCC's comments about the history of .link? While they're far from an endorsement, they do add some value, don't you think?

Would love to hear from other critics (Brad, Nick, MAD, Doc etal). It appears that .link is on the cusp of something pretty big along the lines of .xyz. What do you guys/gals/etc. think?

 

[Atone]

Perfectdomain.link is available reg fee.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Perfectdomain.link is available reg fee.

Thanks....there are lots of two word .link names still available. I own names like DomainBroker.link, DomainMarketplace and DomainAdvisor. Just today according to ntldstats.com 2,345 new domains were added, but not one of them was mine.

For the record I wouldn't recommend anyone purchase Perfectdomain.link...Why? Because PerfectDomain.com is already an active site, and even PerfectDomain.xyz actually forwards to it.

Occasionally I'll find a single word .link, but all the premium names that were available are gone now

 

[Joe N]

Anyway, back to .LINK, what are some of your thoughts on JMCC's comments about the history of .link? While they're far from an endorsement, they do add some value, don't you think?

His comments were fantastic, as usual. I appreciated them very much for the context, but if you saw added value in them for .link then that's great. Hope you put it to good use. Honestly, this is the kind of information I would want to find for myself before investing thousands of dollars in an extension.

It appears that .link is on the cusp of something pretty big along the lines of .xyz. What do you guys/gals/etc. think?

There's certainly no evidence to suggest it. 25 reported sales in 2022 and only 5 of them were over $1,000 (all but one of those in the very low XXXX range).

 

[bmugford]

There's certainly no evidence to suggest it. 25 reported sales in 2022 and only 5 of them were over $1,000 (all but one of those in the very low XXXX range).

Yeah, there is really no evidence or sign of anything big about to happen.
That view seems mainly just like wishful thinking.

.XYZ has had more total sales (225) and dollar volume ($706K) in the last (3) months than .LINK has had since 2014.

2020 - 35 sales / $56K
2021 - 32 sales / $82K
2022 - 25 sales / $21K

.XYZ is the outlier of all news extensions. If another extension was to randomly take off, why would it be .link over the many other options?

Brad

 

[ThatNameGuy]

His comments were fantastic, as usual. I appreciated them very much for the context, but if you saw added value in them for .link then that's great. Hope you put it to good use. Honestly, this is the kind of information I would want to find for myself before investing thousands of dollars in an extension.


There's certainly no evidence to suggest it. 25 reported sales in 2022 and only 5 of them were over $1,000 (all but one of those in the very low XXXX range).

Actually Joe.....JMCC's comments were pretty much confirmation of what I already knew. Having been an equity investor, it's always been a good sign when a company is buying it's own stock back, and that's exactly what Nova Registry has been doing.

When investing in "turnaround" ventures Joe you need to understand three things;

1. The Business
2. The Plan
3. The People behind the Business and the Plan

Joe, past performance is why I'm here

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Yeah, there is really no evidence or sign of anything big about to happen.
That view seems mainly just like wishful thinking.

.XYZ has had more total sales (225) and dollar volume ($706K) in the last (3) months than .LINK has had since 2014.

2020 - 35 sales / $56K
2021 - 32 sales / $82K
2022 - 25 sales / $21K

.XYZ is the outlier of all news extensions. If another extension was to randomly take off, why would it be .link over the many other options?

Brad

Brad.....i'm sure you meant .XYZ is the outlier of all "new" extensions. As you heard me say facetiously, "IF my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle".......that said, i think of .link like a broken down race car. One of my greatest personal hero's of all time is Joe Gibbs, the former head coach of the Washington Redskins (won three Super Bowls with three different QB's). Joe's done in Nascar what he did in the NFL. He's taken "average" cars with "average" drivers at best, and turned them into winners.

Domainers like yourself have said, ".LINK is no worse than .XYZ" just like it's no worse than .horse, .golf, .wtf etc. And If you believe that like I do, WHY WOULDN'T .link take off over the many other options?

Finally Brad....I'm no Joe Gibbs, but I have had my share of successes and failures, neither a result of "wishful thinking"......Happy New Year

 

[Joe N]

Actually Joe.....JMCC's comments were pretty much confirmation of what I already knew. Having been an equity investor, it's always been a good sign when a company is buying it's own stock back, and that's exactly what Nova Registry has been doing.

When investing in "turnaround" ventures Joe you need to understand three things;

1. The Business
2. The Plan
3. The People behind the Business and the Plan

Are you thinking of your domain name purchases as stock investments? I think I'm finally starting to see how you keep going astray. Fascinating.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Are you thinking of your domain name purchases as stock investments? I think I'm finally starting to see how you keep going astray. Fascinating.

LMAO Joe.....i'd say if you're following me, you're the one who's gone astray

 

[Joe N]

LMAO Joe.....i'd say if you're following me, you're the one who's gone astray

We agree on something.

 

[bmugford]

LMAO Joe.....i'd say if you're following me, you're the one who's gone astray

That is kind of a self-own.

Happy New Year.

Brad

 

[DN Playbook]

Most ngTLD's, .link included, serve a utilitarian purpose. They allow companies to create landers without compromising their dot com primary site. Others serve a specific market like .cafe, .live, .virtual, etc, that only make sense for those markets. Yet some others are adopted by specific regions. It is a very tricky game as a seller and you really need to do your research before you blow your money. You have to really give sales and/or usage stats if you promote an extension like .link.

 

[GoKaizen]

Great term for domains people don't want to use for a business or website.

One thing that makes .LINK different from most other new gTLDs is that it is a Truckstop TLD or a Gateway TLD. People don't necessarily go to a .LINK website but rather to a .LINK link to get to another website.

 

[HotKey]

Great term for domains people don't want to use for a business or website.

They don't?

Most ngTLD's, .link included, serve a utilitarian purpose. They allow companies to create landers without compromising their dot com primary site. Others serve a specific market like .cafe, .live, .virtual, etc, that only make sense for those markets. Yet some others are adopted by specific regions. It is a very tricky game as a seller and you really need to do your research before you blow your money. You have to really give sales and/or usage stats if you promote an extension like .link.

Weird. There's so many landers on dot-com too. Guess people will do their own thing.

I've also seen the only thing compromising people's dot-dom primary site, is their dot-com name of choice. Weird too, huh?

Often new G's are an upgrade. Crazy world.

 

[Keith]

Weird. There's so many landers on dot-com too.

Only difference between.com and .shit, I mean link… the entire world is aware of .com. Opportunists are aware of .link and that spells doom.

Good luck with the knockoffs

 

[branding]

Often new G's are an upgrade. Crazy world.

More often new G's are simply a bad choice. Pushed by registrars I may add.

I walked past a local store a couple of weeks ago using a twoword .store.

That's just silly and it hurt my eyes. I walked in, got to talk to the owner and brokered the EMD cctld for just under 2K within a day.

A lot of businesses are just clueless and misinformed.

 

[HotKey]

More often new G's are simply a bad choice. Pushed by registrars I may add.

I walked past a local store a couple of weeks ago using a twoword .store.

That's just silly and it hurt my eyes. I walked in, got to talk to the owner and brokered the EMD cctld for just under 2K within a day.

A lot of businesses are just clueless and misinformed.

Nice!

I find many B&M stores often use terrible choices, no matter the extension. It's not often a necessity for those type of venues, if relying on walk-ins. Same for local trade services, they have their base and the domain name is pure utility. Branding and memorability takes a backseat to word-of-mouth and craft experience.

 

[bmugford]

Often new G's are an upgrade. Crazy world.

I don't think many people are upgrading to .link though.

Brad

 

[jmcc]

I walked past a local store a couple of weeks ago using a twoword .store.

That's just silly and it hurt my eyes. I walked in, got to talk to the owner and brokered the EMD cctld for just under 2K within a day.

Just out of interest, are you in a country where the ccTLD is the dominant TLD? The .ccTLD and .COM generally have about 80% or more of the market share in most countries and the new gTLDs are competing with the non-core legacy gTLDs (.NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO) and other ccTLDs for that 20% or so of the market. Where the ccTLD is the dominant TLD in a country, people expect that a website targeting them will have a .ccTLD domain name.

A lot of businesses are just clueless and misinformed.

Most business owners are not domainers. They often go with what their web developers suggest. It isn't really a case of being misinformed so much as being uninformed.

Regards...jmcc

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Most ngTLD's, .link included, serve a utilitarian purpose. They allow companies to create landers without compromising their dot com primary site. Others serve a specific market like .cafe, .live, .virtual, etc, that only make sense for those markets. Yet some others are adopted by specific regions. It is a very tricky game as a seller and you really need to do your research before you blow your money. You have to really give sales and/or usage stats if you promote an extension like .link.

Regardless of whether we're talking an established business or a startup, few understand this industry like you, me and other domainers. That said however, and although you and I may disagree, I do have a modicum of credibility when I'm talking to a potential "end user" about domains. I'm happy to tell/sell an "end user" just how fucked up this industry truly is, and I can provide examples from personal experience.

Regardless of what any of you think or have been led to believe, the average "end user" doesn't have a clue what a TLD is However, herein lies the opportunity for me to market/sell a .link domain especially when the .com is neither available or simply unaffordable. Basically my spiel is that a TLD (anything right of the dot) is simply a means to an end (a website). Furthermore, a "link" that also happens to be a keyword according to Go Daddy, is a TLD that actually links/connects anyone to a website.

Finally DN Playbook, thanks for posting here. Please keep in mind that I'm not promoting .link to you or other domainers, and to a typical end user "sales and/or usage stats" are meaningless Thanks again.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Just out of interest, are you in a country where the ccTLD is the dominant TLD? The .ccTLD and .COM generally have about 80% or more of the market share in most countries and the new gTLDs are competing with the non-core legacy gTLDs (.NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO) and other ccTLDs for that 20% or so of the market. Where the ccTLD is the dominant TLD in a country, people expect that a website targeting them will have a .ccTLD domain name.

Most business owners are not domainers. They often go with what their web developers suggest. It isn't really a case of being misinformed so much as being uninformed.

Regards...jmcc

Curiously JMCC this thread seems to to be drawing a modicum of attention......i wonder why? As I just said to DN Playbook......most "business owners" don't even know what a TLD is However, therein lies a HUGE opportunity in my playbook. .link is simply a means to an end (website), and it's no more complicated than that Happy New Year!

ps. fyi, to go with Waterford.link, the latest binge buy registered VisitIreland.link

 

[jmcc]

Curiously JMCC this thread seems to to be drawing a modicum of attention......i wonder why? As I just said to DN Playbook......most "business owners" don't even know what a TLD is However, therein lies a HUGE opportunity in my playbook. .link is simply a means to an end (website), and it's no more complicated than that Happy New Year!

Likewise. The problem with business owners and domain names is that they often are exposed to a very limited number of TLDs. Mostly, it is the local ccTLD, .COM, .ORG and .NET. The .NET has been in decline as a first choice TLD since the mid 2000s.

ps. fyi, to go with Waterford.link, the latest binge buy registered VisitIreland.link

Ireland it is a complex market. The .IE ccTLD has about 324K registrations. The number of Irish hosted .COM domain names (Dec 2022 figure) was 126,785. There are approximately 9,951 .EU Irish hosted .EU domain names and 30,836 .UK domain names. There were only 45 Irish hosted .LINK domain names. It is doing better than .CLICK whick only has 35. The visitireland.link might be of interest to the tourism industry. The waterford.link one would need careful handling because of the Waterford trademarks (Waterford Crystal).

When a country becomes ccTLD dominant, how people think of domain names and URLs changes. They begin to identify with the ccTLD as being their TLD. That means that the extension becomes psychologically invisible because people expect that a business aimed at them will use the local ccTLD. The naming dynamics on the right of the dot also change in that business names and geographical keywords are more important. The simplest way to think about it is in like asking someone for directions to a shop. They may give the street name or, if in a different city, the city name too. They won't give the country name (the ccTLD extension). What may seem to be a good generic domain name in .COM may have no local context in a ccTLD. and people, including business owners, think in terms of local context.

It might be an opportunity but the main market for .LINK could still be the US. The problem is that there was very little effective marketing done for the gTLD when it was a Unireg gTLD and there's very little brand awareness of the gTLD. It might be the best mouse trap ever invented but if people don't know that it exists, they won't buy it. From the latest registration stats, the industry is heading for a few rough quarters. The 01 January 2023 .COM total (158,597,872) was down from that of 01 December 2022 (159,095,744). The latest ICANN registry report total (September 2022) for .COM was 164,806,555. The total on the Verisign Zone count page ( https://www.verisign.com/en_US/channel-resources/domain-registry-products/zone-file/index.xhtml ) for 01 January 2023 was 160,518,100. The ICANN registry reports are delayed by about 3 months for contractual reasons. However, the monthly net results .COM went negative a few times (more deletions than additions in a month) during 2022. Some of the ccTLDs have also lost regs over 2022. Some of it is due to the Covid regs washing out of the zones.

Regards...jmcc

 

[bmugford]

Ireland it is a complex market. The .IE ccTLD has about 324K registrations. The number of Irish hosted .COM domain names (Dec 2022 figure) was 126,785. There are approximately 9,951 .EU Irish hosted .EU domain names and 30,836 .UK domain names. There were only 45 Irish hosted .LINK domain names. It is doing better than .CLICK whick only has 35. The visitireland.link might be of interest to the tourism industry. The waterford.link one would need careful handling because of the Waterford trademarks (Waterford Crystal).

When a country becomes ccTLD dominant, how people think of domain names and URLs changes. They begin to identify with the ccTLD as being their TLD. That means that the extension becomes psychologically invisible because people expect that a business aimed at them will use the local ccTLD. The naming dynamics on the right of the dot also change in that business names and geographical keywords are more important. The simplest way to think about it is in like asking someone for directions to a shop. They may give the street name or, if in a different city, the city name too. They won't give the country name (the ccTLD extension). What may seem to be a good generic domain name in .COM may have no local context in a ccTLD. and people, including business owners, think in terms of local context.

It might be an opportunity but the main market for .LINK could still be the US. The problem is that there was very little effective marketing done for the gTLD when it was a Unireg gTLD and there's very little brand awareness of the gTLD. It might be the best mouse trap ever invented but if people don't know that it exists, they won't buy it. From the latest registration stats, the industry is heading for a few rough quarters. The 01 January 2023 .COM total (158,597,872) was down from that of 01 December 2022 (159,095,744). The latest ICANN registry report total (September 2022) for .COM was 164,806,555. The total on the Verisign Zone count page ( https://www.verisign.com/en_US/channel-resources/domain-registry-products/zone-file/index.xhtml ) for 01 January 2023 was 160,518,100. The ICANN registry reports are delayed by about 3 months for contractual reasons. However, the monthly net results .COM went negative a few times (more deletions than additions in a month) during 2022. Some of the ccTLDs have also lost regs over 2022. Some of it is due to the Covid regs washing out of the zones.

Regards...jmcc

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

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

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

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

Brad

 

[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