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.

 

[yesonline]

I believe .pro would be more popular and valuable than .co several years later.

 

[akcampbell]

Steveteva, with respect, it's not enough to have generic keywords in .pro, they need to be popular keywords. You offered me Simulator.pro and FlightSimulator.pro in the week, both keywords are actually a good fit with the .pro extension but Simulator has sold 4 times as part of a key phrase in other extensions but never exact and FlightSimulator has never sold in any extension as part of a key phrase or exact. If you look at the .pros I have sold this year, the keywords have multiple pages of reported sales within key phrases and exact, for example Coupons had sold exact in 8 other extensions. Having a few .pros that you can't sell on a domain forum and a few clients to offer them to is like going fishing in a swimming pool.

Personally, I have never been a fan of ccTLDs masquerading as gTLDs, although I accept they have done better than .pro to date, but only because .pro hasn't had a level playing field due to restrictions, very low registrar penetration, high registration fees until 2008, and a useless registry, although I believe the appointment of Karim Jiwani as CEO could address this last point.

One point about .pro sales is they are rarely to domainers. None of the .pros I have sold have ever been relisted on Sedo, Afternic, or any domain website, they have also not been parked. They haven't always been developed but I have never seen a buyer try to resell them.

 

[Dave]

How are GEO names in .PRO? I have Cardiff.pro (The capital of Wales). ?

 

[siga]

Picked up intelligence.pro a couple of days ago.
Dave the demand for geo s in .pro looks so far stagnant. Comparables such as Edinburgh have been picked up of the drop but not resold. Country's such as ak's Spain Italy and France were offer on reseller markets for lowish xxxx and seemed to have no takers. My lesser newzealand.pro was offered here and did not receive any offers when no bin was set.

 

[dotprofan]

Sparkle.pro

guess we are all busy developing .pros around here. I just launched sparkle.pro

Hey the site looks great, just wanted to let you know I had an issue when adding an item to my cart in Chrome for Mac. After adding the item I get the message "There are no products in your shopping cart." Just wanted to pass that along, nice to see another developed .pro site!

Regarding Dave's question about geo .pro names, I recently had an offer of $800 for CostaRica.pro but I turned it down. I personally think .pro names are great for the geo space, it seems the zip.pro guys think so as well.

On an unrelated note, has anyone seen the .pro.br extension? I stumbled across it doing some searches, there are 531,000 results in Google - http://www.google.com/search?s&q=site:pro.br - I wonder how that is marketed and received in Brazil.

 

[akcampbell]

I have had 3 offers for France.pro on Sedo.

 

[webdomain]

thanks dotprofan for letting me know about the shopping cart issues on sparkle.pro. the issue should now be resolved so that shoppers without an account can now add products to the cart.

Its to bad that dnjournal has not been able to report some of ak's recent sales. I was told that dnjournal can't report till buyers of the domains update their whois information and after sedo (or the likes) has to report it dnjournal which doesn't readily happen. Otherwise dnjournal can't report the information.

the good news is, whether these sales are reported or not.. the .pro extension shows no signs of slowing down.

 

[Jawed]

I have had 3 offers for France.pro on Sedo.

France.pro is a killer name.

I've had 7 offers for appoint.me on Sedo. IMO this doesn't reflect on the overall value of .me names.

 

[JoeBiz]

France.pro is a killer name.

I've had 7 offers for appoint.me on Sedo. IMO this doesn't reflect on the overall value of .me names.

I'd have to strongly agree with you.

And on another subject, I wonder how much it would cost to run Pro banner ads on some of these high volume newsletters? Just wondering.

 

[mwzd]

I've been getting a ton of traffic to page dot pro over the last couple of months and a couple of lowball offers on pages dot pro but nothing exciting as yet.

I've also taken to replying to sedo lowballs with obscenely high numbers, like a $250 offer for television dot pro got a $100k counter. :lol: If you try to insult my intelligence, I'll return the gesture. :p

To have DNJ report, they need transaction proof is all, buyer or seller can send them to Ron and they're reported, no need for Sedo / Afternic / Etc. :tu:

 

[siga]

I agree these country geos are top quality geos my
Comment was not to lessen there value but merely to
Imply the geo market is not as buoyant as other niches in .pro. Which are proving themselves through actual sales.

 

[davidc]

Have any of you guys actually done something with the names you got?

 

[siga]

Hi David, sold a couple if that counts

 

[Ben42]

Have any of you guys actually done something with the names you got?

I see you have Poker.pro developed, have you seen much traffic? I've developed Sail.pro and a number of other .pro fans here have developed sites as well.

 

[davidc]

I see you have Poker.pro developed, have you seen much traffic? I've developed Sail.pro and a number of other .pro fans here have developed sites as well.

Well, it's not really developed yet. It's just a Wordpress-installation right now but I will do something with it in a couple of weeks.

 

[steveteva]

I believe .pro would be more popular and valuable than .co several years later.

Sorry but that's bot true, just compare all .co sales (aftermarket and reg) from launch to now with .pro
Look names of domainers that trust on .co, they are the big guys....
I can argue for hours but don't need because it's a .pro thread.

I was a .pro, .tel... believer but since the big names (domainers), registrars... don't put effort on marketing or are interested about it, I'll put my eggs elswhere.

It could be one of .com challenger but fail, hope that will change but don't really believe because restriction is the lock for success.

I already exlain above other reasons .pro will not work.

Here is another example and experience with .pro
I've collect like many domainers here a list of several hundreds of home staging agencies, company... sent out an email about homestaging.pro for sale (don't tell me that name is not a good name) at a reasonable price $250 (any professional can pay that, and it's cheap) was set on sedo so they can pay immediately or contact me and trade manualy; guess what, I've got a few reply and in their email they were saying not interested, never heard about .pro... just shocking for me!

So I think I sold to a domainer here for a lower price, and it is still parked!

 

[akcampbell]

Homestaging.pro is a poor .pro. There are no previous sales for the keyword homestaging on dnsaleprice.com. Why do you think it's a good .pro?

Having big guys on board didn't stop .mobi sale prices crashing. .pro achieves respectable and consistent sale prices with no hype, no big guys on board, no registry marketing, restrictions, high registration fees, and hardly anybody selling them. It sells because it is brandable, credible, and a gTLD.

No domain extension is ever going to challenge .com or get anywhere near it. However, extensions that rely on hype like .co are more likely to struggle in a market flooded with new extensions because as soon as the spotlight moves on, they will wither. Big companies bought and developed .mobi domains, again it didn't sustain sale prices for very long.

If you buy domains in an alternative extension that is flavour of the month, it can only go down in value when the next big thing comes along. If you buy domains in an alternative extension with $99 registration fees, restrictions and hardly anybody selling it, and then registrations fees fall by 90%, restrictions get relaxed or removed, and more and more registrars sell it, it has to go up in value, all other things being equal.

 

[steveteva]

Homestaging.pro is a poor .pro. There are no previous sales for the keyword homestaging on dnsaleprice.com. Why do you think it's a good .pro?

Having big guys on board didn't stop .mobi sale prices crashing. .pro achieves respectable and consistent sale prices with no hype, no big guys on board, no registry marketing, restrictions, high registration fees, and hardly anybody selling them. It sells because it is brandable, credible, and a gTLD.

No domain extension is ever going to challenge .com or get anywhere near it. However, extensions that rely on hype like .co are more likely to struggle in a market flooded with new extensions because as soon as the spotlight moves on, they will wither. Big companies bought and developed .mobi domains, again it didn't sustain sale prices for very long.

If you buy domains in an alternative extension that is flavour of the month, it can only go down in value when the next big thing comes along. If you buy domains in an alternative extension with $99 registration fees, restrictions and hardly anybody selling it, and then registrations fees fall by 90%, restrictions get relaxed or removed, and more and more registrars sell it, it has to go up in value, all other things being equal.

You're the only one or few making money on .pro because of some top generic you own witch I' happy for you and I believe that you put positive thinking of .pro

You are one of the most famous .pro seller

But for most or all .pro owners it's not really a great extension.

Just open your eyes and look at .pro drops!

I know some did reg hundreds of good .pro at beginning (not me) and let it drop after.

I don't believe when you say homestaging.pro is not worth. dnsaleprice.com is not the only tool to trust on for your statements.

Investigate more on home staging and you'll see it's not a small niche market. In real estate, it's common! Check how many professionals are there? and you'll be :o

 

[davidc]

It's a good extension, but not for all keywords. I like to think that there are some general "rules" for registering a .pro. Don't register simple words or words that can't combine with Pro.

Exampel: Almost all sports can be combined with .Pro, why? Because all sports have pros. The extension fits naturally with the keyword.

Then there are some career, business and product words/names that can be combined but a LOT of them that doesn't fit at all. Just because there was a high sale on a keyword doesn't automatically mean that the same keyword.pro will be sold for a high price.

Try thinking further away, what could "this" domain be used for by the endbuyer? Is it brandable? Would ppl remember/recognize it? Is it a lot of money in this business?!

Of course, all in the end it's what you tell the endbuyer about the domain and why your askingprice is what it is.

 

[akcampbell]

I investigated homestaging at the time you registered the .pro because it wasn't a word I was familiar with but I still concluded it was a poor .pro. There are no previous sales whatever site you check. I have checked Namebio.com, DomainTools, and DNSalePrice. On Sedo, there are 2 domains with 4 offers between them for homestaging. You did well to sell it to another domainer for a few dollars. .pro is like any alternative extension, you need strong keywords that fit the extension and it helps if you have alot of them.