discuss (Rant) People are investing so much in new gTLDs...

[DomainGist]

Hundreds / thousands of people on here, especially newbies, spending thousands of dollars investing in questionable gTLD's with hardly any track history on namebio, and desperate nonsensical crypto domains which will never find a buyer....

... That is is becoming EASY for people to find a handreg .com for their next web dev project.

Now please understand that this isn't a pop at gTLD's in general, or indeed crypto domains (regretting a few I let go in 2015 right now!). But rather just a general observation that you domainers are letting it slip a little bit.

Allow me to illustrate with my current two projects.

Case study 1: Documentary website

So I wanted to build a documentary website. First things first I need a domain, damn. Where can I find a decent domain? First step is always to hope you strike it lucky with a handreg of course, if that fails you start looking at prices on sedo and afternic.

It was easy, I picked up DocumentaryVine.com, it was a handreg. Loved that domain, so didn't need to start trawling through Sedo, which is good news But why was this available to register in the first place? Here are some developed sites with a similar name:

GodVine (Alexa 111k)
NewsVine (recently closed, internet institution acquired by mnsnbc)
ReadingVine (teaching software)
FileVine (cloud based legal software, $3.2m funding)
CollegeVine (college mentoring program)
GuideVine (Financial adviser directory)

There are a lot more.

Here are some publicly disclosed sales:

LearningVine.com ($3995)
TimeVine.com ($1028)
JewelVine ($2188)
WineVine ($3288)
SocialVine ($2500)

So tell me.... why was DocumentaryVine.com available? Documentaries is one of the largest subreddits, 12 million subscribers, I know for a fact that the second largest free documentary website gets around 3 million page views per month. This isn't a small niche.


Case study 2: Wallpaper website

Most of the hard work is done on the documentary site now, Alexa top 165k already and climbing daily... just have to keep adding content, could do with switching to https and serving content through a CDN at some stage... but I'm ready for my next project.

I'm a fan of 'evergreen' content rather than time limited content, I'm looking for passive income rather than a job.... wallpapers seems like a nice niche, once you've broken through the ridiculous amount of competition. I'm a patient man, I'm building for 5, 10, 15 years so I'll take that challenge.

So once again I need a domain. Ideally a handreg, but will pay if I have to. Admittedly this one was a lot more difficult to find a decent domain for....

I looked at prices of domains I liked.... WallpaperVine was priced at about $1300 unfortunately, outside of my budget. I was struggling, but eventually found.... WallpaperBoss.com

Here are some publicly disclosed sales:

WallpaperBase $3550
WallpaperFinder $1100
WallpaperForYou $1931
WallpaperTop $1205
WallpaperCentral $850

Ending in Boss....

HairBoss.com $2000
LifeBoss.com $5700
PaintBoss $1288
StockBoss $1500
DraftBoss $1400
PasswordBoss $3000
PocketBoss $1500

(etc, etc).

Now, you may counter me on that one and point out that wallpaper domains don't usually go for decent money. I'll accept that one, loads go for around $300, but this was actually a developed site for many years and has some excellent historic backlinks. I hand-regged the domain of a former authority site with some lovely high quality backlinks!

So many people putting faith in gTLD's and stuff like .co and .io.

Do you want to know what I turned down in order to register WallpaperBoss.com? I'll tell you..... I could have handregged DesktopWallpapers.io, and I could have handregged DesktopWallpaper.io to go with it.

And the phrase 'Desktop Wallpapers' gets a lot of monthly searches (100k to 1 million).

And you want to know why I didn't reg that? I didn't reg that because .com is king, and will always be the king, and its ludicrous when you see some of the stuff people are regging on a .io and a .co at huge reg fees and all sorts of other dot craps, when there are evidently still dot coms to be had.

Now I bet that instead of thinking "you know, he's right, I'm going to go and find myself a few .com gems" there will now be people go and register desktopwallpapers.io.

I don't blame them to be honest, that's a nice domain and one which actually works in that extension. If I could be bothered I'd do it myself and see if I could flip it, but I'm too busy (you can forward 10% commission to me if that works out for you).

But I think a lot of people spunking $30,$40, $50 taking a punt on some of these alternative gTLD's, probably in the mistaken belief that they have missed the boat when it comes to dot com and gambling on all sorts of rubbish are forgetting one basic principle....

K.I.S.S

Keep It Simple Stupid

Dot com is king and will always be king.

 

[boker]

Exactly!

Yes, out of 18 I've sold 8...I wonder how many info and org.uk did you sold lately?

 

[DomainGist]

So you're the guy who was trying to sell lot's of info's and .org.uk's and asking people to help you sell your domains some time back,( because you're back to domaining after a long time) and still you're the one trying to teach peoples how to make sales( peoples who are doing sales at a daily basis, not once in 5 years). Maybe you should worry more about your info's and .org.uk's than about other's ngtld's.

OK so that is the end of our conversation if you are such a sad case that you need to trawl through years of my old posts.

As for: "asking people to help you sell your domains some time back"

I was asking for a portuguese speaker to broker two domains which related to Portugal, because I don't speak Portuguese

One of those domains was VisitBraga.com.... that's a solid domain!

You accuse me of picking the fight, but I think we can see who is really doing that now. You are twisting my words constantly and being way too over-sensitive. This thread is not about YOU, only a sociopath would perceive it that way and then go through my 1200 posts looking for ammunition to fuel a non-existent dispute.

I'm a domainer who was trying to convey recent experience as an end-user, because I thought it might be of interest.

I 100% regret that now and if I could lock this thread I would, because you are doing my head in now.

 

[DomainGist]

Yes, out of 18 I've sold 8...I wonder how many info and org.uk did you sold lately?

I have literally no idea what domains you own, and have no idea why you are getting so personal with me.

How about you just accept that you have taken this thread too personally when it was an observation about the direction of an entire industry, not about you, and then we will leave it there. Admittedly I was a little provocative.

It is Christmas in 3 days after all, and nobody wants to be falling out with each other during the festive season.

ps. My biggest .org.uk sale converted from GBP to USD was about $1800. I no longer own any .info or .org.uk domains.

If you had been domaining for longer you would know that .info domains used to go for very good money once upon a time, it hasn't always been a dead extension. Same with .org.uk.

 

[boker]

OK so that is the end of our conversation if you are such a sad case that you need to trawl through years of my old posts.

As for: "asking people to help you sell your domains some time back"

I was asking for a portuguese speaker to broker two domains which related to Portugal, because I don't speak Portuguese

One of those domains was VisitBraga.com.... that's a solid domain!

You accuse me of picking the fight, but I think we can see who is really doing that now. You are twisting my words constantly and being way too over-sensitive. This thread is not about YOU, only a sociopath would perceive it that way and then go through my 1200 posts looking for ammunition to fuel a non-existent dispute.

I'm a domainer who was trying to convey recent experience as an end-user, because I thought it might be of interest.

I 100% regret that now and if I could lock this thread I would, because you are doing my head in now.

I wasn't speaking about your portuguese domains, you should check your history where you where asking for ideas where to sell your domain's because you have a hard time making sells. There are a lot of 'domainers' like you, who failed for a long time making sales, betting on info, biz, org.uk and other like these and now you're trying to shift all your hard time on others. I'm not saying that there are no bad ngtlds registered, but you should check the amount of bad .com registered as well. Not attacking, but calling peoples sociopath, talking about others education( maybe you should get reported as well)....and I can bet whatever you want that if we will start comparing our education, you will loose as well. You remind me of a 60 years ex developer, who had some small success after years of tying and all of the sudden you're the big expert now.

 

[DomainGist]

Well I was talking about this one, not sure what you are referring to.... but don't really care.

https://www.namepros.com/threads/any-portuguese-domainers-in-here.881191/

And those were very good domains. VisitBraga.com + VisitXXXXX.com (NDA), both large cities. Those types of domains are valuable. That's why I sought a broker who spoke Portuguese, I wanted to try and sell them to the official tourism board. Never found a broker so sold to domainers.

Shame you didn't notice the numerous domains I've given away for free on this forum over the years.... some of them pretty decent.

Also, a fair amount of the crap .info domains I sold on here actually came in a wholesale lot of 150+ domains I purchased on flippa... and want to know why I bought that lot? Because it had VisitCITY x 2 in it

I've sold good domains on here too as it happens.... Bitcoinee.com was one, and I sure as hell wish that I still owned that one.

 

[DomainGist]

You remind me of a 60 years ex developer

I'm 32, for the record. But I do feel older, admittedly.

 

[Kuffy]

If you can build traffic on those two names, then you can build traffic on other extensions.

 

[GoKaizen]

Didn't miss the point.

If it's easy for people to find handregs what is the motivation to buy names in the aftermarket?

You've missed the point a bit.... I'm an end user in both of these examples, and in neither example did I need to purchase a domain to meet my requirements.

My point is that people are hand-regging all sorts of weird dot craps, when they'd be better off hand-regging .com's.

Share your SEO tips then.

"or is it all just nonsense to promote Documentary Vine .com?"



Mate I've been building sites for about 15 years.... I used to work as an SEO contractor, I don't need to spam a domain forum for hits, I grow sites via search... watch my quantcast over the next year.

Show attachment 75916

Its a discussion by a domainer about domains, having recently become an enduser who found that he didn't need to spend money on domains for his latest two projects. That's all.

For the three projects prior to that I've had to purchase domains. That was my observation.

I've got 1203 namepros posts that could have my URL at the bottom if that was my motivation (I have no signature!)

 

[DomainGist]

If you can build traffic on those two names, then you can build traffic on other extensions.

According to Google they treat new gTLD's like all other gTLD's (although I still don't believe it is completely equal, I still think .com gets the most love).

But as you will know..... .io and .co are not gTLD's. Neither are .to, .ws, and loads of domains that people use as domain hacks or register.

They are ccTLD's..... and Google has said that they geotarget ccTLD domains.

From the Google website:

"If your site has a generic top-level domain, such as .com or .org, you can help us determine which countries are most important to you. If your site has a country-coded top-level domain (such as .ie or .fr) it is already associated with a geographic region (in this example, Ireland or France). If you use a country-coded domain, you won't be able to specify a geographic location. You can specify a target country in the International Targeting report"

Which would perhaps explain why documentaries.io is 3 years old, has 5180 indexed pages, but an Alexa rank of just 1,915,528 and getting worse.

But DocumentaryVine.com is 2 years old, has 1270 indexed pages, but an Alexa rank of 163,225 and improving.

Perhaps my all round on-page and off-page SEO skills are just better than that webmaster so the domain isn't the reason, or perhaps my content is better, I don't know.... but I'll stick to what I know, which works for me.

In my example I explained why I decided against DesktopWallpapers.io.... whether .io is treated as a real gTLD or a ccTLD is currently uncertain and has certainly not confirmed by google. I know that a lot of VC backed startups have graduated from the .io to the .com.... they must have a reason. Whether its ranking or brand recognition I don't know... but all successful startups seem to land their .com once they've reached series B funding.

 

[DomainGist]

Share your SEO tips then.

Well I've got hundreds, but here's a nice one for you....

Tweets are nofollow, so when you tweet links to your page you don't get juice.

But create a Crunchbase profile and insert your twitter ID and all of your tweets are replicated on your company profile, and the links in those tweets are dofollow (pass juice).

Crunchbase is powerful. There's a tip for you.

 

[DomainGist]

Didn't miss the point.

If it's easy for people to find handregs what is the motivation to buy a domain in the aftermarket?

Exactly my point.

Or rather... if they can pick up a .com which they think is okay, then they aren't going to be forced into making offers for your alternative extensions! Or even your .com's for that matter.

For both domains I was willing to pay for a suitable domain, but didn't have to... and in the past I've not very often managed to find something that I like and have had to pay for something.

It was just an observation. A lot of people talk up the new gTLD's and argue that they have value because there are no .com's available.... but there are now more .com's available, because domainers are spread more thinly across so many other extensions, by allocating resources elsewhere the end result is less .com + .net domains in their porfolio's, and therefore more domains in the pool for hand registration. Loosely my point.

It wasn't just a point, I was also being a little provocative because there are a few people on here that are waaaayyyy too reliant on their nGTLDs of choice being adopted by the end user, and for many of them it just isn't going to happen.

Its going to be like crypto.... a few will survive and thrive, most will disappear.... we're at absolute saturation point, there are far too many available domains then are actually required by wider society.

Lots of people talking about the crypto bubbles and scam coins.... need to start talking about domain bubbles and scam extensions.

 

[domainer111]

That's a great post @DomainGist .

But whenever I go to look at expired dot-coms, I think .. "how is this even free .. how is nobody even bidding...does nobody even care...?"

The other day, CouponTap.com was dropping. These sell really well. I was sure there would be a lot of interest, but no .. not even one other bidder.

The problem for domainers is numerous. We are all bootstrapped financed. We can only take the best bets. We have to weed out the rubbish to survive. It is hard to sell a domain above reg fee. Many of us only really get paid a "finders fee".

It doesn't surprise me that you are finding great domains for your projects.

Agreed on registering stuff other than dot-com. Some people will do well out of the Gs. But most won't.

 

[HotKey]

Interesting dislike @HotKey

I was hoping for dialogue, what part do you disagree with.

E.g. how do you feel as the owner of two .express domains about the fact that there has only been 1 recorded .express sale in 2017, and that was 10 months ago?

And that there has only been 5 in two years?

When porn.express sold for just $400.... how do you ever expect to sell facial.express and airdrop.express?

It looks like you started domaining less than 2 years ago. You can see how long ago I started.

Now tell me.... how much are you in the red? Honestly?

Dialogue a-comin'! More later @DomainGist I will clear it up.

 

[Brands.International]

Of course many of us are investing much in new gTLDs...we see lot of opportunities there!

The fact is that 99% of domainers are registering poor .coms, and 99% of domainers are registering poor new gTLDs....this is fact of life. It is impossible that everyone would register just good domains.

If you have ability to get good .com or good new gTLD for reasonable prices, then you will do well. If you do not have this ability, you will do poorly, no matter what investment instrument you choose.

Your post is titled as "rant", because you are (probably, I tend to believe) invested in one kind of asset, and you see more and more people choosing some other type of asset. You can call them newbies, but you know that a dollar spent by newbie is the same as a dollar spent by experienced veteran, it is still one dollar. And that dollar is missing in your assets, as it was redirected into new gTLDs. If you would be invested heavily in new gTLDs, it would not be a rant article, but suddenly it would be a pure celebration, imho

 

[wwwweb]

Of course many of us are investing much in new gTLDs...we see lot of opportunities there!

The fact is that 99% of domainers are registering poor .coms, and 99% of domainers are registering poor new gTLDs....this is fact of life. It is impossible that everyone would register just good domains.

If you have ability to get good .com or good new gTLD for reasonable prices, then you will do well. If you do not have this ability, you will do poorly, no matter what investment instrument you choose.

Your post is titled as "rant", because you are (probably, I tend to believe) invested in one kind of asset, and you see more and more people choosing some other type of asset. You can call them newbies, but you know that a dollar spent by newbie is the same as a dollar spent by experienced veteran, it is still one dollar. And that dollar is missing in your assets, as it was redirected into new gTLDs. If you would be invested heavily in new gTLDs, it would not be a rant article, but suddenly it would be a pure celebration, imho

If you would be invested heavily in new gTLDs, it would not be a rant article, but suddenly it would be a pure celebration, imho

This is one of the most incorrect comments I have ever read on namepros. It is clear the GTLD's favor the registry, not the registrant. The best ones were either acquired by paying the registry an EAP fee up front, or a hefty annual premium. Either way you cannot turn over enough inventory, at the higher carrying costs to make a profitable return. If you think you do, you are not calculating your opportunity cost of time involved to make those $xxx transactions.

 

[Innoverge]

With time, effort and skill one could develop a pretty good site on a mediocre domain, but the point is to have a domain that's appealing and supplementative to the venture, one which optimizes the process.

The domain DocumentaryVine.com is a bit tedious,as opposed maybe DocuVine.com.
While there might be a few decent sales of domains ending in 'Boss' ,WallPaper & Boss hardly gel well together as a brand, though it clearly implies 'Leading wallpaper site'.

All things aside '.com' is unparalleled, with hooks sunk strong and deep in the brand integrity front, while a clutter of new GTLDs will need to work twice as hard to have the intended impact..!!!

 

[BRANDERX]

I rarely engage in these convs, but I felt I had to.

I bought a (.email) domain for $16 bucks in expired domain auction, sent out a few emails, 10 days later sold it for $650. Thats around 40 times what I paid.

If the ngtld makes good sense, with some effort on at your end, you'd be able to sell it for a decent price.

 

[DomainGist]

With time, effort and skill one could develop a pretty good site on a mediocre domain, but the point is to have a domain that's appealing and supplementative to the venture, one which optimizes the process.

The domain DocumentaryVine.com is a bit tedious,as opposed maybe DocuVine.com.
While there might be a few decent sales of domains ending in 'Boss' ,WallPaper & Boss hardly gel well together as a brand, though it clearly implies 'Leading wallpaper site'.

All things aside '.com' is unparalleled, with hooks sunk strong and deep in the brand integrity front, while a clutter of new GTLDs will need to work twice as hard to have the intended impact..!!!

Hi, sure docuvine.com is a nice domain... probably better for a document startup really... but its still a .com. But look at the top google results for the search 'Watch Free Documentaries'..... (only included relevant sites, of same type, not articles on the subject etc)...

TopDocumentaryFilms.com
DocumentaryHeaven.com
FreeDocumentaries.org
DocumentaryTube.com
DocumentaryStorm.com
WatchDocumentaries.com
DocumentaryAddict.com
DocumentaryLovers.com
Documentary24.com
DocumentaryWire.com
DocumentaryVine.com
Docur.co
CrimeDocumentary.com
Documentary-log.com
Documentary.net
Documentarymania.net
NatureDocumentaries.org

Can't even see Documentaries.io on the first 10 pages for that phrase actually. But every domain above me for that phrase (which is a keyword phrase I target) has either the word 'Documentary' or 'Documentaries' in full. All above me are .com apart from one, which is a .org (but that only works with the .org because the site is ad free and donation supported).

Having 'Documentary' in the domain does seem to carry some weight.

There are countless other factors of course... like domain age / authority, a lot of those sites are established with some nice old backlinks, quality of content. Documentaries.io seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, although think they were pretty much scrapping or not writing descriptions so it may be that.

Also, of the 10 sites above me.... only 1 is newer that mine... WatchDocumentaries.com was sold on Flippa for just $750 in May 2017! Really wish I'd seen that.

They've bought the category killer EMD..... and they are flying. There is still a lot of value in buying the category killer and I'd really wish I'd bought it.

Would I buy WatchDocumentaries.com for $750 or DocuVine.com for $1995? What do you think?

Would buy BuyDomains.com for $7500 or DomBuy.com for $19950? That's a similar question.

Now DocuVine.com may better than DocumentaryVine.com for a domainer, probably. Because it has multiple users and may attract a startup with some seed capital. You've got a better chance of getting $1995 for DocuVine.com, due to a higher number of possible end users with capital. You are thinking like a domainer rather than somebody who is starting a documentary streaming site (quite correctly).

That is sort of off topic though? Because we're talking about people who are buying junk nGTLD's and junk ccTLD's.... which there are no demand for... its a difficult one to illustrate because I don't want to start using examples from namepros, not fair to call out individuals.

ps. I'm so glad that this thread went into an interesting and constructive direction, at one point it looked like it was going to go very wrong!

 

[DomainGist]

I rarely engage in these convs, but I felt I had to.

I bought a (.email) domain for $16 bucks in expired domain auction, sent out a few emails, 10 days later sold it for $650. Thats around 40 times what I paid.

If the ngtld makes good sense, with some effort on at your end, you'd be able to sell it for a decent price.

I have never at any stage said that there aren't good ngtld's, or that some don't make sense, or that some shrewd investors will make some decent money out of them, or that all of them will fail and none of them will succeed. That really wasn't the point in the post.

The point was rather that a lot of people are choosing very low quality ngtld's which have a very poor chance of ever finding an enduser who thinks it makes good business sense for them.... instead of registering .com's which may be 'mediocre' but have at least a slim chance of an end user sale.

Clearly there are domainers who know what they are doing, and domainers who don't.

 

[DomainGist]

With time, effort and skill one could develop a pretty good site on a mediocre domain, but the point is to have a domain that's appealing and supplementative to the venture, one which optimizes the process.

Not really.... 100% wanted a domain which would benefit me for SEO purposes. Some businesses want a domain which people will instantly remember and can type straight into their browser bar. E.g. Its easy to remember 'Namepros'. Its important for namepros, because its a forum... it relies on constant repeat visitors.

Makes sense for ecommerce, they want people to remember them so they don't have to pay for PPC ads to recapture a customer. Doesn't really make sense for my site because most of the traffic will be searching for a specific documentary, or documentaries about a specific subject.... often via Google Video search... not "I wonder what documentary vine has published today"... literally nobody will every think that, irrespective of my domain name.

Its more important for me to capture social followers when they hit my site via search than to try and get people to remember my domain name when they fancy watching a documentary.

 

[wwwweb]

Not really.... 100% wanted a domain which would benefit me for SEO purposes. Some businesses want a domain which people will instantly remember and can type straight into their browser bar. E.g. Its easy to remember 'Namepros'. Its important for namepros, because its a forum... it relies on constant repeat visitors.

Makes sense for ecommerce, they want people to remember them so they don't have to pay for PPC ads to recapture a customer. Doesn't really make sense for my site because most of the traffic will be searching for a specific documentary, or documentaries about a specific subject.... often via Google Video search... not "I wonder what documentary vine has published today"... literally nobody will every think that, irrespective of my domain name.

Its more important for me to capture social followers when they hit my site via search than to try and get people to remember my domain name when they fancy watching a documentary.

In order to get those so called social followers, you first have to get their trust to come to your site, and review your content. There in lies the hard part, end users want .com for a reason, not a bleed out.

 

[GoKaizen]

The money is in the list.

Its more important for me to capture social followers when they hit my site via search than to try and get people to remember my domain name when they fancy watching a documentary.

 

[DomainGist]

In order to get those so called social followers, you first have to get their trust to come to your site, and review your content. There in lies the hard part, end users want .com for a reason, not a bleed out.

Right well I'm not going to get that trust on docuvine.express am I.... and that's the subject of this thread.

Why wouldn't people trust 'DocumentaryVine.com', not sure I understand where you are coming from.

Unless we are actually saying the same thing here? (Just re-read and I think we are).

 

[DomainGist]

The money is in the list.

Although you are correct, I've decided against building a list for this website. That may sound stupid, but I've got another project brewing which is 100% about the mailing list

 

[wwwweb]

Right well I'm not going to get that trust on docuvine.express am I.... and that's the subject of this thread.

Why wouldn't people trust 'DocumentaryVine.com', not sure I understand where you are coming from.

Plus I literally used to work in SEO, I know how to get traffic, and I'm already up to 63k unique visitors per month. That's 50% of what Namepros gets. I don't need traffic tips.

Yes, I know we all know SEO blah blah

Right well I'm not going to get that trust on docuvine.express am I.... and that's the subject of this thread.

Why wouldn't people trust 'DocumentaryVine.com', not sure I understand where you are coming from.

Plus I literally used to work in SEO, I know how to get traffic, and I'm already up to 63k unique visitors per month. That's 50% of what Namepros gets. I don't need traffic tips.

End users don’t want them, talk to your ex seo pals building mega sites on .top .xyz .international etc...

I didn’t ask for your resume, nor am I hear to award brownies badges, so you can relax, talk to CEO’s they are not going the gtld route, and people making dillusional comments about feeling angry because they did not invest in them, so now they are upset are ludicrous. I am invested on both sides, and I can see what sells, and what doesn’t, and gtlds do not have follow thru buying, simple as that.