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?

 

[Brands.International]

But I wouldn't have searched for it (as an enduser). I wouldn't have even known it existed. So how would the average enduser with a business or product named "sex life" even find the .life alternative? How would you as the domainer with a name to sell know where to find the very limited number of specific buyers (maybe just one) who have a need for this name?

This is good question. The answer is, most of registrars and registries are very fond of new gTLDs. If you search for .com name in largest world registrars, they will automatically now propose you whole bunch of gTLDs. There are many reasons for that, important is of course financial side of it, but also they are competing and wish to provide largest array of choices for their clients.

Second answer to this might be media agencies. They are well oriented and know about gTLDs..when they have large client, they can offer him bigger amount of choice right now..maybe this year and next year still lot of big businesses will go with .com, as for reasons we all know here. But as more and more big companies are adopting gTLDs, it is only matter of time when good new gTLD combo will be if equal value to comparable good .com keyword, imo.

Now, as domainers, we need to be ahead of all this. It is too late to start investing when everybody will adopt it. If you wait for general approval (yes, now you can invest, it is safe!), you can not get ROI which you can get when you are an "early adopter". Early adopter does not mean here that one registers all bs which is out there..renewals are generally higher then .com, so one needs to be quite reasonable.

Personally, I would prefer sex.life to sexlife.com even this year, sex.life is very valuable from many different reasons. It is not only internet pages we are talking here, we have facebook, twitter, etc..every redundant string of characters will sooner or later simply become unnecessary in those new media.

 

[168]

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on new tld registrations and renewals over the last few years. Before the new extensions were launched new domain investors and low-budget developers and small businesses sometimes would opt for .Com or .net domains priced low $xxx as there were few other alternatives. Now there are hundreds of new extensions so yes I have seen a lot of those low $xxx sales disappear. It has been more than a year since my last .net sale. Yet I would prefer .net over any new tld. But if end users are opting for reg fee priced domains over low $xxx priced .net domains what will it take for them to pay a premium for a new extension when there are hundreds of new choices available?

what will it take ?
1.xyz 182971 USD 2016-03-31 West.cn
Sex.LIVE 160000 USD 2016-07-13 Rightside
Porn.LIVE 120000 USD 2016-07-14 Rightside
co.ltd 115000 USD 2016-08-15 Donuts
99.vip 77622 USD 2016-06-06 2016 Global Domains Industry Summit
Web.hosting 75000 USD 2016-05-08 DomainPros
88.xyz 70000 USD 2016-01-11 NamesCon 2016/RightOfTheDot
66.xyz 65901 USD 2016-03-31 West.cn
d.vip 63152 USD 2016-05-31 west.cn
stock.photo / stock.photos 60000 USD 2016-01-11 NamesCon 2016
66.vip 59348 USD 2016-05-31 west.cn
web.hosting 52500 USD 2016-01-11 NamesCon 2016/RightOfTheDot
work.place 50001 USD 2016-10-08 Private
i.vip 48836 USD 2016-05-20 Ali Auction
51.xyz 46518 USD 2016-03-31 West.cn
58.vip 45660 USD 2016-06-06 2016 Global Domains Industry Summit
e.vip 45660 USD 2016-06-06 2016 Global Domains Industry Summit
Auto.loan 45000 USD 2016-11-27 Undeveloped
11.xyz 43107 USD 2016-03-31 West.cn
ym.xyz 39695 USD 2016-03-31
3d.software 100001 USD 2015-05-08 Rightside
dui.attorney 100001 USD 2015-06-01 Private
Undisclosed 100000 USD 2014-12-31 Sedo
Coffee.Club 100000 USD 2014-11-01 TRAFFIC MIAMI 2014
Vegas.Club 100000 USD 2015-01-13 Right Of The Dot
Autism.Rocks 100000 USD 2015-06-18 Sedo
net.work 100000 USD 2015-06-16 Mind + Machines
6.top 93600 USD 2015-12-09 Jiangsu Bangning
M.top 93600 USD 2015-12-09 Jiangsu Bangning
Transfer.Money 90000 USD 2015-06-17 Private
a.top 90000 USD 2014-12-31

 

[168]

This is the prime example of wishful thinking

Agree.
There are very few able/willing to pay millions compared to millions willing to pay a decent premium for something new, exciting,relevant.
Anybody here still use an Osborne 1 computer? or how about a Mortolla brick phone, dial-up connection, DOS, floppy discs, pager?

 

[slader23]

Ok then report us your sales in 2036.

I bet your the same guy who'd ask .com owners in 1996 to report their sales in 2016. This isn't a pissing contest, stop making surface level arguments and deal with the reality of whats happening and whats to come.

 

[dordomai]

The argument that .com is "too saturated" is a bit crazy.
It's like saying that there is not enough land left on Earth.. so we'd better start moving to other planets.

It's like saying Manhattan is too saturated and real estate prices will decline.

 

[slader23]

It would be interesting to quantify / estimate how many domains are "investable" (long-term) in a certain new TLD, and then look up the reg fees and renewals of those domains.
Like I argued before, there are just too many ways that it can look ugly and sound bad.. and leave out nice brands and generics (where will those have to go, yea, .com or ccTLD.) Yes, there are some great word.word ones, but the question is how many, and how much do they cost? Especially to renew.. (the prices can reduce over time though, I guess. hopefully they won't go up on people )

Yea bro I agree with you but the same thing could be said for .coms. What I've been trying to convey here is that there are only a set amount of invest-able domains in each ngtld and those are what will be competing with medium grade two word.coms. This will provide consumer choice(read up on the theory if you don't know it) and reduce the prices of .com's that are considered to be medium level premiums.

The premium renewals are bad...disgusting in some cases but its all subjective, some tlds like .repair aren't trying to horde your cash while others like .blog are trying to get an early return on a substantial investment. That's what you get with so many ngtlds available there is an incredible amount of variance and in turn an immense amount of opportunity for those who take the time to research and know what their doing.

It's not for the faint of heart, nor is it for those who are in it to make a quick buck. I know of a few guys that have sold xxx,xxx in ngtlds already this year and I also know of some guys who hold some absolutely ridiculous ngtlds that might sell for xxx,xxx just on their own in a few years. There is a place like NP for ngtld domainers and you will be surprised at who you find there. The work.place guy is a regular and its always interesting to see what he and others have to say. Try not to listen to the random noise that gets thrown around here from time to time, do your research and talk to people that actually sell and have sold names in the niche your studying. Otherwise your just another person in the crowd, letting profitable opportunities pass you by.

 

[imadoer]

These dumb threads never stop .com ain't going anywhere ever case closed

 

[jmcc]

Looks like the line continues to go up according to that chart. I imagine it'll be even better in the future once people smarten up, adjust and start rolling with the king.

What that chart does not show is that .COM went negative on monthly growth according to the 01 December 2016 figures.

Regards...jmcc

 

[New.Life]

Namebio provides lists of nGTLD sales. About 1-2 sales per day on average I would guess.

How many .com sales were 30 years ago?!

 

[New.Life]

Any sales like that.

Why are you asking for sales the people who just "yesterday" registered these domains?!

It's too early to sell! New gTLD are - NEW!

For example, I have a lot of domains, but they are NOT for sale.
There is my best list (not all of course)

https://www.namepros.com/threads/your-best-new-gtld-list.985807/

...and for all of these domains I got the real offers,
but I ignored them, because domains are simply not for sale.

I counter offered just 3 times:
- First, in order to see how it works.
- Second, I try to sell domain. But I counter offered the really Big price! )
- Third, just for fun, I sent $30K counter offer for very small initial offer, just a couple of days ago.

If you want to see the facts about "the end users want to buy new domains" - easily!

But, most of new gTLD owners - don't want to sell ! If yes, I don't want to sell for cheap!


I got the offer for 4 words (!) domain "howtoget.money" - $2,000

The article was about this on OnlineDomains:

http://onlinedomain.com/2016/10/21/...owner-refuses-2000-offer-buyer-goes-com-2100/


And these are the real facts:

1.

2.

3.

If you don't have new gTLD (or better say good new gTLD) you don't know what's really going on in this part of the World.

Sales!? Wait! And you'll see them a lot!

 

[mad409]

drops make up only a part of .com sales, even without them this doesn't change. Godaddy allows to track all expired nGTLDs that get sold so they do get reported as well. You can compare them.

I'm not sure what you don't understand, I'm not knocking .com but rather saying there is NO SYSTEM to track the new g's that are dropping, period.

Why are you always defensive? Geesh! Again go back and read my first reply..

 

[168]

a single sale is NOT a reliable test for anything... If you have a bunch of sales OK. To me this sounds like another desperate attempt to 'prove' that .com is not worth anything anymore. It's pathetic really.

If they were really selling so well they wouldn't need this crap.

there is not a single New"G" supporter bent on proving .com isn't worth anything or that it will die on the vine. That propaganda
comes from the .commie camp. Use of extremes is a fear mongering tactic from individuals adverse to risk, change.
All of the New "G" supporters I know also promote and sell .coms and understand .com will be around with value forever. that being said, ROI's on .coms are thinning. There are more losses than gains this year in resales. check Namebio this is a first for .coms
Is it an anomaly? time will tell.
New.Life is correct in suggesting investors are holding for long term gains just like .com investors do..
Most large dollar sales also have a hold of 5+ years prior to sale. Some 10+ years.
Domainer's promote domains, .commies promote .coms
If your really "for the end user" or "want to change the world" you'll promote the best possible available cost effective solution
for your client and not your personal agenda.
From the New "G" supporters perspective there is nothing wrong with only promoting .com but there is definitely everything wrong
with .commies trashing everything but.com
Cheers!

 

[Kuffy]

Yes, the more web savvy you are the LESS likely you are to trust new domains.

Many IT admins have blanket blocked new TLDs due to spam. They don't do this with .com or .uk.

I'm in McDonalds at the moment using their free WiFi. Yahoo.com is blocked, Yahoo.co.uk is blocked - Yahoo.in is NOT blocked.

 

[168]

as far as I remember I bought 2 but changed my mind and grace deleted them the next day.



I am neither. I think releasing too many extensions at once is bad for the internet.

I do believe that the most effective solution for a business is to buy a .com for a price that does not hurt you financially. I think that can be done.

If you are small web developer and trying to experiment or launch a small project or if you want to launch a personal blog whatever or perhaps you are a small offline business that doesn't depend that much on online sales, or if you are doing some SEO and affiliate marketing, i think using a nGTLD is perfectly fine. I might possibly do the same.

What I wouldn't do, or recommend is, if you are taking a long term view and you want to build an online brand, or you are a startup to build on a nGTLD. Or paying big bucks for an exact match nGTLD.
I think that is a very bad idea.

Wish you the best with your strategy. There's lots of room for other strategies too. Sorry, I just can't support positions that don't support the whole team and every team has bad players. It's like saying we only need the quarterback and the other players will never be as valuable. The team can survive without the quarterback. The quarterback cannot survive without the team.
Relevance will always be important and valuable.
that's how exact match and dictionary terms became so valuable and that is why "end users" will choose a more relevant New "G" over an obscure .com leftover. Relevance is a long term view
do you really tell clients anything other than a .com is a bad idea unless you can't afford it ? New "G"s are only good for playing around or experimenting ? There are a lot of .coms nobody wants one could "experiment" with. 99 cents for a whole year ! You will never be taken seriously without the legacy .com ? Why even bother with New "G"s at all when there are sooo many .com's nobody wants?
"buy a .com for a price that does not hurt you financially". Add to that,- You can spread out the real cost year after year marketing a brand identity that is trendy,miss spelled,obscure, doesn't pass the radio test and is irrelevant to your product or service. But seriously a leftover .com is the way to go unless you can't afford it.
Cheers

 

[joro001]

All very astute points. I appreciate that you see what is being impacted even though ultra premium .coms will remain valuable. Another domainer mentioned zero .net sales this year vs consistent sales years prior. I also see several .com porfolios paring down.
Do you do any .net sales ?
Cheers

I only own selfemployed.net which i bought recently, can't think of any others off hand so i'm the wrong person to ask about .net sales but other more high profile names in the industry who own a ton of premium .nets have stated sales are way down and recently I think media options said the market for .net is all but dead at present.

I also feel contrary to what most people think, .i.e. that they prefer .net to all gtld's and as .nets are dead so therefore all gtld's are not worthwhile. That is a load of old rubbish if you ask me. .Net is a decent enough extension with end user appeal and acceptance but you simply can't compare most .nets to a name like forex.trading.

As an end user (I am an end user as well as a domainer) I would go for that all day long over forextrading.net if I had to pay a premium for the .net. If I can't get the .com i'll buy forex.trading all day long for $5k and not bother with the .net unless I could get it for reg fee, but I certainly wouldn't pay up for it.

Thus .net is down and unlikely to come back up to anywhere close to the 10% of .coms we sometimes saw in the past.

You would have never seen me stating these sort of views even a few months ago but times are changing.

 

[slader23]

It's bad not because it is a bad or a good domain but because most people don't even know that it is a domain!!

Great comeback bro, still doesn't assess the fact that you used that article to make an illegitimate conclusion in an attempt to twist the reality of what is actually happening. So many examples that prove you wrong.

Let me give you one.

Division.Zone

This is the online community for players of the game division. It is run by ubisoft. Millions of gamers play this game. I'm sure many of its users don't know .zone is a ngtld but they go and spend hours communication in the community posting their thoughts. Also the .com does not resolve, which I think will be a new trend with developed ngtlds.

 

[Dun]

Well, this is very good point. I will explain it to you as I have it personally:

On one hand, every time there is a huge stream of anti new gTLD posts in some threads on NamePros, I, and other gTLD investors, we actually have great buying opportunities here. I have bough lot of nice new gTLD domains from members here, for few bucks. People are dropping or selling very cheaply sometimes very good new gTLD names, often after they are reading posts from naysayers. They do not realize that those few people who are constantly posting anti new gTLD posts here are very biased. Nobody from them has any new gTLDs investments whatsoever, no experience, no contacts in this area, absolutely nothing. Just their opinions. Because, opinions are for free, aren't they?

As far as I know, one of them is actually sitting on very nice .com porfolio. Another one spent years to build large ccTLD portolio. There is also a guy who invested about year ago in new gTLD domains, but names he picked were simple one of the worst I have ever seen. He had to drop then all of them, and since then he is saying that new gTLDs does not work. Well it sure has not worked for him. I think my favorite from this small camp is a person who is for long time trying unsuccessfully selling somewhat obscure .link domain, while in parallel he is posting tons of gTLD bashing links in every thread he visits. While I fully understand incentives of other naysayers, I can not simply wrap my mind around this one, I simply does not understand it. But all is ok. I mean, I have my fun here, and I am buying very cheaply. This is one aspect of it.

On the other hand, there is something what is called a morale, or sense of community. If I would be driven only from opportunistic forces, I would join the naysayers and and start bashing too! But I like to also share information and enjoy the people here, and so I sometimes I get into discussions like in this thread, and say my opinion. I am persuaded 100% that new Gs are true opportunity for everyone, and I also believe one should be very careful to listen to people who are heavily investing in com or ccTLDs...do you really think that someone who spent years to build valuable .com portfolio will tell you ANYTHING nice about new gTLD domains which directly threats his or her own business? I particularly do not like some appraisals from senior members, when it comes to new gTLDs..just recently I saw new member here, joined day ago,, he posted pretty valuable new gTLD domains, very nice list..each of them can easily fetch few hundreds to low thousands even in solid new gTLD re seller market (I am not even speaking about end users here)..and what senior member told him (guy who is here from 2003!!!) - he told him his domains are of no value, and he should put them to auction starting $1 to basically get rid of them. If I see this kind of "advice", I interact, because it is a pure disgrace.

I am also biased, as you can see from my portfolio, as I am new gTLD enthusiast.
But, at least I tell it openly, and I do not go to .com and ccTLD threads, and spread my "valuable opinions" there.

So you see, it is kind of ambivalent position here. One one hand, gTLD bashing is great for purchases, but in parallel, one simply does not feel good to listen it all the time.

I hope it helped

Thanks for your input. One of the few statements I enjoyed reading through this post. Clean, simple, and free of unnecessary agitation.

keep it that way.

 

[Phgauge000]

What's better wn.media or wnmedia.com ? For a company that calls themselves wn media ?

Or cannabis.online verse cannabisonline.com ?

 

[wwwweb]

What's better wn.media or wnmedia.com ? For a company that calls themselves wn media ?

Or cannabis.online verse cannabisonline.com ?

cannabis.online at $1200 per year renewal, no thanks.

Godaddy just acquired another 30K domain mainly .com portfolio today.

I know many here want to believe based on their present day purchases of GTLD's, but the man made demand is not strong enough to support it today.

Grandfathered $8 registrations still reign supreme, nobody is interested in 4-5 figure premium renewal fees, just a suckers game. I see many who keep throwing money into GTLD's, yet sell none. It is only a matter of time before they get slaughtered.

The registry wins, domainers lose, 97% of the people investing in GTLD's have no clue what they are doing.

 

[slader23]

cannabis.online at $1200 per year renewal, no thanks.

Godaddy just acquired another 30K domain mainly .com portfolio today.

I know many here want to believe based on their present day purchases of GTLD's, but the man made demand is not strong enough to support it today.

Grandfathered $8 registrations still reign supreme, nobody is interested in 4-5 figure premium renewal fees, just a suckers game. I see many who keep throwing money into GTLD's, yet sell none. It is only a matter of time before they get slaughtered.

The registry wins, domainers lose, 97% of the people investing in GTLD's have no clue what they are doing.

It all depends on the risk appetite and preferences of the end user/investor buying the domain. Its wrong to throw out random numbers like 97% simply because we cannot quantify scenarios with infinite possibilities. In some cases renewals are a problem, in others it isn't...you can't even say "most" because there is an incredible amount of variance since no one trade scenario is the same when selling/acquiring domains. Still...you point out a relevant issue that I'm sure is taken into consideration, thanks for the post.

 

[Phgauge000]

People can invest in gold silver or scrap iron... And in every case can attain a good return if they know the market. Some can invest thousands per share in a stock like Berkshire Hathaway or they can opt for an investment in penny stocks . One is obviously unproven and many times more risky , but there is a market for those speculators and in some cases the investment far exceeds the risk.

Gold is at about 1200 an oz silver at around 17 an oz if anyone can tell me today where a 50k investment in either will pay off better with 100 percent certainty I invite you to share. My point is I don't know and I don't believe anyone else knows for certain either. Same goes with any speculative investment .com or .whatevr included

 

[Kuffy]

agree with that. In domains any long-term or even short-term investment is risky in every extension.

If someone offers you silver claiming it will soon be worth more than gold I would be skeptical though.

The historic price differential seems to indicate that silver is likely to increase far more than gold. Gold is an artificial manipulated market, and this is why it is difficult to project future values, unless you are a member of the elite.

Copper is the understated alternative, and I belive that it may become a safe-haven metal at some stage in the future. It was once worth more than gold.

 

[New.Life]

Yesterday was Wednesday...

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

 

[wwwweb]

Renewal rates can and will make a difference for someone holding on to a large inventory . That being said , small- mid size ant large companies alike ; depending on their business model ,volume and profitably can certainly budget 1200 a year a renewals . Yes , I also admit I don't have a masters ; although I have had several work for me through the years . My brick and motar buisness is relatively small for our industry and we spend 60k a month on marketing. So if someone had name that could potentially impact our marketing even if it's used to measure the success of other medias 1200 a year is negligible.

On a side note ; as some have stated most of us that have speculated heavy in the new gtlds don't come on here or other forums to defend our strategy every day. I have shared over 100k of reported gTLD sales with dnjournal just so others can see there is some traction taking place. As others have stated there is no need for me to talk others into competing with me on the drops and or eap releases. There are many non reported sales happening every day.

.com is great but it's not the only choice . As a market continues to evolve we can see shifts in demand for every product/ service . Nothing is a known fact until it has happened . Ford at one time had almost 100 percent market share . Now the market has grown and fragmented , brands like Toyota were at one time considered cheap inferior products but still an alternitive to the big 3 , well as history has shown , things can change .. What was considered inferior not only stole market share but eventually fought its way to a very large part of the total market and is considered a quality product .

At one time Woolworth Corp was very successful , Kmart the same , Sears ... MySpace ... Aol... And on and on .. Consumer demand can change , so anyone that says unilateral comments like gtlds are dead , have no use , purpose please keep saying it. This will help,the people that want to speculate in this area have less competition.

You are not being honest with yourself, go thru all your GTLD's, add up your renewals, EAP, and acq. costs, and you will see you have a long uphill battle ahead of you. Anyone can spend $250K, and talk about $100K in sales. The KMART argument is ten years stale, that is not relevant going on into 2017.

You have to discount your renewals, against your better domains which will tend to sell first, then against holding $250-$1200 premium renewal domains, along with the costs of renewing domains which cost 4X the typical .com, your business plan has a kink in it.

Even if you get to the stage of getting someone to agree to a sale price, you need to break the news to them of a $500 renewal, majority of the time that will kill the deal.

Just because a business is a billion dollar corporation, does not mean they have billions to extend to domain purchases, just doesn't work like that in reality when it comes to budgets, and forecasting.

GTLD's have opened up options, maybe one to many, anyone deciding down this route, could get a $10K quote from you, a $500 quote from another guy, and maybe a $29 reg fee, for similar option endings. This only causes more expenses in regards to DOA deals.

How many of those $500+ renewal domains have you sold? If ICANN opens up another round in 2 years, how does this affect the value of your current holdings?

2016 has been a year where the underlying holders of the extensions, have just put end user BIN's on their own domains, and cut domainers out of the equation. You have a dozen guys paying $3K+ in EAP for the one that slipped thru the cracks, while the similar .com sits parked for the last decade.

 

[Internet.Domains]

.rodeo is unsinkable ?

There will be winners and losers with the New G's, just as there are with .Com........Quality is key in relation to both the New G's and .Com......Most of the .coms registered are worthless, its the good quality ones that sell. Same with New G's...