The .PRO Discussion

[InvisionTech]

It seems .PRO is slowly coming out of the cage with cheaper reg prices than they were a year ago and major registrars like netsol taking notice of the extension and promoting it.

Here are some that I picked up in last couple of days:

Alexandria.pro

Anchorage.pro

Arlington.pro

Belfast.pro

Birmingham.pro

Budapest.pro

Durham.pro

Fairfax.pro

Italian.pro

Lisbon.pro

Fire away with your regs after the relaunch on September 8th, 2008.

 

[sky]

You aren't ".pro's constituency", they don't represent you or owe you anything. As with any business the aim is to extract as much profits from you (the customer) as they can, they do that for their shareholders, that is who they have a duty towards. That isn't hypocitical, it is how business works.

Let me see if I can find a word to substitute for 'hypocritical' that doesn't involve the use of some sort of squalid invective. ... hmmm, that's going to be tough.

Let me put it this way... ethical businesses try to serve the needs of the customers that pay for their services.

 

[DnEbook]

i live in australia and if i had a .pro website i would have to make sure i had the www in the title because no one would know it was a website

Australia is still a hard place to buy + sell domains, you do need a aussie business number to reg a name here

It is not a well known industry (domaining)

 

[firefly]

Comparing .com.au to .pro is like comparing a thoroughbred to a dog turd.

The .com.au extension rules down under. It is almost a prerequisite to succeed in business down here. It even takes preference to .com.

Snoop is right on two points. firstly .us won't ever be huge simply because the US sees .com as *it's* extension. He was also correct in saying that the best way for registras to make money is to release new extensions to take advantage of domainers feeding frenzy mentality everytime one is released.

The .pro extension is not much different to most of the newer released TLD's. I've never seen one in a search engine when I'm looking for various things and I'm sure that unless some determined domainer, out to prove his point, goes digging, not many regular users find any either.

Most all newer extension releases are domainer driven, creating their own market within a market and I guess that is good for those that invest, but in the long run, if Joe public doesn't know about it, then it's worth squat in real world terms. The .pro extension falls into that category. There might even be some decent sales...but no mass adoption by the general public leaves it high and dry.

Look around the threads you can .tel which extensions are mainly driven by domainers. Blow public perception, or even knowledge or acceptance. Most people will search for recognised extensions wether you like it or not. the .com.au extension is one of them. That's what it has over .pro. That's what any established extension like .com, or any strong cctld has over it period.


.

 

[akcampbell]

The .com.au extension rules down under. It is almost a prerequisite to succeed in business down here. It even takes preference to .com.

Yes but Australia is a tiny country with 21.7m people. There are 6,770m people in the world as of April 2009. That's the market I'm targeting when I develop a .pro. If you aim beyond Australia when you develop a .com.au, Google will penalise you. Want proof of that, read the comment by Google employee JohnMu in August 2008 on this Google Webmaster page;

http://groups.google.com/group/Goog...g/browse_thread/thread/8f9026c2eddb7036?pli=1

The .pro extension is not much different to most of the newer released TLD's..

Of course it is, .pro is a gTLD. That automatically bundles it with .com, .net, .org, and .info whether you like it or not.

I've never seen one in a search engine when I'm looking for various things

Do you understand why you don't see one? There are 77m .coms registered, up to mid-2008 there were 6,500 .pros. About 80% of those .pros were leased from Encirca under their Pro Forwarding agreement. Lessees were sitting tight waiting for the .pro rules to change. That leaves 1,200-1,500 .pros versus 77m .coms. That would give you a 1 in 50,000 chance of finding a .pro, and that's only out the of .coms that rank in search engine results, and that doesn't take into account the fact that older domain tend to rank higher because of bank link accumulation.

There might even be some decent sales...but no mass adoption by the general public leaves it high and dry.

.pro is still restricted to licensed professionals, it wasn't intended for mass adoption. Until September 2008, you had to be a company employing 2 out of these 4 types of professionals - doctor, lawyer, engineer, or accountant - in Germany, Canada, the UK and US to register a second level .pro. How many companies do you know that don't already have a .com and employ 2 of those 4 professional types in those 4 countries? Even if you were licensed as one of those professionals in those countries, you could still only register a profession specific third level .pro, like JohnSmith.law.pro. Who is going to develop a sub domain of a heavily restricted extension that nobody has heard of? The prize with .pro is the second level domains and they have only become more widely available within the last 6 months and even then only about 5-6 registrars offer .pro at reasonable reg fees.

Comparing .com.au to .pro is like comparing a thoroughbred to a dog turd.

I'm in the UK so .com.au has now value to me. I have no interest in .co.uk either. There are 65m people in the UK. The last website I developed, a .com, has few members in the UK, I get most of my members from the US. My key requirement when I develop a website is that I don't want to be penalised by non-UK search engines.

I could choose a reinvented ccTLD like .me or .tv but I'm not comfortable with that. I don't like the fact that under the surface, .me is Montenegro's ccTLD and .tv is Tuvalu. Montenegro inflation in Jan 1994 was 3,000,000%, it has only been an independent country since 2006. I don't want my online business and brand dependent on political stability in a tiny ethnically diverse country with just 677,000 people. Plus .me only fits verbs. Same with .tv, I like the branding angle with media keywords but it doesn't fit keywords I develop.

That leaves .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .mobi, and .pro. Like any developer, I prefer .com, if I launch a com, I will do a press release, and if it's got a good name, I will get alot of initial traffic from that and bloggers will pick up on it to carry that along. You can't get close to .com in terms of profile and notice people take, I accept that. .net doesn't nothing for me, although I understand it's old, keeps good company, is well known, I understand why people develop it. .org is for not for profit sites, .info works with generic information keywords but not everything I develop fits that model, .biz is informal slang, only good for getting out a tight squeeze at scrabble, .mobi is ugly and pointless, so that really only leaves .pro.

As a developer, I like .pro because;

1) It's a gTLD, I won't get disavantaged by non-UK search engines. This is critical, I aim for the long tail when I develop, I need a little bit of traffic from everywhere to make the site work.

2) It's brandable. There are 15,000 references to Pro in the US trademark registry. Pro is an aspirational, credibility boosting, premium product suffix that people add to generic words offline. What works offline as a brand, works online, the reason .pro hasn't fulfilled its potential online is high reg fees and insane restrictions which until September 2008 stopped even licensed professional registering the sought after second level domains.

3) The word Pro is universally recognised. This was part of my logic for investing in .info several years ago and I'm glad I did.

4) It creates beautiful keyword fits. You have the obvious superstars like Poker.pro and Golf.pro. I paid $3,000 each for Guide.pro (Professional Guide), Survey.pro (Professional Survey), and Studio.pro (Studio Professional). I paid $600 for Expert.pro (Professional Expert), $150 for Salon.pro (Salon Professional), $1,800 for Training.pro (Professional Training), $1,000 for Company.pro (Company Professional). Maybe domainers can tell me where I can get a gTLD with fit like that in popular commercial keywords for less money other than .pro?

If you want to read more about .pro restrictions, see .pro sale prices to date, view my .pros, see which registrars offer .pro and how much they charge, check out .pro stats graphically, or read my .pro Blog, have a look at Total.pro. Try not to get lost at Total.com or TotalPro.com along the way.

 

[sky]

Comparing .com.au to .pro is like comparing a thoroughbred to a dog turd.

The .com.au extension rules down under. It is almost a prerequisite to succeed in business down here. It even takes preference to .com.

Snoop is right on two points. firstly .us won't ever be huge simply because the US sees .com as *it's* extension. He was also correct in saying that the best way for registras to make money is to release new extensions to take advantage of domainers feeding frenzy mentality everytime one is released.

The .pro extension is not much different to most of the newer released TLD's. I've never seen one in a search engine when I'm looking for various things and I'm sure that unless some determined domainer, out to prove his point, goes digging, not many regular users find any either.

Most all newer extension releases are domainer driven, creating their own market within a market and I guess that is good for those that invest, but in the long run, if Joe public doesn't know about it, then it's worth squat in real world terms. The .pro extension falls into that category. There might even be some decent sales...but no mass adoption by the general public leaves it high and dry.

Look around the threads you can .tel which extensions are mainly driven by domainers. Blow public perception, or even knowledge or acceptance. Most people will search for recognised extensions wether you like it or not. the .com.au extension is one of them. That's what it has over .pro. That's what any established extension like .com, or any strong cctld has over it period.
.

I get all of that. I've started looking into ccTLDs. A ccTLD llike .US will ever touch .COM, but .COM is used up and a lot of small start-ups are willing to pay low $XXXX for a .US with a good keyword or keyword combo, and .US fits the bill increasingly, and is heating up. That's not just my observation, but of captains of the industry, including Rick Latona and Ron Jackson.

Long gone are the days I thought I'd just wake up and find out someone had offered me $50,000 or $500,000 for a name I just put up on sedo. I'm starting to diversify my portfolio. I made the newbie mistake of overinvesting in .PRO, and some of my names have been duds for sure. I will have probably thrown away $1500 on useless .PROs by the time it's all said and done. But I'm hanging on to the good keyword .PRO regs I worked hard to find, and focusing new regs in other areas.

But regardless of what people say about .PRO being crap, and regardless of what weak poorly considered policies Registry.pro has for 2nd level domains (and I have parsed the language and it is weak and overly vague and has dumb loopholes and weird bias), the fact remains, in my opinion that the name .PRO sounds good for some keywords, and in fact sounds better than .COM for some keywords. That might not make .PRO more valuable than .COM from the standpoint of public recognition, or searchability, but it still means that it can make for some very cool sounding site names.

A couple of people here keep saying they never see .PRO come up in searches, but no one has made any kind of claim whatsoever that there's an inherent bias against .PRO by Google's algorithm. recording.pro has PR 3 with very little promotion or serious SEO, or business. It's just a site under development. So I don't see where there's any Google bias against pro.

So for developer's that have good content, meet the licensing requirements and build up the domain, .PRO should be just as good as a .COM, and when a few good sites come up with .PRO on the name (and they will) the fact it sounds different from .COM along along with a cool popular term 'pro' could make them memorable by contrast alone. People are going to remember the names of sites they like, especially if it is a one keyword domain with a cool sound to it, and good content. To me that's the bottom line. I think .PRO is bad for speculation, but fine for development.

So while I'm disappointed in many things about .PRO, I am not feeling completely defeated. But I'm only keeping .PRO for development sites that I want to give a nice name to that I could never afford in a .COM.

 

[firefly]

.pro is still restricted to licensed professionals, it wasn't intended for mass adoption.

And here I was thinking there would be millions upon millions of licensed professional worldwide. :o . Considering that there is 760,929 in New York State alone by the 2008 numbers http://www.op.nysed.gov/08reg.htm . The list doesn't even include the numerous trade professionals such as plumbers and other licensed tradespeople.

If all the good .coms are taken, why isn't there a mad rush by the pros who missed out?

Look, out of some the more recent (and I do realize that it's not that recent) releases .pro is probably one of the least offensive or inherently redundant. Doesn't mean it's great. Far from it.

The question was what does .com.au have that .pro doesn't. It has a ready made market as do most cctld's and it is widely adopted by it's target audience...even for a small country...lol.


.

 

[James]

How can you possibly compare the 2 when ones made for Australian residents/businesses and the other is marketed for 'professionals'

I'm sorry but this argument is stupid. They've both got their downfalls and in the end, any tld can become popular because of keywords.

 

[Tippy]

.com.au has to be one of the fugliest ext. out there... about as bad as our .qc.ca

 

[firefly]

.com.au has to be one of the fugliest ext. out there... about as bad as our .qc.ca

LMAO...you might find it ugly but I'll take ugly and useable over pretty and useless any day

 

[mwzd]

.com.au makes sense in australia and has widespread local usage and acceptance from a branding standpoint

.pro makes sense globally. It currently doesn't have a fraction of the usage .com.au does.

.com.au is a cctld, it has high significance and usage in the country of location. But thats it, it has no other global significance.

.Pro has the potential and the possibility of taking on .com on a global playing field. Plus imho its more with the times in terms of hipness and the 'now' factor.

Apples and oranges really.

What really people don't understand is that country extensions with nexus requirements are just as hampered as .pro but have the additional disadvantage of being geo limited, something that a gtld and commonly used word like pro doesn't.

.us is a word, but is also hampered by nexus. only way it will go global is if the nexus is removed, chances of which happening are remote to nil. .com.au and .co.uk can never be global, not even if .au and .uk were launched.

it is widely considered to be junk.

What DON'T you consider 'junk'?

But I'm perfectly happy to have .pro be the TLD of new development. Why? Because it sounds *cool*.

Exactly my point and its absolutely ok if people don't get it, yet. Just means that their are profits still to be made here. They were also laughing at the people hoarding domains in 2000 after the dotcom bust.

I remember scanning the entire .pro zone file once and got a grand total of 4 names with overture with extention. Its dead, even .travel is killing it

Try without the extension. You must remember ovt's heyday was when mostly everything was .com, it was/is not geared to the new paradigm of 300+ tlds, with more coming almost regularly.

And this is what really matters - without extension, huge keywords are available for registration or purchase at sane prices. Developed, the seo value of this will be much more than geo limited cctlds and on par with other gtlds like .com .net .org with the added and obvious marketing benefits of the 'hipness' factor.

 

[akcampbell]

If all the good .coms are taken, why isn't there a mad rush by the pros who missed out?

When .pro relaunched in September 2008, RegistryPro talked about opening up .pro to "tens of millions of licensed professionals". What RegistryPro fail to grasp is that licensed professionals don't have the technical skills, risk appetite, or knowledge of alternative extensions to develop .pro.

The natural market for .pro are web developers and entrepreneurs who want a brandable, geo-neutral, commercial, to borrow your phrase non-offensive, alternative to .com. They want single short generic keywords from $1,000 to $10,000 not from $100,000 to $10m. The problem is web developers and entrepreneurs are qualified by experience and do not meet .pro eligibility requirements.

That leaves .pro in the hands of a few hundred people like me, paper qualified professionals who are also part time domainers, developers, or both. Of the 30,000 .pros registered, 1,000 are held by a guy in Phoenix who resells high tech equipment, I assume he is also a qualified engineer.

Doesn't mean it's great. Far from it.

People have a choice, they can either run with domains like you have in your signature or switch to an alternative like .pro.

Your signature domains break all of my domaining rules. You have 3 word commercial keyphrases in .org. They are long, unbrandable, and have a wonky fit between commercial keywords and a not-for-profit extension.

You have a 3 word brandable in .net starting with the word "The". Can you name a well known 3 word brand that starts with the word "The"? You use dashes in your .coms. You use combinations of keywords in .com that make little sense, for example "About Beat" has 95,000 Google indexed pages as a phrase. The last 2 word brandable .com I developed had 172,000,000 Google uniques.

Even when you pick logical 3 word .coms, presumably pitched at the PPC market, for example "Basic Cooking Skills", the Google search stats are tiny. "Basic Cooking Skills" has 155 searches per month on Google and a suggested bid of GBP 41p per click. My next .com development project is LoyaltyCards.com, the phrase "Loyalty Cards" has 6,600 searches per month and a suggested bid of GBP £2.39 per click. You have SmartPhonesShowdown.com in your signature, I hand-regged Phones.pro. Phones.co.uk sold for $344,710 in July 08.

If you can buy a phrase that pays and gets searched for in .com for sensible money, I understand that. But scraping the barrel with 3 and 4 word .coms, .nets and .orgs with dashes, keywords like "The", that's like chasing the tail of a game that was played and won 10 years ago.

Have you seen the film "Far And Away". There is a land grab scene in it, I love it, it sums up the psychology of alternative extensions. Some people will stay on the .com farm, working as laborers for wealthy landowners who grabbed the best .coms in the 1990s, other people refuse to do that. It's never too late to dump that rubbish in your signature, pack a suitcase, and find your own land to farm.

 

[James]

If you can buy a phrase that pays and gets searched for in .com for sensible money, I understand that. But scraping the barrel with 3 and 4 word .coms, .nets and .orgs with dashes, keywords like "The", that's like chasing the tail of a game that was played and won 10 years ago.

Have you seen the film "Far And Away". There is a land grab scene in it, I love it, it sums up the psychology of alternative extensions. Some people will stay on the .com farm, working as laborers for wealthy landowners who grabbed the best .coms in the 1990s, other people refuse to do that. It's never too late to dump that rubbish in your signature, pack a suitcase, and find your own land to farm.

You put it perfectly.

 

[bmugford]

I am not sure how this comparison even came up. You have a ccTLD vs a gTLD.

The difference here is the first is widely accepted and used in a major country. .PRO is well down the totem pole as far as gTLD goes. You can't really make any direct comparison since they have different purposes.

Brad

 

[akcampbell]

.PRO is well down the totem pole as far as gTLD goes. Brad

Every domain on DataCube.com is well down the totem pole as far as .com, .net and .org goes.

The question is what is more likely to sell, something like Mobile.pro or one of the "premium" domains on DataCube.com like eMoron.com? Mobile.co.uk sold for $247,921 in Nov 07, Mobile.im sold for $7,000 in Jan 08, I can't see any sales for eMoron and only 1 for Moron, why do you think that is?

If .pro makes progress, Mobile.pro could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars because of the exceptional fit and blockbuster keyword. eMoron.com isn't going anywhere. Moron.com sold for $25,000 in Aug 06, and that's the first and last domain that will sell with the keyword moron in.

As Oscar Wilde said, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars".

 

[bmugford]

akcambell, it is clear you have no clue what you are talking about so you try to resort to personal attacks I guess.

First of all eMoron.com is not a "premium domain" on DataCube.com, it is one of hundreds of random domains that you picked. Second eKeyword.com domains have buyers now. I have sold many of them. I have sold several domains in the last month in the low $X,XXX range. How many .PRO have you sold for that?

.PRO is well after COM/NET/ORG/INFO/BIZ and probably several others. I understand you are a cheerleader of it, but I think you could stand a dose of reality.

The difference is credible extensions have buyers now. No one wants to buy a .PRO because it has little credibility and probably never will.

I would prefer to make "actual" sales. While you are at NameBio.com, take some time and lookup all the .PRO sales. It is a pretty short list.

Brad

Every domain on DataCube.com is well down the totem pole as far as .com, .net and .org goes.

The question is what is more likely to sell, something like Mobile.pro or one of the "premium" domains on DataCube.com like eMoron.com? Mobile.co.uk sold for $247,921 in Nov 07, Mobile.im sold for $7,000 in Jan 08, I can't see any sales for eMoron and only 1 for Moron, why do you think that is?

If .pro makes progress, Mobile.pro could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars because of the exceptional fit and blockbuster keyword. eMoron.com isn't going anywhere. Moron.com sold for $25,000 in Aug 06, and that's the first and last domain that will sell with the keyword moron in.

As Oscar Wilde said, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars".

 

[akcampbell]

it is clear you have no clue what you are talking about so you try to resort to personal attacks I guess.

If you can't take it, don't dish it out. I commented on your domains, that's not a personal attack. You said .pro was at the bottom of the totem pole, I fired that back at you.

While you are at NameBio.com, take some time and lookup all the .PRO sales. It is a pretty short list.

I don't need to do that, they are listed on my .pro site Total.pro. This will amaze you but it works just like a .com, you type it in, all 8 letters and a dot and the site appears.

I've been looking through DataCube.com for a good domain name for a similar .com domain project. How about BuyMyDomainNames.com? 4 words and 19 letters of .com beauty. I could provide a link from Total.pro so your visitors don't get repetitive strain injury?

 

[bmugford]

Well, I have already said everything I want to say so good luck with your .PRO domains.

Brad

If you can't take it, don't dish it out. I commented on your domains, that's not a personal attack. You said .pro was at the bottom of the totem pole, I fired that back at you.

I don't need to do that, they are listed on my .pro site Total.pro. This will amaze you but it works just like a .com, you type it in, all 8 letters and a dot and the site appears.

I've been looking through DataCube.com for a good domain name for a similar .com domain project. How about BuyMyDomainNames.com? 4 words and 19 letters of .com beauty. I could provide a link from Total.pro so your visitors don't get repetitive strain injury?

 

[Tippy]

akcampbell, your in the wrong here, will you attack me as well if I say anything bad about .pro... what you did/said certainly wasnt very pro.

 

[akcampbell]

akcampbell, your in the wrong here, will you attack me as well if I say anything bad about .pro... what you did/said certainly wasnt very pro.

I certainly won't attack you but I may run a ruler over your domains. Be nice to .pro and I won't make any comments about your 4 word .coms.

 

[mwzd]

Keyboard Joe doesn't know what a .info, .pro, .tel - dot anything but dot com is.... When the whole rest of the world thinks Internet, they think dot com. I don't see that changing too much in the future either.

Thats incorrect. I've had end users who are oblivious to the extension.

I've also had buyers who knew exactly why they were buying an alternative extension.

At the end of the day its about ROI, if their investment needs to be greater than profits over a year, they're just not interested. Thats where other extensions score, just that not too many people know about .pro atm, while cctlds are very well known in their country and elsewhere too.