New gTLD prices

[abdussamad]

We've got all these new TLDs but prices aren't going down. Take .expert for instance. It is at $40 per year and competing against .guru which costs 25 a year. The cheapest appears to be .link at around $10. Why aren't they all competing on price? They should be selling these new TLDs for a $1-2 per year to get them out there and get people developing on them.

 

[Kate]

In fact they could even give them away for free. But you are then going to see a .info effect, with many domains used for nefarious purposes like spam. Or you will see a lot of MFA sites or otherwise poorly developed domains. This will reinforce the impression of a shady extension where no serious development takes place. You will have volume (in terms of registrations) but a bad perception which is bad for the long term. It's one reason why .biz/.info don't carry a lot of trust.

Somebody who cannot spend $40 or even $25 on a domain probably doesn't have a big budget for development in the first place... after all it's the price range of a .com with a retail registrar like netsol or register.com (vs the discount registrars that we domainers use).

 

[abdussamad]

In fact they could even give them away for free. But you are then going to see a .info effect, with many domains used for nefarious purposes like spam. Or you will see a lot of MFA sites or otherwise poorly developed domains. This will reinforce the impression of a shady extension where no serious development takes place. You will have volume (in terms of registrations) but a bad perception which is bad for the long term. It's one reason why .biz/.info don't carry a lot of trust.

Somebody who cannot spend $40 or even $25 on a domain probably doesn't have a big budget for development in the first place... after all it's the price range of a .com with a retail registrar like netsol or register.com (vs the discount registrars that we domainers use).

The Internet is global and most of world is poor. There is demand for cheap TLDs. $25-40 is a significant amount for most people. To ask that much just when you are starting out and have no idea whether your site is going to succeed or not is a barrier to entry.

The cost of development tends to be lower than you imagine when you live in countries where labour is cheap. Also development adds value to the domain name while the domain itself is just a row in a registry's database somewhere. You can't compare the two.

Right now the only option is a .info or those free tlds like .tk. If there were more options like .info but with low renewal prices then that would open up all sorts of possibilities.

As far as registrars goes, godaddy is the biggest and most widely known registrar. No one has heard of netsol or register.com.

 

[Kate]

Right now the only option is a .info or those free tlds like .tk. If there were more options like .info but with low renewal prices then that would open up all sorts of possibilities.

.tk is the best example of a non-trusted TLD... because those domains are available for free, then people abuse them. You see the result.
I would never do any serious development on a .tk.

$25 or $40 for a domain may not be 'cheap' but you still have to pay for hosting. This is where you are going to spend more money (assuming development can be done cheaply).

As far as registrars goes, godaddy is the biggest and most widely known registrar. No one has heard of netsol or register.com.

Plenty of corporate users are still with them and may not even know about godaddy et al. Also, many people still buy domains from their webhost (not a good idea but that's the way it is). Pricing is not always a decisive criterion.

 

[B&J]

As to resales: DNPric.es has just opened New gTLDs [re]Sale League:

http://DNPric.es/stats/stats-by-tld/?newgtld

Heads to @getDotClub for leading with 11 deals