I agree with Samit on the best 10, the only change I would make is to switch Furnishing.pro for Furnishings.pro. I don't usually prefer the plural but here it has higher search volume, more keyword historical sales, and more advertiser competition. If I had to go further and pick the top 5 they would be;
1) Console.pro
2) Netbook.pro
2) Shooting.pro
3) SkyDiving.pro
5) Silk.pro
The tech angle and sporting angle work very well with .pro plus the top two have high search volume. I picked Silk for 5) because it's short and brandable above and beyond selling silk and silk products.
I would echo what Samit says about .pros being difficult to sell, it doesn't help that only 10% of people are eligible to register so you are taking an already small market of people willing to consider developing an alternative extension and cutting it by a further 90%.
As Samit says, first names make less sense with .pro than surnames, people call a company by their surname so you'd have more chance of selling Harris.pro than Linda.pro and Lisa.pro. The problem with surnames in general is they add another level of filtering to your potential market. You have to go through 1) Would Consider Developing or Buying a .Pro, 2) Are Eligible to register a .pro, and then you are adding 3) Must be called Harris. It's difficult to find buyers because of 1) and 2), going that extra step 3) is making things even harder.
I renewed 340 .pros on the back of the Encirca price promotions and will let about 50 drop. If RegistryPro fail to negotiate a more commercially viable contract with ICANN in May 2010, I will cut my holding to 100 .pros in 2010-11. RegistryPro have to get rid of residual restrictions. Until they do, the math is simple, 90% of people won't consider developing an alternative extension, 90% of registrars don't offer .pro, and 90% of people aren't eligible to register. Get rid of restrictions, get every registrar offering .pro, and you get a 100 fold increase in the size of the .pro market. If you do a simple SWOT analysis of .pro;
Strengths
1) Brilliant brand potential
2) Heavy KeywordPro.com development
3) 15,000 US Pro trademarks
4) gTLD status
5) Semantically credible and impressive
Weaknesses
1) 90% of registrars by volume don't offer .pro
2) 90% of people aren't eligible to register them
3) Still overpriced compared to other gTLD's like .biz, .mobi, and .info
4) Hardly anybody had heard of .pro
5) Only 35,000 .pros registered
Opportunities
1) ICANN are selling off new extensions so the owners of the old restricted ones can extract concessions by playing the "level playing field" card.
2) Existing alternative extensions are either ugly like .biz and .mobi or only work with certain keywords like .info (information friendly generics), .me (verbs), and .tv (media). There is a gap in the market for a beautiful extension that can fit a breadth of keywords.
Threats
1) A wave of new gTLD's will wipe out the value of restricted extension. There will be no point in Hostway funding RegistryPro losses for another 5 years
The game to me couldn't be easier. Negotiate a level playing field with ICANN, get rid of restrictions, get sold by every registrar, increase your potential market 100 fold, cut reg fees in line with .biz, .mobi and .info, and market .pro as an premium version of .com by playing on the pro angle.
Will RegistryPro do this? Based on the last 5 years, no. They appear to have no clue whatsoever about the mechanics of developing an alternative extension, their marketing is either non-existent or laughably amateurish, they don't understand domain pricing economics, and other than Network Solutions, they can't persuade big registrars to offer .pro.
However, on the legal site at least, and that's where the CEO of RegistryPro's strength is, they have made more progress in the last 12 months than in the previous 4 years put together. The partial removal of restrictions in September 2008 and recent applications to ICANN to reduce registry fees and issue 1,2, and 3 character .pros demonstrates a long overdue willingness to fight .pro's corner and make it profitable.
However, what they have done so far is nowhere near enough, they cannot accept restrictions on .pro registrations in their 2010-2015 contract, any restrictions must be limited to registry monitoring of professional use, the new wave of gTLD's ICANN are planning to launch won't be restricted, restrictions are not workable or commercially viable, and that's why virtually every extension has dropped them along the way.
