The future of .COM after new gTLDs boom! Big DROP?!

[New.Life]

According to the data and this simple chart:

http://www.registrarstats.com/TLDDomainCounts.aspx

Is there a BIG drop? Coming soon?

 

[dordomai]

I'd disagree - you just have to look at the number of names that use parking sites for their Name Servers.

what is the percentage using parking services?

 

[Wannabean]

most regs in .com zone have nothing to do with speculation..

My gut feeling says actually they are mostly speculative registrations in com. Although I'm prepared to be proven wrong if anyone has data to back up.

Speculation is what keeps the renewal fees down at around $10 and makes .com viable for everyone.

For every huge name that sells for millions,even though the initial reg cost was only a few bucks, there are thousands and thousands of variations that are registered as a result by investors.

To put this in perspective. If sex.com was $10 to register and was resold for say $14,000,000 by an investor, it would spark many speculative renewals in the .com extension with the keyword sex in it. So although a loss was seemingly made on the initial sale (technically an opportunity cost), it is gained back later through the registration of other names.

The low initial costs ensure a vibrant market with ample liquidity, whilst maintaining excellent cash flow for the registry and registrars. Whether by design or not, it works very well for everyone.

New g's don't have this and it makes being involved in them in any way a great financial strain with significant risk.

 

[Wannabean]

Some sysadmins are even blocking new extensions on mailservers, because they know they will get less spam and little collateral damage.

This is interesting. If it ever gets so bad that just blocking extensions makes it way in to course material, as an effective measure to restrict unwanted traffic, that would be huge.

 

[168]

Wannabean,
"Speculation is what keeps the renewal fees down at around $10 and makes .com viable for everyone."

What keeps renewals down on all legacies is contractual obligation. Verisign is restricted to a certain price range.
This should be the case for all extensions. Sadly it's not.
.com started @ 100 $ yr. Then 35 $ then 10. In the history of .com that is exactly the point in time ".com speculation took off"
creating the aftermarket that exists today. 10+ years after launch.
Some New "G"s understand this some do not. The market will correct this soon enough. There has already been reg fee drops in
some.
Most New "G" reg fees are 15-30 yr. This is inline with the cost of cc tlds. The ones well above that - Good luck.

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

Personally, I disagree - I've seen a copy of the dot-COM zone file and it is so full of garbage

Flippa have a very good guide on what domains are worth auctioning and what are not - if you ran their filter on the dot-COM zone you'd lose 75% of it - lots of people have invested in haste and will never see their money back - multi-word concatenations of more than (say) 10 to 15 characters will never sell.

Loss Aversion and the Sunk Cost Fallacy

You should quote my entire message, not just part of it.
Thee new G's are like a religion. You either belive in it, or you dont
Just like the almight One
So ya lots of .com dropping, chinese garbage.
Remember all the believers, no way they could be wrong either

 

[Lox]

Page 89
The higher evaluation fee for top-level names in itself will
discourage abuse.

Here's a really long story; ICANNs expansion of TLD.
// gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112shrg74251/html/CHRG-112shrg74251.htm

or download pdf
// dommunity.com/docs/icann.expansion_tld.pdf

 

[Registry Services]

My gut feeling says actually they are mostly speculative registrations in com. Although I'm prepared to be proven wrong if anyone has data to back up.

Speculation is what keeps the renewal fees down at around $10 and makes .com viable for everyone.

For every huge name that sells for millions,even though the initial reg cost was only a few bucks, there are thousands and thousands of variations that are registered as a result by investors.

To put this in perspective. If sex.com was $10 to register and was resold for say $14,000,000 by an investor, it would spark many speculative renewals in the .com extension with the keyword sex in it. So although a loss was seemingly made on the initial sale (technically an opportunity cost), it is gained back later through the registration of other names.

The low initial costs ensure a vibrant market with ample liquidity, whilst maintaining excellent cash flow for the registry and registrars. Whether by design or not, it works very well for everyone.

New g's don't have this and it makes being involved in them in any way a great financial strain with significant risk.

sounds like a business plan not a million miles away from a pyramid selling scheme

It's true, it's full of garbage. But new extensions suffer from the same problem. Many new extensions are niche and the majority of keywords just won't fit. The quality problem isn't a .com thing.

The supply of domain name is infinite, quality is finite.

Indeed, there is plenty of speculation in .com. In new extensions too, non-development rates tend to be very high as domains are either parked, inactive or on a registrar placeholder page.

Non-utilization and prevalence of abuse are problematic when they are not offset by a sufficient measure of quality development. Then the TLDs quickly turn into wastelands, earn a bad reputation and consumers run away. Thus I have never received a mail ending in .xyz/.top/.click that was not spam. The spam rate in .com and other established TLDs is never 100%. Some sysadmins are even blocking new extensions on mailservers, because they know they will get less spam and little collateral damage.

Doesn't this then present an argument to raise the fees to try and only ensure you're getting genuine registrations, or speculation that stands some kind of chance of every paying off.

But, as has been said before, with variable pricing the nGTLDs are effectively cutting out the middle-man and becoming the domainers themselves - the lower volume offset by the premium pricing (in theory).

I do feel for them, to a certain extent, as they have to pay the ICANN taxes the ccTLDs don't.

 

[Registry Services]

You should quote my entire message, not just part of it.
Thee new G's are like a religion. You either belive in it, or you dont
Just like the almight One
So ya lots of .com dropping, chinese garbage.
Remember all the believers, no way they could be wrong either

Apologies, if you felt misrepresented - I tried to quote only the part I was replying to.

Personally, I don't see it as either/or, but more like "why not both" ?

I can see there are a lot of vested interested on both sides that would prefer the other side failed, personally my main investment is nGTLDs, but I don't see dot-COM going away any day soon - although seeing as it's already flat-lined, I can see it halving in five years time.

 

[Wannabean]

sounds like a business plan not a million miles away from a pyramid selling scheme

Really not sure how you've made that leap.

 

[Registry Services]

Really not sure how you've made that leap.

collecting lots of small amounts of money from people hoping to make a business for themselves, but who almost certainly won't see their money back.

 

[Alessandro Couteau]

So I am in Slovenia at the moment, home to the First Lady ... And I was going through some bags in my cabinet ... And found this ...

Needless to say, a smile came to my face ... Some people get it

Now I don't endorse NewYorker and I don't even remember what I had purchased there but this example was something to mention ^

 

[Wannabean]

collecting lots of small amounts of money from people hoping to make a business for themselves, but who almost certainly won't see their money back.

I'm really not seeing what your getting at. At best your reaching.