Firstly for those who are still posting as though I am negative on all the changes being made at the moment, Give it up!
I’ve told people for 10 years this extension was awful for domainers due to pricing and now that is changing. It is time to take a very hard look at these changes, because when fundamentals change your position *must* be revaluated. You can say the chocolate bar is lousy value when priced at $10, but when it is 50 cents that is a completely different proposition.
Opportunities Versus Waste
The current .tv auctions & sales will create opportunities, there will also be money wasted by people getting hyped up and expecting unrealistic things, the people who get in at the right price and make sensible realistic decision will make money. Personally I think a lot more money is going to be wasted than made but that it is true of other alt tlds as well. However there will be opportunities.
New recession pricing.
What Verisign are doing is mixing up the entire landscape. The jig appears to be up on premium pricing. Personally I’m surprised by their move. The number of people who still think those names are worth buying is perhaps limited and change may well have been forced on Verisign, change due to lack of revenue, change due to people realizing they were duped, not duped as in Verisign stole from them, duped as in they made stupid decisions and Verisign played the game far better.
“Once announced, there could be a domain buying frenzy and you could lose out on some quality names.”
Enom itself have sent people an email using the word “frenzy”. That is the hope, a frenzy, a frenzy of bad decisions, impulse purchases, first in best dressed! Be careful…the donkey might well win this race. Make sure you are in a very sober state before hitting the register button on anything.
Enom and Verisign not your friends.
Verisign and Enom are not on your side, they never were and they haven’t changed…they do want your money back though, and they are getting it.
In one sense they won round one when everyone overpaid for premium stuff for years…..they lost round two when most people walked away, England.tv anyone? So a change now is an attempt to salvage something, to get the speculator money flowing again. It is a good thing and I’m in favour of the change, but it is very likely grounded upon falling revenue. Don’t kid yourself, they are not trying to do you a favour.
Now we have round three, who will win? I don’t know.
Cleaning up a toxic wasteland
What we are seeing now is the transformation of .tv as an investment from a “toxic wasteland” to whatever happens to toxic wastelands when they are cleaned up and made fit for habitation (made investment worthy). How do you turn sub prime into something less sub? You try and take out all the bad bits and hope people will like what is left. In truth cleaning out probably takes longer than people might think, is full of mistakes and often leaves a bad smell and bad sentiment for a long time.
The fundamentals of .tv development are still what they always were, most of those geo’s still have no really clear business model apart from something “broad” and the development efforts are unlikely to be any better than in past. Producing quality video isn’t cheap or easy.
So .tv is terms of domaining is getting better, development wise things haven’t changed much except the holding costs are coming down to something more palatable for 2010.
Oversupply
Keep in mind a few things, firstly there is likely to be a lot of premium .tv offered, there is 50,000+ names on this list and it look like they want to sell them all off. Enom priced names in the main at one years reg fee in their email offer. If we say assume that average price of roughly $1800, that is $90,000,000 worth of stock they have to sell.
Obviously either there is going to be a decade+ of oversupply in the market or names will be sold via auction or private sale for far lower than many would have thought.
So whilst this new pricing makes a lot more sense than before it is only an attempt to put it on a similar level to other alt extensions. It is a bit like .mobi where there needs to be dozens of auctions to get rid of everything. Ok .tv is far more well known, but .tv does have baggage.
The Baggage
The main issue that is likely to linger is confusion about pricing. That will dissipate gradually over time, but there will still be confusion for years. Sedo will still have to run those warning messages about premium pricing for some time (unless Verisign gives everyone a free conversion-which I think is unlikely). The general developer community will still be cautious “don’t some of those names have $1000 per year renewals?”.
Correct pricing
So when the auctions start (and I expect lots of them), personally I don’t think we’ll see huge prices. I doubt Business.tv will be getting 6 figures. I look at California.tv which looks to have been bought for 25k and I really wonder if that makes sense. Is anything really going to happen with a name like this after novelty of a great keyword wears off? It is cheaper than in the past but is it cheap? I think once things have settled, say in 6 months time things will be a lot clear on valuations. I think it will take a few auctions before the situation is clear on what these names are likely to be worth. Again it comes to back to supply. That is something that could be easily ignored at the start when hype levels are highest.
Having said all that this is obviously the biggest opportunity in .tv ever, because basically there was very few opportunities in the past aside from the rare mispriced name or names with traffic. Play you cards carefully, and be the donkey, that is my advice. There is 50,000+ names coming down the pipeline so beware the “frenzy”.
I’ve told people for 10 years this extension was awful for domainers due to pricing and now that is changing. It is time to take a very hard look at these changes, because when fundamentals change your position *must* be revaluated. You can say the chocolate bar is lousy value when priced at $10, but when it is 50 cents that is a completely different proposition.
Opportunities Versus Waste
The current .tv auctions & sales will create opportunities, there will also be money wasted by people getting hyped up and expecting unrealistic things, the people who get in at the right price and make sensible realistic decision will make money. Personally I think a lot more money is going to be wasted than made but that it is true of other alt tlds as well. However there will be opportunities.
New recession pricing.
What Verisign are doing is mixing up the entire landscape. The jig appears to be up on premium pricing. Personally I’m surprised by their move. The number of people who still think those names are worth buying is perhaps limited and change may well have been forced on Verisign, change due to lack of revenue, change due to people realizing they were duped, not duped as in Verisign stole from them, duped as in they made stupid decisions and Verisign played the game far better.
“Once announced, there could be a domain buying frenzy and you could lose out on some quality names.”
Enom itself have sent people an email using the word “frenzy”. That is the hope, a frenzy, a frenzy of bad decisions, impulse purchases, first in best dressed! Be careful…the donkey might well win this race. Make sure you are in a very sober state before hitting the register button on anything.
Enom and Verisign not your friends.
Verisign and Enom are not on your side, they never were and they haven’t changed…they do want your money back though, and they are getting it.
In one sense they won round one when everyone overpaid for premium stuff for years…..they lost round two when most people walked away, England.tv anyone? So a change now is an attempt to salvage something, to get the speculator money flowing again. It is a good thing and I’m in favour of the change, but it is very likely grounded upon falling revenue. Don’t kid yourself, they are not trying to do you a favour.
Now we have round three, who will win? I don’t know.
Cleaning up a toxic wasteland
What we are seeing now is the transformation of .tv as an investment from a “toxic wasteland” to whatever happens to toxic wastelands when they are cleaned up and made fit for habitation (made investment worthy). How do you turn sub prime into something less sub? You try and take out all the bad bits and hope people will like what is left. In truth cleaning out probably takes longer than people might think, is full of mistakes and often leaves a bad smell and bad sentiment for a long time.
The fundamentals of .tv development are still what they always were, most of those geo’s still have no really clear business model apart from something “broad” and the development efforts are unlikely to be any better than in past. Producing quality video isn’t cheap or easy.
So .tv is terms of domaining is getting better, development wise things haven’t changed much except the holding costs are coming down to something more palatable for 2010.
Oversupply
Keep in mind a few things, firstly there is likely to be a lot of premium .tv offered, there is 50,000+ names on this list and it look like they want to sell them all off. Enom priced names in the main at one years reg fee in their email offer. If we say assume that average price of roughly $1800, that is $90,000,000 worth of stock they have to sell.
Obviously either there is going to be a decade+ of oversupply in the market or names will be sold via auction or private sale for far lower than many would have thought.
So whilst this new pricing makes a lot more sense than before it is only an attempt to put it on a similar level to other alt extensions. It is a bit like .mobi where there needs to be dozens of auctions to get rid of everything. Ok .tv is far more well known, but .tv does have baggage.
The Baggage
The main issue that is likely to linger is confusion about pricing. That will dissipate gradually over time, but there will still be confusion for years. Sedo will still have to run those warning messages about premium pricing for some time (unless Verisign gives everyone a free conversion-which I think is unlikely). The general developer community will still be cautious “don’t some of those names have $1000 per year renewals?”.
Correct pricing
So when the auctions start (and I expect lots of them), personally I don’t think we’ll see huge prices. I doubt Business.tv will be getting 6 figures. I look at California.tv which looks to have been bought for 25k and I really wonder if that makes sense. Is anything really going to happen with a name like this after novelty of a great keyword wears off? It is cheaper than in the past but is it cheap? I think once things have settled, say in 6 months time things will be a lot clear on valuations. I think it will take a few auctions before the situation is clear on what these names are likely to be worth. Again it comes to back to supply. That is something that could be easily ignored at the start when hype levels are highest.
Having said all that this is obviously the biggest opportunity in .tv ever, because basically there was very few opportunities in the past aside from the rare mispriced name or names with traffic. Play you cards carefully, and be the donkey, that is my advice. There is 50,000+ names coming down the pipeline so beware the “frenzy”.
