.tv New to .TV domains - Question for the pros

[gilescoley]

Question on .TV domains??

Just curious what you all think of regging one word .TV domains. The words are not neccessary directly related to TV/Media/Film/Movies etc but are just short to medium one worders

examples would be the following

Trigger.tv
Happened.tv
Motive.tv
Organizer.tv
Stared.tv
Occasion.tv
Simple.tv


Any comments on this?

I own 1 .TV, any comments on it

ActionPacked.TV

 

[equity78]

What are you missing ? I said I believe every forum that sells domains whatever extension, sucks right now. And yes I think MMB.com is an excellent LLL.com that someone looking to the future believing in .com should have no problem buying in an instant if they are a top tier domainer from a budget, bankroll standpoint.

And for the most part the people who have great .tv domains get offers everyday like those that have great domains in any other extension. And many sell off here why would they sell here ? It is people looking for bargains and no one I know with a decent .tv portfolio is looking to give anyone a bargain they are looking for their price nothing else.

Jimbo I have not sold any of the three I have turned down offers on all 3 of them. And I agree with you the tv.tv needs to be extra special or it is just wasting money.

I regged each one looking at the overall scope.

Sixtv.tv was regged as a protection domain I owned SIX.tv which did well from a ppc standpoint and it sold for $25,000. SIXtv.tv gets some traffic and in ppc it has made $120 since last June.

Usatv.tv I looked at the USA.tv $100,000 premium to reg the domain and the renewal. And then looked at a company like GOL TV they took the GOLtv.tv instead of paying Verisign a marked up GOL.tv for $5000 instead of $500. Funny someone regged it and parked it at SEDO but GOL using GOLTV.tv.

Girlstv.tv I picked up knowing who owned Girls.tv and what they wanted for the domain.

I then picked up TEAtv.tv as protection for Tea.tv, ninetv.tv,cattv.tv and mentv.tv. I really took the last three as a spec and figured worth regging.

 

[jeffoverman]

It is very hard to flip .tv names. Last year I bought to many .tv names thinking I could flip and test out ppc parking and etc. Well it was a huge mess lol but a learning lesson.

I am keeping my winners, names I love and see value in.

Ray brought up a good point on good names get offers. Agree on it 100 percent. Again people don't like to give numbers out or if a buyer prefers not to say how much he paid. Then there are people that don't care if they get reported and others ego is so huge and say I sold this name for this amount. Not picking anyone on this, just a general remark.

Vegaschapels.tv brings in close to 3 to 12 dollars a month. Sure it won't make me rich but traffic is building and when the ppc parking rebounds everyone should rebound.

Can see snoop is back to his 2 week withdrawl on .tv threads lol.

Its a tough market out there and for domaining right now. Maybe things will rebound after August and a ppc parking company thinks it could. Then economy, snow bill, jobs being lost and etc.

Cheers everyone and good luck. Welcome to .tv section. Its a good group and a lot of loyal readers and posters here for the most part.

 

[michaeldotcom]

.tv is far easier to blow money in because the reg fees are several times higher that regular tld's...

A .com domain costs between $7 and $10 to register at the moment, while a .tv domain costs $17.99 at GoDaddy. That means that .tv domains are about twice as expensive as .com. That's not exactly "several times higher" as you stated.

Moreover, most available .com domains that can be handregged nowadays are more or less worthless. So to get any decent .com domain, you need to go on the aftermarket and pay often $xxx or $x,xxx, that is 10 or 100 times more than the regfee for a .tv domain. Will you be able to sell that .com domain 10 or 100 times more than a very good handregged .tv domain ? I'm really not sure.

You will always tell us that this or that .tv domain hasn't been sold yet on NP Marketplace, but what about the millions of .com domains that are on sale on Sedo and elsewhere and the many many thousands of .com domains that are getting dropped every single day ?

If the wholesale market isn't strong it is because people don't believe the purchase of those names is likely to yield good results.

Unlike .com domains, there are still lots of great .tv domains available to handreg.

For any extension, the aftermarket grows stronger only when all the good domains are taken. Just remember the 1990s, still lots of .com domains available, the aftermarket barely existed. Does that mean that .com is worthless and that nobody believed in .com domains in the 90s ?

Just like any market, the .tv market needs time to grow and mature. It's still a fairly recent extension, the online video market is still very recent too. But both are developing rapidly. Big corporations are investing in .tv domains. The .tv extension is actually the only extension they're investing in, other than .com and the main ccTLDs (examples are numerous, like Time Warner, Audi, Mercedes Benz, NHL, ABC, ITV and Channel Five here in the UK...).

As the online video market is growing, we can see bigger and smaller media companies investing and developing quickly. Unlike .eu, .mobi, .asia, etc., there are more and more .tv sites getting developed every day. Many of them are promoted heavily online, on tv, on billboards, etc.

I'm monitoring things closely and scanning available .tv names everyday and I can tell you that they're registered faster than ever before. Even .tv premiums (which are very costly indeed) get registered daily, with almost always big development plans behind them.

I can see all those developments around me, people working hard on videos for upcoming .tv sites. The big convergence between tv and the Internet is getting closer everyday. The future is most definitely very bright for .tv

 

[treebytheriver]

I am not a pro but my thinking is:

think about what you would like to watch on your iphone, or pda, or computer etc. when you have extra time to kill. It may be:

sports
news
medicine
home or garden, or whatever interests you, and....
run with that.... that is my approach to the tv world

try to find non premium domains that really should be premium, there are so many now, in a few years it wont be the case, in my humble opinion

and.. be patient, be willing to wait a while, develop if you can.

 

[snoop]

For any extension, the aftermarket grows stronger only when all the good domains are taken. Just remember the 1990s, still lots of .com domains available, the aftermarket barely existed. Does that mean that .com is worthless and that nobody believed in .com domains in the 90s ?

.Com prices grew with the growth of internet. Today it is a different scenario. Extension don't just grow out of nowhere, they get popular due to usage and have capital value when holding costs are low. In the mid 1990's yes .com domains were worthless, that doesn't mean .tv will somehow follow the same path, the circumstances couldn't be any more different. In fact .tv has been around since pretty much that time anyway (see below).

Just like any market, the .tv market needs time to grow and mature. It's still a fairly recent extension, the online video market is still very recent too.

.TV was introduced in 1996 and it was seen as a desirable extension for tv and video pretty much from the start, so it is an awful long way from being "fairly recent".

 

[michaeldotcom]

.TV was introduced in 1996 and it was seen as a desirable extension for tv and video pretty much from the start, so it is an awful long way from being "fairly recent".

Were you already on the Internet in 1996 ? I was, and I remember that in 1996, most Internet users had extremely slow connections to the Internet using modems. Most websites were static pages with text-only or with very few pictures, some little animated gifs were seen as awesome by many... lol

Those were the times when users sometimes struggled to download *one* bigger picture on a webpage. No average Internet user could possibly imagine that he/she could ever download any videos from the Internet. Video streaming or online tv were things that very few Internet users thought possible.

So obviously even if some people were thinking of a day when they could broadcast videos online, no media company, no tv channel were putting any videos on their websites. None of the average Internet users would have been able to download/watch them with their extremely slow modems.

In 1996 developers and companies were still busy building their first websites, mostly static pages, and things have evolved a lot in the past 12 years. Now lots of websites offer video podcasts, video streaming, video downloads, etc. You can watch sports games online, tv shows, newscasts, etc.

The online video market is currently booming and this explains why the .tv extension is currently the hottest and fastest growing extension on the Internet. Lots of media companies are investing in them. Many .tv websites are being developed, more and more often involving big sports teams (nhl.tv, liverpoolfc.tv), big companies (audi.tv, mercedes-benz.tv), big celebrities (Whoopi Goldberg on broadway.tv, etc.).

They all want to get involved in this online video market, because it's the future of television, the future of entertainment, the future of business. We're at the very beginning of it now, but it's gonna be huge !

 

[snoop]

Were you....but it's gonna be huge !

The fact is .tv is not a "fairly recent extension" which is what you were claiming.

Only in the most biased speculators eyes is .tv the "hottest and fastest growing extension".

 

[michaeldotcom]

The fact is .tv is not a "fairly recent extension" which is what you were claiming.

The .tv extension has only been marketed worldwide as the preferred TLD for video content very recently. It would have been a waste of time to market it this way in 1996 when there were basically no video content online.

Only in the most biased speculators eyes is .tv the "hottest and fastest growing extension".

There's nothing biased about it. I'm only talking about hard facts.

Just look at Google Trends and you'll see that .tv has grown exponentially over the past two years :

http://www.google.com/trends?q=.tv

The rapid growth is happening at the same time as the growth in the online video market.

You were talking about speculators but the fact is that the growth of the .tv TLD is not lead by speculators but by developers. That's why this growth is much more solid and meaningful than all the other newer extensions (.mobi, .eu, . asia, etc)

When I look at advertising here in the UK on tv, on billboards, I can see companies promoting their websites. The only extensions I see on a daily basis are .com, .co.uk and .tv

This shows that it's not a fantasy of some "biased speculators" but simply hard facts.

 

[snoop]

The .tv extension has only been marketed worldwide as the preferred TLD for video content very recently.

In 1998 it was being marketed like that.

Here is a story on it from 2000,

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/08/38476


////////////////


08.31.00 | 3:00 AM

Hoping to break from the pack of teeny domains like .tm, .md, and .to, .tv has launched a major advertising campaign, touting itself as the perfect symbol for the Internet's future.

The dotTV company of Pasadena, California, is behind the print, radio, and outdoor ads, which started running this summer in national newspapers like The New York Times and on radio stations in 12 major cities.

DotTV, funded primarily by the Idealab company, formed after a Canadian entrepreneur bought the rights to the .tv domain from the remote South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu in 1998. In turn, Tuvalu gets a seat on the board of directors and $50 million over 12 years.

DotTV's new ads position it as a domain whose potential goes far beyond its natural and universal association with television.

The company has attracted a number of high-profile clients, including the PAX TV network and the Emmy awards. It also has auctioned off its free.tv, china.tv, and net.tv domains for $100,000 a piece. It hopes to attract businesses beyond traditional television outlets.

"DotTV is a reflection of a new kind of Internet, with rich media, broadband, all those things," said marketing director Rob Kostich.

But will dotTV's ads manage to convince businesses in a widespread way that .tv is the next .com?

And will users ever come to see domains other than .com, .net, and .org as anything worth paying attention to?..........................

 

[localexperts]

If you are developer, the extension doesn't matter since you control your own destiny.

If you are a domainer, you want to anticipate which extension will see the the highest development growth.

Because more development, leads to more type in traffic to your parked domains as people poke around to see what is out there.

.com - most of the good domains are gone or $XX,XXX forcing other TLDs to get developed.

But will dotTV's ads manage to convince businesses in a widespread way that .tv is the next .com?

discjockeys.tv > eventdiscjockeys.com or discjockeyquotes.com = IMHO

 

[snoop]

If you are developer, the extension doesn't matter since you control your own destiny.

If this was true developers would just go for .dx or any extension that was available, of course extension matters!

 

[localexperts]

.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .pro, .tv, .mobi - the generic extensions don't matter.

 

[michaeldotcom]

Snoop, you're obviously an intelligent person and I'm sure you can understand that there is and will always be a certain amount of time between the moment someone has a brilliant business idea and the moment this idea becomes a success worldwide. It does take time to develop an idea, a new product, a new service, and this is true in every industry.

Many companies are currently working on different types of renewable energies. They've been working on them for a long time already, but still a huge part of the energy used around the world is not yet renewable. How come ? You would maybe say that renewable energies are a failure, that they won't ever work, that companies may as well not try.

Putting any business idea into practice takes a lot of time. There are lots of risks, there can be some failures, but most of the time the path to success in business is through long hard work.

It's not because someone has the idea ot market .tv as the videocentric TLD in 1998 that the next day millions of .tv websites will have been developed and millions of people will use them. That's just not possible, especially as 10 years ago, most companies were still working on their first websites, had no real online strategy. And most users weren't able to watch/download videos online. So there's no point in making videocentric websites at that time.

As always in business, you have to wait for the right time to put a product on the market. The recent boom in the online video market, the fact that lots of people are now watching sports, news, tv shows, etc. online... All those facts show that more and more Internet users want to watch videos on the Internet. The convergence between TV and the Internet is just around the corner.

The fact that many big companies who have developed .com websites are now developing .tv sites shows that it does make sense for many of them in their online strategy. Car manufacturers, artists, celebrities, fashion designers, media companies, tv channels, they are all starting to understand that need.

So much has been happening online in the past 10 years and many more exciting things are ahead of us. As connection speeds available to average Internet users are getting faster and faster, and as tv is an extremely popular source of entertainment all around the world, we can be sure that videocentric websites will be even more successful in the future. The .tv extension will definitely be part of this success.

 

[snoop]

.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .pro, .tv, .mobi - the generic extensions don't matter.

I think you are dreaming, the average guy on the street doesn't even have a clue what .pro is, it isn't intuitive or memorable, so very few developers are going to use this extension. Ditto for about half of the others you have listed.

 

[localexperts]

That makes no difference to me. I've helped launch four .COM companies. In 1995, when I was working at Insuremarket.com - no one knew about .com. Didn't hurt us or hurt us from getting bought by Intuit. .COM was just starting to get penetration with average American when we launched Lifeminders.com in 1998. We got 20 million users on there.

From a marketing prospective, extension doesn't matter. Build a good product and have a good marketing plan and the extension doesn't matter - see del.icio.us or other examples.

Also, YellowPages.pro has gotten more offers than any other domain I own.

My job as a marketing manager is to create awareness. Extension doesn't matter.

 

[michaeldotcom]

I think you are dreaming, the average guy on the street doesn't even have a clue what .pro is, it isn't intuitive or memorable, so very few developers are going to use this extension. Ditto for about half of the others you have listed.

What extensions is the "average guy" aware of ? Simply the extensions that he uses on a daily basis. This means the extensions where lots of big websites are developed and promoted by big companies. That's already the case for .tv, but not yet for .mobi or .pro

The .pro extension is quite a nice brandable extension, but it's sufferring from very strict registration regulations, which meant very few developed websites and very few "average guys" using them.

The .mobi, .eu and .asia extensions has been mostly speculators' extensions so far, with very few developed websites and very few "average guys" using them.

It's all about awareness and .tv is doing very well from this point of view. There's still a long way to go, but .tv is on the right track.

From a marketing prospective, extension doesn't matter. Build a good product and have a good marketing plan and the extension doesn't matter - see del.icio.us or other examples.

Also, YellowPages.pro has gotten more offers than any other domain I own.

My job as a marketing manager is to create awareness. Extension doesn't matter.

I agree with you to some extent.

I think extensions still need to be meaningful and keywords need to suit the extension.

"Yellow pages" is a premium that would work well with many extensions. It does fit the .pro extension very well and should be fairly easy to market. This explains why you've got lots of offers for it.

I still think that some extensions are much better than others, even if some of them are not yet very successful. I mean that the .pro extension is very meaningful but not yet successful because of its very strict registration regulations. If that changes, it could become a fairly successful extension in the future, and I could really see many more companies using it, as they struggle to find good .com domains.

But on the other hand, I think that an extension like .tk isn't meaningful at all, and that it's often associated with scammers and spammers. I don't see any company wanting a .tk domain because it would just take too much work to market it and they could do it much better and faster with any of the other meaningful extensions (.com, .tv, .org, .net, .info, etc)

 

[localexperts]

I agree, I shouldn't have made a global statement - .tk - yes a no go

but

.TV - video
.PRO - professional
.INFO - information

those are three extensions that could be branded.

 

[michaeldotcom]

.TV - video
.PRO - professional
.INFO - information
those are three extensions that could be branded.

Completely agreed.

These extensions can be branded because they're meaningful.

To take the examples of two successful websites :
spain.info is IMHO a much better domain than spanishtouristinformation.com
boston.tv is IMHO a much better domain than thebostontvchannel.com

Extensions like .tv and .info are very meaningful and easier to promote with great generics or geos.

In most cases it's better from a branding perspective to have a great generic or geo domain with a .tv or a .info extension, rather than a crappy, very long .com domain.

That's why I think that, even though .com is a very good extension, it is often overrated by some domainers who are obsessed by the ".com is king" motto.

 

[localexperts]

that was my point michaeldotcom. You expressed what I was trying to say in a direct, understandable statement. Thank you.

most of the time

oneword.tv > threeword.com
oneword.pro > threeword.com
oneword.info > threeword.com

there are exceptions like homeimprovementprojects.com and newyorkcity.com

now

oneword.tv vs twoword.com - then it depends on how many searches are done each month for that two word domain vs the one word domain.

Landscaper.TV > LeadingLandscapers.com IMHO, especially if you have LandscaperTV.com to protect your .TV domain. But that argument is subjective. I could see folks saying LeadingLandscapers.com is better.

 

[michaeldotcom]

I definitely agree with your analysis.

One of the main problems with .com is that it's been there for such a long time. So all the good one-word domains were taken a long time ago, as well as all the meaningful two-word domains.

As good .com domains do fairly well with parking pages and as their renewal fees are low, it's fairly easy to hold them till that huge $xxx,xxx offer. In many cases, this huge offer never comes because most companies/individuals can't afford to spend that kind of money on one domain.

So in many cases, companies/individuals have the choice between :
- handregging or buying at an affordable price a not-so-good two-word domain or even a very long and not very memorable three-word domain (can be hard to market and promote)
- spending a huge amount of money on that one- or two-word generic (difficult especially for most newer companies which have so many other expenses and just can't afford them)
- go for nice meaningful one-word generics in alternative meaningful extensions like .tv or .info (often makes lots of sense)

That's precisely the reason why I see those two extensions doing very well compared with the often overpriced .com