- Impact
- 32,429
http://www.domainingblog.com/2005/09/special-edition-report-tv-domain-name.html
Many believe this is a dot com world and to a certain extent this is a partial truth. The king of all extensions is surely the most desirable in the domain name market of past, present and most likely the future but don’t be fooled there are other major markets in the world of domaining. For instance, there are many countries where ccTLD’s are very popular and widely accepted. Germany’s .DE, ccTLD, is the second most registered domain name in world nearing the 10 million .DE domain names registered marker. England’s .co.uk is another very popular and widely accepted ccTLD. Other popular ccTLD’s include; India’s new ccTLD, .IN, France’s .FR, Japan’s .JP, China’s .CN and Italy’s .IT just to name a few.
Now let’s not forget the tiny South Pacific nation of Tuvalu with it’s red hot ccTLD, .TV. Less than two weeks ago Travel.tv sold for $65,000 while Mail.tv sold for $35,000 and these are not even close to the highest reported sales of all-time. It was rumored that Golf.tv sold for $600,00 in years past but can not be verified. Other top reported .TV sales include; China.tv, Free.tv and Net.tv, all which had $100,000 price tags.
Why so much fuss over this tiny island country of just 11,636 inhabitants ccTLD? It’s simple really, the acronym TV is known around the world as the abbreviation for television, this acronym has no language barriers. It is without question one of the most recognized two letter combinations in the entire world and we all know the world has an incredible fascination with their beloved televisions. In fact in many countries throughout the world watching television is their favorite past time. From one study we saw it showed that an average person in a particular country watches TV for nearly 30 hours on average per week. That’s nearly 1,000 per year, nonetheless this a lot of time to devote to the tube.
The correlation? The market is absolutely enormous, so enormous in fact that the California-based company that partnered with Tuvalu ended up selling their share to VeriSign, operator of the .com and .net extensions, after claiming to sell more than 450,000 .TV domain names in December of 2001. This made the tiny island country of Tuvalu quite a bit of money (millions upon millions), enough in fact to build new roads and infrastructures. Now in the hands of VeriSign the .TV extension has been taken to all-new levels.
For companies and .TV speculators/investors the renewal fees are just a tad higher than for dot com’s, ranging from $29.99-$49.99 per year depending on the registrar. Seems fair enough but believe it or not VeriSign has marked a premium on many of the best names. For example if you want to register Comedy.tv, which is available at this very moment, it would cost you a whooping $100,000 per year in annual renewal fees, some even have premiums up to $1,000,000 per year for names like Business.tv. GreatDomains, premium domain name brokerage, currently has over 300 premium .TV domain names listed for sale including Trips.tv for $250,000 and Cinema.tv for $200,000.
The .TV extension is only now really starting to take off in a bigger way as large corporations such as the MLB are you using it to stream live Major League Baseball games at MLB.tv. Major televisions such as TNT are now using the .TV extension for their Internet presence. Many infomercials and made for television product companies are also using the .TV extension more and more on major television networks. All of this exposure is making the .TV extension more recognizable to the average person and the .TV extension is beginning to become more and more accepted each and everyday. With this acceptance comes an increase in traffic and more importantly value.
There was recently an incredibly informative sponsored thread on the .TV domain name extension at one of the top domaining forums, NamePros. We were so fortunate enough to get together with the thread’s creator and .TV connoisseur Raymond Hackney of 3Character.com for a short Q&A.
Here is what he had to say:
Q: db – When did you begin investing in .TV domain names?
A: RH – 2003, although I followed since 2000.
Q: db – What do you think of the two recent .TV sales of Travel.tv and Mail.tv?
A: RH - Elequa is the best .TV domainer on the planet, IMO . They are great names with the integration of computer and TV someday you may very well check your email on your TV, so I think that a great play. Travel is a very big market too so a lot of possibilities, IMO.
Q: db - From a traffic stand point what kind of results have you had with your best .TV domain names? Do you expect the traffic to increase in the future?
A: RH - .TV domains do get traffic, people think they don't but they do and I think they should keep getting traffic as more stations and companies use them.
Q: db - What do you think of the premiums that VeriSign charges for some of the .tv domain names? Do you think that this helps or hurts the .TV marketplace and why so?
A: RH - Goes both ways, many domainers do not like .TV, especially for this reason of premium pricing. So they are expensive but you have less competition. Think how much competition on a drop for a good LLL.com or a good keyword.
Q: db - What do you think the future beholds for the .TV extension?
A: RH - I think you will see continued use growing pretty rapidly. In England TV stations use them more and more each day. There will be naysayers but they cannot deny the fact that TV is the most popular and well-known 2-letter combination on the planet. If you speak Mandarin you know what a TV is, Greek you know what a TV is what it means even if you speak no English.
Q: db - What kind of advice could you give to other .TV domain name speculators/investors to help them become more successful?
A: RH - You have to be right in this extension more than any other. What I mean is you will not sell a bad reg to another domainer in a forum and get back your $30. If you buy a premium name you will certainly not get back the premium price. You must focus on END user needs. It should go with the ext, be intuitive. Examples; LCD.tv, Plasma.tv, Ten.tv Watch.tv See.tv. Focus on technology such as IP TV, programs but be careful for trademarks. Focus on numbers, I believe every country has stations and they are numbered three, six, ten, etc. Focus on popular things on TV such as sports, cooking, leisure. It is better to own 1 great .TV, yes, they are expensive but that is better than 25 so so .TV names. Focus on developing, especially if the name is intuitive it will stay with people i.e. branding. Remember it is about 4 to 1 most people can register a .com for $7 a .TV for $30 so that ratio you have to be aware of one bad .TV reg is like four .com. When you can reg the ****tv.com too, you will notice that TravelTV.com and MailTV.com were regged with the two .TV names always get the set. Gives you leverage with an end user, you get both sets of traffic. Major companies are mixed; SPIKETV.com, TNT.tv, SPICETV.com, CN8.tv, so even major companies are split on how to use them. If you have both you have control.
Without question .TV domain names can turn into successful investments or websites. The proof is how they say in the pudding. If you get the right .TV domain name you could make out quite well on your investment. Many have already turned reg fee .TV domains into five, even six-figures. Really, this is only the tip of the iceberg as the .TV extension is only going to become more recognizable to the general public from this point on. Like Raymond mentioned, be sure to get domains that have a direct correlation to the extension and try to always get the *****TV.com to accompany your .TV for more leverage and a full market share on the namespace.
Happy .TV domaining to all!
Source: NamePros.com
What does everybody think about the .TV domain name extension? Do you currently hold any .TV domains and if so, how many? What .TV domains do you hold and how much have they been speculated or appraised to be worth? What do you think the future has in store for the .TV domain name extension?
Please share all of your thoughts about on this topic by commenting on this post. Also, feel free to start up a conversation about this topic in the chat box or chat room.
Domaining Blog
"The Place Where Domainer's Blog"
DomainingBlog.com
Many believe this is a dot com world and to a certain extent this is a partial truth. The king of all extensions is surely the most desirable in the domain name market of past, present and most likely the future but don’t be fooled there are other major markets in the world of domaining. For instance, there are many countries where ccTLD’s are very popular and widely accepted. Germany’s .DE, ccTLD, is the second most registered domain name in world nearing the 10 million .DE domain names registered marker. England’s .co.uk is another very popular and widely accepted ccTLD. Other popular ccTLD’s include; India’s new ccTLD, .IN, France’s .FR, Japan’s .JP, China’s .CN and Italy’s .IT just to name a few.
Now let’s not forget the tiny South Pacific nation of Tuvalu with it’s red hot ccTLD, .TV. Less than two weeks ago Travel.tv sold for $65,000 while Mail.tv sold for $35,000 and these are not even close to the highest reported sales of all-time. It was rumored that Golf.tv sold for $600,00 in years past but can not be verified. Other top reported .TV sales include; China.tv, Free.tv and Net.tv, all which had $100,000 price tags.
Why so much fuss over this tiny island country of just 11,636 inhabitants ccTLD? It’s simple really, the acronym TV is known around the world as the abbreviation for television, this acronym has no language barriers. It is without question one of the most recognized two letter combinations in the entire world and we all know the world has an incredible fascination with their beloved televisions. In fact in many countries throughout the world watching television is their favorite past time. From one study we saw it showed that an average person in a particular country watches TV for nearly 30 hours on average per week. That’s nearly 1,000 per year, nonetheless this a lot of time to devote to the tube.
The correlation? The market is absolutely enormous, so enormous in fact that the California-based company that partnered with Tuvalu ended up selling their share to VeriSign, operator of the .com and .net extensions, after claiming to sell more than 450,000 .TV domain names in December of 2001. This made the tiny island country of Tuvalu quite a bit of money (millions upon millions), enough in fact to build new roads and infrastructures. Now in the hands of VeriSign the .TV extension has been taken to all-new levels.
For companies and .TV speculators/investors the renewal fees are just a tad higher than for dot com’s, ranging from $29.99-$49.99 per year depending on the registrar. Seems fair enough but believe it or not VeriSign has marked a premium on many of the best names. For example if you want to register Comedy.tv, which is available at this very moment, it would cost you a whooping $100,000 per year in annual renewal fees, some even have premiums up to $1,000,000 per year for names like Business.tv. GreatDomains, premium domain name brokerage, currently has over 300 premium .TV domain names listed for sale including Trips.tv for $250,000 and Cinema.tv for $200,000.
The .TV extension is only now really starting to take off in a bigger way as large corporations such as the MLB are you using it to stream live Major League Baseball games at MLB.tv. Major televisions such as TNT are now using the .TV extension for their Internet presence. Many infomercials and made for television product companies are also using the .TV extension more and more on major television networks. All of this exposure is making the .TV extension more recognizable to the average person and the .TV extension is beginning to become more and more accepted each and everyday. With this acceptance comes an increase in traffic and more importantly value.
There was recently an incredibly informative sponsored thread on the .TV domain name extension at one of the top domaining forums, NamePros. We were so fortunate enough to get together with the thread’s creator and .TV connoisseur Raymond Hackney of 3Character.com for a short Q&A.
Here is what he had to say:
Q: db – When did you begin investing in .TV domain names?
A: RH – 2003, although I followed since 2000.
Q: db – What do you think of the two recent .TV sales of Travel.tv and Mail.tv?
A: RH - Elequa is the best .TV domainer on the planet, IMO . They are great names with the integration of computer and TV someday you may very well check your email on your TV, so I think that a great play. Travel is a very big market too so a lot of possibilities, IMO.
Q: db - From a traffic stand point what kind of results have you had with your best .TV domain names? Do you expect the traffic to increase in the future?
A: RH - .TV domains do get traffic, people think they don't but they do and I think they should keep getting traffic as more stations and companies use them.
Q: db - What do you think of the premiums that VeriSign charges for some of the .tv domain names? Do you think that this helps or hurts the .TV marketplace and why so?
A: RH - Goes both ways, many domainers do not like .TV, especially for this reason of premium pricing. So they are expensive but you have less competition. Think how much competition on a drop for a good LLL.com or a good keyword.
Q: db - What do you think the future beholds for the .TV extension?
A: RH - I think you will see continued use growing pretty rapidly. In England TV stations use them more and more each day. There will be naysayers but they cannot deny the fact that TV is the most popular and well-known 2-letter combination on the planet. If you speak Mandarin you know what a TV is, Greek you know what a TV is what it means even if you speak no English.
Q: db - What kind of advice could you give to other .TV domain name speculators/investors to help them become more successful?
A: RH - You have to be right in this extension more than any other. What I mean is you will not sell a bad reg to another domainer in a forum and get back your $30. If you buy a premium name you will certainly not get back the premium price. You must focus on END user needs. It should go with the ext, be intuitive. Examples; LCD.tv, Plasma.tv, Ten.tv Watch.tv See.tv. Focus on technology such as IP TV, programs but be careful for trademarks. Focus on numbers, I believe every country has stations and they are numbered three, six, ten, etc. Focus on popular things on TV such as sports, cooking, leisure. It is better to own 1 great .TV, yes, they are expensive but that is better than 25 so so .TV names. Focus on developing, especially if the name is intuitive it will stay with people i.e. branding. Remember it is about 4 to 1 most people can register a .com for $7 a .TV for $30 so that ratio you have to be aware of one bad .TV reg is like four .com. When you can reg the ****tv.com too, you will notice that TravelTV.com and MailTV.com were regged with the two .TV names always get the set. Gives you leverage with an end user, you get both sets of traffic. Major companies are mixed; SPIKETV.com, TNT.tv, SPICETV.com, CN8.tv, so even major companies are split on how to use them. If you have both you have control.
Without question .TV domain names can turn into successful investments or websites. The proof is how they say in the pudding. If you get the right .TV domain name you could make out quite well on your investment. Many have already turned reg fee .TV domains into five, even six-figures. Really, this is only the tip of the iceberg as the .TV extension is only going to become more recognizable to the general public from this point on. Like Raymond mentioned, be sure to get domains that have a direct correlation to the extension and try to always get the *****TV.com to accompany your .TV for more leverage and a full market share on the namespace.
Happy .TV domaining to all!
Source: NamePros.com
What does everybody think about the .TV domain name extension? Do you currently hold any .TV domains and if so, how many? What .TV domains do you hold and how much have they been speculated or appraised to be worth? What do you think the future has in store for the .TV domain name extension?
Please share all of your thoughts about on this topic by commenting on this post. Also, feel free to start up a conversation about this topic in the chat box or chat room.
Domaining Blog
"The Place Where Domainer's Blog"
DomainingBlog.com
