- Impact
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I'm sure most participants of this subforum have seen the numerous discussions of the new TLD launches. While some view the launch of hundreds of new TLDs as a threat to domain investors, perhaps there are some lessons to be learned here. While many of the .TV subforum posts seem to be sales-related, it should be noted that many new TLD registries are not even offering for sale their best and most logical keywords. Those registry-reserved names are not available - at any price at least for now. Other quality keywords in these new TLDs are still being sold off in tiers with higher pricing initially and then lower pricing over a set number of days so that the best keywords will likely be sold to those willing to open their wallets. So these registries are attempting to get the best price possible for their best keywords - either by having tiered pricing or reserving them for some future date perhaps years from now.
So what is the lesson - why are we as .TV investors so sales focused? I am not saying I don't want to sell domains. Hey I have renewals to pay like everyone else. What I am saying is that perhaps for the top 5-20% of your portfolio depending on how long you have been investing that certain names really shouldn't be targeted for immediate sale. Those truly premium domains just are not replaceable.
Most of these new TLDs only make sense for a limited number of keyword combinations and even .TV only makes sense with certain keywords - those where you could realistically envision a website with video-oriented content related to that topic. But if you have one-word, industry-defining keywords where video content seems appropriate, perhaps rather than focusing on selling the domain, the focus should be on monetizing it. Now I know that domainers tend to be the worst developers. Hey I have not done so well in my development efforts. But there are end users who know how to create relevant content and they are passionate about their businesses.
So I guess my suggestion is to consider reaching out to end users but rather than selling for a one-time flip, actually generating a recurring revenue stream. See which end users are creating video content on Youtube and reach out to them. This won't work for medium quality domains so 95% of my domains are still for sale
but I am thinking now that a few of them I would rather lease. You may have seen the news of the Whisky.com sale where it was once offered for sale for $1000 but the potential buyer balked. Years later in 2014 it was sold for over $3 million. Years from now I don't want to regret having sold ny best ,TV domains in 2014 just to pay renewals.
So what is the lesson - why are we as .TV investors so sales focused? I am not saying I don't want to sell domains. Hey I have renewals to pay like everyone else. What I am saying is that perhaps for the top 5-20% of your portfolio depending on how long you have been investing that certain names really shouldn't be targeted for immediate sale. Those truly premium domains just are not replaceable.
Most of these new TLDs only make sense for a limited number of keyword combinations and even .TV only makes sense with certain keywords - those where you could realistically envision a website with video-oriented content related to that topic. But if you have one-word, industry-defining keywords where video content seems appropriate, perhaps rather than focusing on selling the domain, the focus should be on monetizing it. Now I know that domainers tend to be the worst developers. Hey I have not done so well in my development efforts. But there are end users who know how to create relevant content and they are passionate about their businesses.
So I guess my suggestion is to consider reaching out to end users but rather than selling for a one-time flip, actually generating a recurring revenue stream. See which end users are creating video content on Youtube and reach out to them. This won't work for medium quality domains so 95% of my domains are still for sale
but I am thinking now that a few of them I would rather lease. You may have seen the news of the Whisky.com sale where it was once offered for sale for $1000 but the potential buyer balked. Years later in 2014 it was sold for over $3 million. Years from now I don't want to regret having sold ny best ,TV domains in 2014 just to pay renewals.
