Survey on Top Level Domain Names (TLD’s) and the Secondary Domain Name Marketplace

[Ammudamus]

January 20, 2009 03:30 AM Eastern Time
Survey on Top Level Domain Names (TLD’s) and the Secondary Domain Name Marketplace
Survey Performed on Top Level Domain Names Sold on the Secondary Marketplace and Highlighting Undiscovered .Travel Domain Registry as the Next Dot Com

BERKLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--According to a report issued by Hudson Crossing Advisory, a strategic advisory firm specializing in venture capital, the secondary domain name market, toll free numbers and the internet industry, very few domain names other than .com command 6 and 7 figure sale prices on the secondary market.

The internet blossomed in the mid-1990’s with the almighty .com registry. All of the world’s most popular sites ended up being in .com primarily because the .com registry was the building foundation to the internet world. Throughout the last decade other registries such as .net and .org have tried to make it big, but could never come close to .com while it has been the more favored ending for most of our favorite words such as Jobs.com, Dictionary.com, Answers.com, Sex.com, Date.com, YellowPages.com, Hotels.com, Travel.com and others.

“While the .com version of these very popular words have already dominated their specific market, why would anyone pay a premium for the same popular keywords in .net or even .ws or any other of the TLD’s that are available,” states Kirk Bradshaw, owner of Bradshaw consulting. “Registries like .net, .pro, .ws, .aero, .mobi, and many others are just plain meaningless. They simply have 0 meaning. Dot com domain names will always bare the most fruit simply because they were the first to do it.”

The study shows that very few domain registries actually have any meaning whatsoever such as:

.jobs , .museum , .travel , .asia , .info , .name

As the .com domain name rush has ended with most, if not all, keywords being taken, investors and internet entrepreneurs are looking to other registries that could provide valuable real estate for much less. The survey showed that 7 domain registries out of hundreds worldwide actually have a real meaning in the English language. Out of these 7 registries that represent 7 different keywords used in everyday life, only 4 had value as far as significant sales in the marketplace. Those are:

.travel - Registrar by Trailliance Corporation. The online travel industry in the United States was $66 billion in 2007, Canada is estimated to be $11 billion in 2009, UK was $5 billion in 2005, and Australia was $780 million in 2005.

.tv - Registrar by Verisign Corporation. The television and online media industries in the United States were over $78 billion in 2006, Canada was $22 billion, UK was $48 billion in 2007, and Australia was $6 billion in 2007.

.jobs - Registrar by Employ Media, LLC. The online job search industry is estimated to be $200 to $400 million across all 4 English speaking countries.

.museum - Registrar by Museum Domain Management Association. Museum advertising is very minimal and not much public information could be found. Estimates are $25 million to $100 million in all 4 English speaking countries.

With each having their own registration rules and requirements, most individuals cannot register the following domains unless:

.jobs - Verification of corporation required. The registrar requires the user to provide evidence that the domain will be used for job search related content.

.museum - These domains are only sold to official museums and museum employees. Evidence must be submitted along with pictures of the museum. Obtaining a .museum domain name is highly unlikely if user is not a licensed physical museum.

The 2 remaining domain names, .tv and .travel, carry far more value than other TLD’s in that each is a commonly used word in the English language. In particular, .travel carries even more perceived value considering “travel” is a word used all across the world, even by non-English speaking natives. The online comparison travel industry is as big as online comparison shopping. Furthermore, the world’s official domain registry for travel uses the actual word “travel” as its extension. Some cities, states, and countries around the world are early adopters of .travel and continuously advertise it as their official homepage in the United States marketplace such as: LasVegas.travel, Utah.travel, Canada.travel, Greece.travel, and many others.

Recent acquisitions such as www.Answers.travel for an unconfirmed reported price of $3.3 million could be the initial signs of this young registry. The .travel registry launched in 2005 and only sold .travel domains to verified travel industry professionals. In 2008, the .travel registry opened the doors to the public and allowed non-travel industry professionals to buy as well. With the .com market at its saturation point, this opens the investment opportunity to specific domain names such as .travel that provide valuable intellectual property. As the largest e-commerce category on the net, the .travel opportunity is staggering and far surpasses .jobs, .tv, .net, .biz, .aero, .mobi, .pro, .ws and other TLD’s.

According to John Marshall of Travel Domain Partners, “I asked my 15-year-old daughter what service she thought Answers.pro, Answers.aero, Answers.ws and several others provided, she paused and perplexedly gave multiple unrelated responses. When asked what Answers.travel provided, she immediately responded, ‘a site that answers your travel questions or travel answers’.” Moreover, “travel answers” is a highly searched term on Google. Consequently, Answers.travel appears as the 3rd result from the top simply because “travel” is recognized as a word on the major search engines and not just a domain ending. Marshall goes on further to say, “The right single, concise, short word like Answers or Compare or even Shop put in front of .travel would be a very expensive and worthwhile piece of real estate.”

Early adopters of anything usually pay the least and get the most criticism. Most thought buying an acre of land in desert Las Vegas 25 years ago for $10,000 an acre was a waste of money and time. An average acre of land now in Las Vegas is $1.5 million. Buying .tv and in particular .travel domain names now is no different, as .travel is an undeveloped oasis of opportunity. We feel these two registries are gems in the rough that have been overlooked in the marketplace. Select single, short, concise words on either of the registries are highly valued.

Domain investors and internet entrepreneurs are urged to do their own research. Registries that use a short concise word as their domain ending will be worth far more than meaningless ones. Eventually, registries that represent significant industries like: .sex , .porn , .shop , .movie , .cars , .money , and others may come to market in the future in which their domain ending is a real word in the English language. Specific single, concise words on these registries will automatically carry significant perceived value. The first player to do this for a significant market is .travel. It is anticipated that many more high level acquisitions will occur in the years to come.

Source: http://www.businesswire.com

Best,
A

 

[Makis.TV]

.....In particular, .travel carries even more perceived value considering “travel” is a word used all across the world, even by non-English speaking natives.

Source: http://www.businesswire.com

Best,
A

Thanx A, for the update...

the quoted text compared to .tv makes me laugh

 

[virtuali]

This article is more of a plug for .Travel then anything. Its funny how the author is stating .Travel is better in comparison to .TV...Laughable really....

 

[akcampbell]

What a load of tosh. written by a muppet .travel domainer or developer. Let's analyse it out

1) Apparently it's a survey...one respondent, the .travel pundit's daughter. Very scientific.

2) "I know what the site does Daddy, yes I do!" Yeah like that mattered for Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Myspace.

Let's face it, if you take a generic keyword and call it an extension, you're going to know what the site does. If you bolt on a "WTF does this site do" keyword like "Answers", a keyword extension like travel will give the game away.

There are 4.5m Google indexed pages ending travel.com, a 15 year old can guess what any of them do too.

3) Answers.travel "sold for a reported $3.3m". What a ridiculous price claim. Answers is a useless keyword, this domain would struggle to fetch $200 on NamePros.

4) ".travel is an unprecendented oasis of opportunity". Has anybody ever read the list of .travels dropping? The keywords are so bad, it's difficult to imagine somebody regged them to begin with.

According to this somebody bulk regged 25,000 .travel domains

http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2008/d2008-1168.html

Write a list of 25,000 travel related keywords and let me know if there is an "oasis of opportunity" left.

5) "Select single, short, concise words"...take your own advice, select short, concise extensions. Travel is a keyword not an extension. 2 keywords with a dot in the middle are longer and less brandable than a keyword followed by 2 or 3 letters.

If somebody writes a "Why I like .travel article", I'd read it with an open mind, but dressing up vested interest propaganda in a mock press release about a TLD domain survey that never was makes .travel look spivvy and ridiculous.

.travel will get nowhere because;

1) It's too long, keywords as extensions increase domain length and reduce brandability. Very few global brands have more than 8 letters. a .travel is using 6 letters for the extension, that's a waste.

2) It only fits keywords in one industry sector, therefore it will never reach the critical mass it needs to gain traction or be taken seriously.

3) There are relatively few good keywords, perhaps 100 countries that people travel to for holidays, 300 big city destinations, 100 tourist islands, maybe another 500 regions and states, and possibly 100 travel related keywords. That's 1,100 keywords worth bagging. Mr 25,000 bulk reg must have been flicking through his atlas in desparation 5,000 words in.

4) The vast majority of people don't book holidays through single destination geo domain web sites. They don't have the scale to negotiate bulk discounts, the brand strength to reassure people they will still be trading when they travel, or the variety and options available for people to pick from.

The value of something like France.com is that people type it in and the owner can channel that traffic to a well known operator who sells holidays in France amongst other holidays. Hardly anybody will type France.travel into their address bar so there won't be much business to pass on.

5) .travel is a stitch up. Somebody bulk regging 25,000? The only "oasis of opportunity" is for the bulk regger if people start to speculate on .travel. I doubt they will because people like to reg a domain on a subject they have an interest in or want to develop, and that's only going to be travel for 1%-5% of people so the registrant target market is tiny.

.pro has the same problem but the 1%-5% derives from the proportion of people who meet the ridiculous license requirements. At least .pro can eventually get rid of that restriction and target 100% of users, .travel will always be a small fish in a big sea.

Saying .pro has no meaning makes you wonder whether the author of this .travel drivel is literate.

Dictionary definition of Pro;

1. A professional, especially in sports.
2. An expert in a field of endeavor.
3. An argument or consideration in favor of something.

Whatever somebody does online, they are going to want to be regarded as an expert at it. .pro has many registry related problems like license restrictions, only being sold by 3-4 registrars, and high reg fees, but lack of meaning isn't one of them.

 

[mckennaronnie]

What a load of tosh. written by a muppet .travel domainer or developer. Let's analyse it out

1) Apparently it's a survey...one respondent, the .travel pundit's daughter. Very scientific.

2) "I know what the site does Daddy, yes I do!" Yeah like that mattered for Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Myspace.

Let's face it, if you take a generic keyword and call it an extension, you're going to know what the site does. If you bolt on a "WTF does this site do" keyword like "Answers", a keyword extension like travel will give the game away.

There are 4.5m Google indexed pages ending travel.com, a 15 year old can guess what any of them do too.

3) Answers.travel "sold for a reported $3.3m". What a ridiculous price claim. Answers is a useless keyword, this domain would struggle to fetch $200 on NamePros.

4) ".travel is an unprecendented oasis of opportunity". Has anybody ever read the list of .travels dropping? The keywords are so bad, it's difficult to imagine somebody regged them to begin with.

According to this somebody bulk regged 25,000 .travel domains

http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2008/d2008-1168.html

Write a list of 25,000 travel related keywords and let me know if there is an "oasis of opportunity" left.

5) "Select single, short, concise words"...take your own advice, select short, concise extensions. Travel is a keyword not an extension. 2 keywords with a dot in the middle are longer and less brandable than a keyword followed by 2 or 3 letters.

If somebody writes a "Why I like .travel article", I'd read it with an open mind, but dressing up vested interest propaganda in a mock press release about a TLD domain survey that never was is ridiculous and makes .travel look spivvy and ridiculous.

.travel will get nowhere because;

1) It's too long, keywords as extensions increase domain length and reduce brandability. Very few global brands have more than 8 letters. a .travel is using 6 letters for the extension, that's a waste.

2) It only fits keywords in one industry sector, therefore it will never reach the critical mass it needs to gain traction or be taken seriously.

3) There are relatively few good keywords, perhaps 100 countries that people travel to for holidays, 300 big city destinations, 100 tourist islands, maybe another 500 regions and states, and possibly 100 travel related keywords. That's 1,100 keywords worth bagging. Mr 25,000 bulk reg must have been flicking through his atlas in desparation 5,000 words in.

4) The vast majority of people don't book holidays through single destination geo domain web sites. They don't have the scale to negotiate bulk discounts, the brand strength to reassure people they will still be trading when they travel, or the variety and options available for people to pick from.

The value of something like France.com is that people type it in and the owner can channel that traffic to a well known operator who sells holidays in France amongst other holidays. Hardly anybody will type France.travel into their address bar so there won't be much business to pass on.

5) .travel is a stitch up. Somebody bulk regging 25,000? The only "oasis of opportunity" is for the bulk regger if people start to speculate on .travel. I doubt they will because people like to reg a domain on a subject they have an interest in or want to develop, and that's only going to be travel for 1%-5% of people so the registrant target market is tiny.

.pro has the same problem but the 1%-5% derives from the proportion of people who meet the ridiculous license requirements. At least .pro can eventually get rid of that restriction and target 100% of users, .travel will always be a small fish in a big sea.

Saying .pro has no meaning makes you wonder whether the author of this .travel drivel is literate.

Dictionary definition of Pro;

1. A professional, especially in sports.
2. An expert in a field of endeavor.
3. An argument or consideration in favor of something.

Whatever somebody does online, they are going to want to be regarded as an expert at it. .pro has many registry related problems like license restrictions, only being sold by 3-4 registrars, and high reg fees, but lack of meaning isn't one of them.

So you enjoyed it then? :p
:lol:

 

[ripley]

It's not exactly surprising that someone put out some self-serving garbage over Business Wire, it's basically a service that distributes press releases and the like. Caveat emptor!

ripley.

 

[GoneWalkabout]

AKCampbell

Excellent, well put, dissemination of the 'story'.

I was amazed at the guys from Florida who bought 25,000 .travel names.

Thank goodness nobody did that with .TV names or the extension would have been destroyed.

Thanks for making the effort in writing.

 

[exsedo]

It is also worth a note that throughout the whole article there is not one single mention of .ME which has enjoyed the most success of any new extension.

 

[Jeff]

It's not exactly surprising that someone put out some self-serving garbage over Business Wire, it's basically a service that distributes press releases and the like. Caveat emptor!

Touche ... this exact same hype process occurred with the "dot Mobey", and the fallout from that debacle is of grand proportions, and the downward spiral still continues to this day IMHO.

Sadly, there were a lot of good, well-intentioned domainers even here on our #1 Namepros who bought in to this type of new extension hype and propoganda (and empty promises on the part of the Registry and its hired minions on the forums); they were the victims that we should be thinking about, collectively, when we see this type of less-than-newsworthy "PR", IMHO.

-Jeff

 

[discovernow]

At least .tv is working out while the others are a bunch of hype

 

[exsedo]

At least .tv is working out while the others are a bunch of hype

Brave statement. I think i will reserve my judgement on that until after Hollywood.

 

[ecalc]

That press release is a piece of work.

BERKLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)

Is that near Berkeley?

the .com registry was the building foundation to the internet world. Throughout the last decade other registries such as .net and .org have tried to make it big

Dot com, net and org are TLD's, not registries. Verisign and PIR are registries.

Dot com domain names will always bare the most fruit

naked fruit?

Some cities, states, and countries around the world are early adopters of .travel and continuously advertise it as their official homepage in the United States marketplace such as: LasVegas.travel ...

LasVegas.travel redirects to VisitLasVegas.com

“travel answers” is a highly searched term on Google.

The approximate average monthly number of search queries for the exact phrase "travel answers" is 73. (source: Google Adwords keyword tool)

Most thought buying an acre of land in desert Las Vegas 25 years ago for $10,000 an acre was a waste of money and time

"Starting in the mid 1980s, a period of unprecedented growth begins. Annual population increases averaging nearly 7 percent causes the city's population to almost double between 1985 and 1995, increasing from 186,380 to 368,360, a 97.6 percent increase. That is equivalent to building a city larger than Reno in 10 years! At the same time, Clark County's population increases from 562,280 to 1,036,180, an increase of 84.3 percent. (source: lasvegasnevada.gov)