discuss .Online Domains - Why 3,634 and counting

[ThatNameGuy]

NamePros member @DirkS has requested that I provide an explanation for why I've registered over 3,600 .online domains in the last six months, so here goes;

First and foremost I'm a visionary. I've started dozens of business in my life. I'm 73 years old, and I started my first business while still in college in 1970. Sure I could just be saying this, but if you have doubts I would strongly suggest that you check me out.

Having learned about this industry just over three years ago I've found the .com extension for most new business names to be both unavailable and unaffordable. I've learned that if I were to start a new business today it's unlikely the name I choose for my business would be available or affordable.

Most important, like zip codes and area codes there are literally hundreds/thousands of alternatives, and .Online just so happens to be one of the alternatives. What initially attracted me to the .Online extension was when NamesCon Online (aka NamesCon.com) made the decision to have Radix (aka Radix.online) be a sponsor. Radix then created the domain NamesCon.online to compliment/match NamesCon.com.

When I realized how the .online extension matched up with names like Reservations.online, Shopping.online, Learning.online and Domains.online, I just knew i was on to something Note that names like Reservations.com, Shopping.com, Learning.com and Domains.com are not only "unavailable", even if they were available, they'd most likely be "unaffordable"

Ironically about the time I noticed the .online extension, Go Daddy and Radix partnered and made .online domains available for a first time annual registration fee of .99 cents, and an annual re-registration of just 49.99 thereafter.

I've spent over a thousand hours in the last six months buying mostly one and two word .online domains, so if you were to add my time to the approximate $4,200 I've paid Go Daddy, I have over $20,000 invested in my portfolio of 3,634 domains.

My critics will say things like, you'll never be able to afford to renew all your domains at 49.99 each to which I have a twofold answer; #1 i don't need to renew a single domain and #2 whose to say the renewal fee isn't negotiable....as a businessperson I've learned that pretty much everything is negotiable.

Of importance to me is the fact that "if" my .online domains were .com domains my portfolio would be "valued" at over twenty million dollars. Yes, that's $20,000,000 or 20M

Now is where the rubber meets the road meaning, how do I plan to sell these domains? I just started listing them with the likes of Go Daddy where my current pricing ranges from a low of $199 to $999 and I'm looking to have an annual renewal of $99.....remember, everything is negotiable.

I plan to experiment with financing, leasing/renting and licensing my domains. I also plan to form a "users group" where end users actually have an interest in promoting the .online extension to the world.

Few domains and especially .online domains will sell themselves Thus I plan on having an "outbound" sales/marketing team who share my vision to make .online both available and affordable.

Finally, I owe a bit of gratitude to the monopoly Verisign for confirming my suspicions about the nature of the .com beast. While the beast is slowly dying, alternative solutions are ready, willing and able to take over.

Thank you!

 

[Silentptnr]

We're talking about a $4200 investment. It's not much at all imo.

However, think about this..

3600 Domains

3 sales p/mo = 100 years to sell all
10 sales p/mo = 30 years to sell all
30 sales p/mo = 10 years to sell all

Now factor in renewals for those periods and consider how holding costs might affect potential profitability.

I'd say turn that $4200 into as much as you can and drop the rest.

I like .online though it's a bit on the longer side.

Anyway, I'm just reiterating what I said earlier in the thread. It's a lot of names and the holding costs are on the higher end. Of course, I wish you the best of luck. Ideally you might get a 10x+ return on your investment.

 

[Grego85]

So are you going to be renewing these domains? .Online isn't really very cheap, even amongst many other new gtlds when you factor in multi year renewals. Godaddy too, yikes! That's alot of transferring.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

But these names are way too long. Too many characters.

Namebio.com is reporting 159 sales only for the .online domain extension. Most of them are one word domains.

You need strong one word domains for this .online extension if you want to make any sales.

And you haven't sold any yet.

I suggest you to stop now, take a break. Try to sell one, just one .online domain to an end user, for an end user price. Don't register any more domains until you have sold one, just 1 domain.

Spoken like a traditional domainer....shorter is better "if" it fits the narrative. That said however, there are tens of thousands of .com domains less than 15 characters that have "keywords", are easy to remember, and make for perfect business names.

Remember I told you I really don't care what you or other domainers think i only care what an "end user" thinks. I know a lot of successful business people from the finance industry, the tech industry, the real estate industry, the legal profession, and the healthcare industry to name a few. I've started and named dozens of my own businesses, and I think I know a little better than most domainers what makes for a good business name.

The real question for me is.....what are you afraid of....there's a chance I might be right?

 

[ThatNameGuy]

So are you going to be renewing these domains? .Online isn't really very cheap, even amongst many other new gtlds when you factor in multi year renewals. Godaddy too, yikes! That's alot of transferring.

Have you been paying attention? Renewals are negotiable (at least for me), and that's the last time I'm telling you.

 

[branding]

Sorry for the late reply. Life got in the way. appreciate the share. Ignoring some things posted, my thoughts:

NamePros member @DirkS has requested that I provide an explanation for why I've registered over 3,600 .online domains in the last six months, so here goes;

Thanks for the post Rich. I think it's a ballsy move to go this big, this fast on an extension like .online, hence my interest in your reasons, though process etc.

For those who missed it, we've been discussing .xyz sales here, resulting in my request to Rich to elaborate a bit on his visions for .online.

Although I still have some questions I think you outlined your vision pretty well. Please don't mind me addressing a couple of things:

I've found the .com extension for most new business names to be both unavailable and unaffordable. I've learned that if I were to start a new business today it's unlikely the name I choose for my business would be available or affordable.

Might be a bit beyond the scope of this thread but do you really think that's the case? In my experience there are plenty of good 2 word .coms available for reasonable pricing when you take some time to research. Don't you think the bigger issue is that business owners become emotionally attached to the business name they think up, find out it's not that unique but don't want to settle for an 'inferior' option? You know the saying 'kill your darlings' used in writing? Don't get attached to your branding, don't get attached to a domain/tld. Treat it like a business. In business data/numbers don't lie.

What initially attracted me to the .Online extension was when NamesCon Online (aka NamesCon.com) made the decision to have Radix (aka Radix.online) be a sponsor. Radix then created the domain NamesCon.

I get your reasoning. I just think it's flawed. Namescon is an existing brand. A meeting intended to take place offline. They had to pivot to an online auction, hence the .online extension makes perfect sense, but solely temporarily. Once the end of the pandemic is in sight, it might still continue to be online but the .online extension will become obsolete and they will simple revert back to the .com.

I've spent over a thousand hours in the last six months buying mostly one and two word .online domains, so if you were to add my time to the approximate $4,200 I've paid Go Daddy, I have over $20,000 invested in my portfolio of 3,634 domains.

I guess it depends where you're from and how you value your time but flipping burgers would definitely make me way more than $20K for 1000 hours worked. And that's a sure return/profit/income.

able to afford to renew all your domains at 49.99 each to which I have a twofold answer; #1 i don't need to renew a single domain and #2 whose to say the renewal fee isn't negotiable....as a businessperson I've learned that pretty much everything is negotiable.

Even if you're looking at a $10/piece renewal odds are not in your favour. One of the basic errors new domainers make is not taking into consideration renewal costs. If you renew none, you're done after a year. You'd need to sell at least 45 (roughly) at $500 a pop within the year to make this just as profitable as flipping burgers. That's quite the gamble considering .online's track record. After a year you can continue to work at
the burgers inn just the same and make a profit. If you need to renew 3K domains that would set you back 30K each year, leaving you with about $10K in the red, each year.

Not even taking into account taxes to be payed, payment processing fees, you name it.

Thus I plan on having an "outbound" sales/marketing team who share my vision to make .online both available and affordable.

Who's going to pay them? And why? .online is already available and affordable.

Look, I'm not a particular fan of .online but I don't hate it either. I wish you best of luck with this and hope you will share some numbers again once a year has past to see if this has been profitable for you.

I see .web getting mentioned a lot for some reason so I'm gonna address that as well. They missed the momentum. The .web extension is just as obsolete as .online following some member's reasoning. It's meaningless albeit shorter than .online. How often do you use the word web vs online? Might be commonly used in the us but over here only diehard .net lovers (read old people and geeks) are still referencing to the internet as 'the web' and we all know what happened to .net (from a domainers perspective).

Sums it up I think. Numbers used are sheer estimates and guesses but should be sufficiently close enough to be used in a workable model, too tired at the moment to do some 100% accurate calculations

 

[karamakate]

I think we are facing a situation similar to the .top case.

I'm sorry for your loss @ThatNameGuy

Good luck.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Sorry for the late reply. Life got in the way. appreciate the share. Ignoring some things posted, my thoughts:



Thanks for the post Rich. I think it's a ballsy move to go this big, this fast on an extension like .online, hence my interest in your reasons, though process etc.

For those who missed it, we've been discussing .xyz sales, resulting in my request to Rich to elaborate a bit on his visions for .online.

Although I still have some questions I think you outlined your vision pretty well. Please don't mind me addressing a couple of things:



Might be a bit beyond the scope of this thread but do you really think that's the case? In my experience there are plenty of good 2 word .coms available for reasonable pricing when you take some time to research. Don't you think the bigger issue is that business owners become emotionally attached to the business name they think up, find out it's not that unique but don't want to settle for an 'inferior' option? You know the saying 'kill your darlings' used in writing? Don't get attached to your branding, don't get attached to a domain/tld. Treat it like a business. In business data/numbers don't lie.



I get your reasoning. I just think it's flawed. Namescon is an existing brand. A meeting intended to take place offline. They had to pivot to an online auction, hence the .online extension makes perfect sense, but solely temporarily. Once the end of the pandemic is in sight, it might still continue to be online but the .online extension will become obsolete and they will simple revert back to the .com.



I guess it depends where you're from and how you value your time but flipping burgers would definitely make me way more than $20K for 1000 hours worked. And that's a sure return/profit/income.



Even if you're looking at a $10/piece renewal odds are not in your favour. One of the basic errors new domainers make is not taking into consideration renewal costs. If you renew none, you're done after a year. You'd need to sell at least 45 (roughly) at $500 a pop within the year to make this just as profitable as flipping burgers. That's quite the gamble considering .online's track record. After a year you can continue to work at
the burgers inn just the same and make a profit. If you need to renew 3K domains that would set you back 30K each year, leaving you with about $10K in the red, each year.

Not even taking into account taxes to be payed, payment processing fees, you name it.



Who's going to pay them? And why? .online is already available and affordable.

Look, I'm not a particular fan of .online but I don't hate it either. I wish you best of luck with this and hope you will share some numbers again once a year has past to see if this has been profitable for you.

I see .web getting mentioned a lot for some reason so I'm gonna address that as well. They missed the momentum. The .web extension is just as obsolete as .online following some member's reasoning. It's meaningless albeit shorter than .online. How often do you use the word web vs online? Might be commonly used in the us but over here only diehard .net lovers (read old people and geeks) are still referencing to the internet as 'the web' and we all know what happened to .net (from a domainers perspective).

Sums it up I think. Numbers used are sheer estimates and guesses but should be sufficiently close enough to be used in a workable model, too tired at the moment to do some 100% accurate calculations

Dutchman....thanks for a well thought out and heartfelt response. Despite what some of my critics think, I'm a balsy sort of guy. You wished me luck in the golf tournament I played in this weekend and I appreciate it, but I think for the most part it's up to me to create my own luck. I don't know if you know what a calcutta is, but it's the means to bet on any team in the field or to bet on your own team. Well my partner and I bet $350 on our own team meaning if we didn't come in first or second in a two day tournament with just six teams playing, we'd lose our money. The money was divided between the two days meaning there was potential to win as much as $800 each day "if" you came in first. The first day we came in dead last out of six teams, but we started out with a clean slate the second day and low and behold we won the $800 the second day. I share this because life, sports and even domaining is all about taking risk.

As soon as I finish responding I intend to risk $15 purchasing the following .online domains;

TourCanada.online
TourScotland.online
TourAfrica.online
TourRome.onlne
TourItaly.online
TourAmerica.online
TourAlaska.online
TourIreland.online
TourJapan.online
TourVegas.online
TourChina.online
TourIndia.online
TourAsia.online
TourHawaii.online
TourEurope.online

Dirk....tourism is a big deal the world over, and while the .com for all these names is already registered, to be able to tour these places "online" is absolutely incredible Left of the dot these are great names especially considering "tour" is a keyword.

So who might want these names? I don't know, but for starters any of the thousands of business's that are already in the tourism business, or maybe an entrepreneur like Nick from Wales? Ironically living in the largest resort city in the world i think I may register TourVirginiaBeach.online, and maybe the city of Virginia Beach may want it. We'll see.

As for "plenty of good two word .coms", i've discovered only a few while researching the 3,600 .online domains i registered. Guess what? I've picked them up as well, and I may have about a dozen of them.

Also Dirk, online learning is here to say regardless if the pandemic. My Kiwanis club that had zoom meetings for about a year is now back to meeting in person. Guess what though, we now have an option to go to the meeting virtually and I suppose that will continue ad infinitum.online Same thing goes for jobs, healhcare, real estate and most of the tech industry.....virtual and online is here to stay.

With regards to renewals, honestly I'm not concerned....that's the mindset of a true entrepreneur. The fact that none of them have to be renewed is very consoling. Make sense?

Finally, regardless of the time spent creating this portfolio, i've loved every minute of it. It's been more fun than any of my startups, and I've had quite a few over the last 50 years.

Thanks again Dirk....you're a gentleman and a friend. I hope to meetyou.offline someday

 

[bmugford]

I think we are facing a situation similar to the .top case.

I'm sorry for your loss @ThatNameGuy

Good luck.

It was .realty before it was .online...

 

[Compassion]

A simple one year investment to see if profits can be made on the initial sum.
Nothing outlandish.

No need for the melodrama.



Two or three good end user sales makes a one year strategy work.
Not impossible.
Loading up on super cheap one year reg deals and playing a large field is nothing new.
A lot of ways to angle domains - why not buy one great name for the same amount?
or with the same est $4k - buy a few pronounceable and short names and see how that plays out over a year +

There are no shortage of ways to throw money at domains...

Always the question:
Is the juice worth the squeeze?

 

[ThatNameGuy]

It was .realty before it was .online...

Here's some more help for you Brad.....when your client's business name already has a .com associated with it, contact me and I'll help you find an alternative extension. I won't charge you a penny, but if I can be of help I'm here for you.

 

[Mary Muse]

After listening to this clown bat away every other investors logical takes on this, you deserve to lose every penny that you will ended up pissing away on these terrible domains.

Zero sympathy.

 

[Grego85]

Here's some more help for you Brad.....when your client's business name already has a .com associated with it, contact me and I'll help you find an alternative extension. I won't charge you a penny, but if I can be of help I'm here for you.

dude,
no one needs any help typing progressively lower quality names into a registrar until finding one that is available to settle for. It is the laziest way of getting domains. Your addiction to instant gratification is costing you.

 

[Charybdis]

In my experience there are plenty of good 2 word .coms available for reasonable pricing when you take some time to research.

Exactly, there are a lot of quality, brandable .com domains available for 2000 - 3000 USD if you browse marketplaces such as BrandBucket, Squadhelp or Alter. 2-word .com domains or 5L-6L quality brandable .com domains.

This pricing is affordable for a lot of businesses registered in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France etc.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Exactly, there are a lot of quality, brandable .com domains available for 2000 - 3000 USD if you browse marketplaces such as BrandBucket, Squadhelp or Alter. 2-word .com domains or 5L-6L quality brandable .com domains.

This pricing is affordable for a lot of businesses registered in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France etc.

Trust me....i've taken time to research and you're wrong about there being plenty of good 2-word .com domains available for a new business start up. As I told the Dutchman, less than 1% of the 2-word .online domains I've registered have an affordable equivalent .com. Here are the last three 2-word domains I registered a few hours ago, and you tell me an equivalent .com? I think you'll find they don't exist;

VideoHealth.online - for a medical/doctor group who see's patients "online"
VideoSpy.online - for investigative surveillance
VideoGuard.online - for security, protection and surveillance

 

[ThatNameGuy]

dude,
no one needs any help typing progressively lower quality names into a registrar until finding one that is available to settle for. It is the laziest way of getting domains. Your addiction to instant gratification is costing you.

Costing me? Dude, it's costing you wasting your time way more than the .online discovery is costing me

 

[ThatNameGuy]

After listening to this clown bat away every other investors logical takes on this, you deserve to lose every penny that you will ended up pissing away on these terrible domains.

Zero sympathy.

Hey I'm not looking for sympathy....just the fact they you're commenting adds value....thanks.

 

[Mary Muse]

Hey I'm not looking for sympathy....just the fact they you're commenting adds value....thanks.

Zero sales and zero potential sales

That's the metric that matters.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

A simple one year investment to see if profits can be made on the initial sum.
Nothing outlandish.

No need for the melodrama.



Two or three good end user sales makes a one year strategy work.
Not impossible.
Loading up on super cheap one year reg deals and playing a large field is nothing new.
A lot of ways to angle domains - why not buy one great name for the same amount?
or with the same est $4k - buy a few pronounceable and short names and see how that plays out over a year +

There are no shortage of ways to throw money at domains...

Always the question:
Is the juice worth the squeeze?

You're absolutely right....there are just as many ways to make money in this industry as there are to lose money. Having started and named many businesses serving multiple industries I know what I'm doing, and I'm aware of the risk.

Thanks for the endorsement

 

[ThatNameGuy]

We're talking about a $4200 investment. It's not much at all imo.

However, think about this..

3600 Domains

3 sales p/mo = 100 years to sell all
10 sales p/mo = 30 years to sell all
30 sales p/mo = 10 years to sell all

Now factor in renewals for those periods and consider how holding costs might affect potential profitability.

I'd say turn that $4200 into as much as you can and drop the rest.

I like .online though it's a bit on the longer side.

Anyway, I'm just reiterating what I said earlier in the thread. It's a lot of names and the holding costs are on the higher end. Of course, I wish you the best of luck. Ideally you might get a 10x+ return on your investment.

Thanks...."Idealy you might get a 10X+ return on your investment"....If that were to happen...it's off to the races. Just the fact you've been at this game and are well respected similar to my friend Bob Hawkes speaks volumes.

videospy.online .ONLINE Domain Registration
1 Year
Renews June 2022 for $29.99 (1-yr term)
$0.99
96% off

Above is a screen print of the 1-yr renewal term of a domain I bought this am. I'm sharing this because there seems to be some confusion surrounding renewals for .online domains.

One final note, and this is typical of the .online domains I own. VideoSpy.com is for sale at Go Daddy for $6,999, and I plan on using this sort of information to help sell my .online domains to end users.

Thanks again for commenting.

;

 

[CraigD]

I suggest you look at transferring your best to IONOS as they have a $1.00 transfer deal.

That will at least give you another 12 months.

From thereon however, the transfer and renewal fees look prohibitively expensive almost everywhere else.

 

[88.88]

i had some (may be) good .online but drop them for the expensive renewal fee. I suffer when need to drop domains so I decided not to register anymore .online and other expensive similar ones.
Bur when I saw that casino.online is the most expensive sale of all I couldn't resist so now I've got only two.
One is e-casino .online and the other is e-bet .online.
Among other things, I saw later that previously they were from a member of namepros.
e-poker .online (not mine) is already taken and developed.
I think suggestion from CraigD is very useful. To move domains following transfer deals from time to time when available.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

I suggest you look at transferring your best to IONOS as they have a $1.00 transfer deal.

That will at least give you another 12 months.

From thereon however, the transfer and renewal fees look prohibitively expensive almost everywhere else.

Thanks Craig. Question? Since all my domains are registered for $1 for a year, should I wait and transfer them close to the time when my year is up? I've not done this before, but is it time consuming and could you do this in bulk? Do you remember what I said about registrations possibly being negotiable? I only share that because I've personally been told by a registry they are. Thanks again.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

i had some (may be) good .online but drop them for the expensive renewal fee. I suffer when need to drop domains so I decided not to register anymore .online and other expensive similar ones.
Bur when I saw that casino.online is the most expensive sale of all I couldn't resist so now I've got only two.
One is e-casino .online and the other is e-bet .online.
Among other things, I saw later that previously they were from a member of namepros.
e-poker .online (not mine) is already taken and developed.
I think suggestion from CraigD is very useful. To move domains following transfer deals from time to time when available.

88.88....yes, I've known since I first started accumulating .online domains that Casino.Online sold for 200K thus i own a dozen or so names like;

CasinoRoulette .online
eRoulette .online
CasinoCraps .online
CasinoDealer .online
VegasDealer .online

Could it be that you and I are the only ones who know about gambling.online Thanks for your input

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Zero sales and zero potential sales

That's the metric that matters.

ooops Ms. Muse....wrong on both counts......just had a lawyer/investor invest 20K plus for 20% of my .online portfolio. He's a sports guy, and when he learned GD is asking ten million dollars for the domain LocalSports.com and I own the "Local Sports Online", he decided to risk a few dollars.

Anything else I can aMuse you with Ms. Muse

 

[branding]

Thank you for the kind words Richard. Like I said, we may disagree on some things but skipping the noise, focussing on domaining by numbers I don't see why this endeavour couldn't be profitable. It's not for everyone, you would need to have money to burn, which you obviously have. You wouldn't even have to like the extension. Like I said, numbers don't lie.

With regards to renewals, honestly I'm not concerned....that's the mindset of a true entrepreneur. The fact that none of them have to be renewed is very consoling. Make sense

Well, that would be a major thing we disagree on. As an entrepreneur recurring costs is one of the most important things to take into consideration. Gotta pay my mortgage each month, gotta pay my renewals each year. I don't worry about it but it has to be part of the Masterplan. Can't leave things up to luck .

Finally, regardless of the time spent creating this portfolio, i've loved every minute of it. It's been more fun than any of my startups, and I've had quite a few over the last 50 years

Good for you

simple one year investment to see if profits can be made on the initial sum.
Nothing outlandish.

No need for the melodrama.

Agreed. I don't shy away from opportunities. Did a similar thing on .shop domains back in 2019 I think. Just 400 or so names. Wasn't worth the squeeze but did leave me with additional profit to reinvest in some aftermarket purchases to hold. So yeah, not for everyone.

Exactly, there are a lot of quality, brandable .com domains available for 2000 - 3000 USD if you browse marketplaces such as BrandBucket, Squadhelp or Alter. 2-word .com domains or 5L-6L quality brandable .com domains.

This pricing is affordable for a lot of businesses registered in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France etc.

Spot on. You'll notice how well buydomains is doing. I don't know about their cost but a lot of 'ok' domains are sold on a daily basis within that range. If you don't limit yourself to direct venue purchases but get involved in auctions, private sales and some negotiation a suitable .com for the smaller businesses is something that's attainable... For now.

As I told the Dutchman, less than 1% of the 2-word .online domains I've registered have an affordable equivalent .com. Here are the last three 2-word domains I registered a few hours ago, and you tell me an equivalent .com? I think you'll find they don't exist;

VideoHealth.online - for a medical/doctor group who see's patients "online"
VideoSpy.online - for investigative surveillance
VideoGuard.online - for security, protection and surveillance

Well, video is a nice keyword although it would limit the use a bit in my opinion. I actually did find some that would could be a nice fit (depending on a more detailed businessmodel) within the $200-$3K range. Exact matches... All 6K+. That's a bin... Open to negotiate. Just saying.

Circling back, you have a big enough number to make some 'lucky' sales, you may be able to offset your costs by getting some investors involved. You're enjoying it, have money to spend. Why not?. Wouldn't recommend it to most with limited funds to use though. Do keep us posted and like @CraigD mentioned, a $1 transfer deal might give you just the chance to broaden the experiment. Good luck and do keep us posted.