Tom Barett Blog, '05: Sprit of .Pro, Where Art Thou?

[sky]

Tom Barret is president of Encirca, the most created .Pro registrar.
I own some .pro domains, and I'm very interested in seeing them have a future and being a part of it.

I'm looking forward to Tom's replies to the questions solicited about pro...
Meanwhile, I found the link to one of his blogs from '05 and thought I'd share

http://www.circleid.com/posts/spirit_of_pro_where_art_thou/

 

[akcampbell]

It's been quite a few weeks now since the Encirca post and email soliciting questions. I'm wondering whether Tom wants to hold back the answers until there is some news to report on registration fees and restrictions or if some of the questions raised were awkward to answer.

It's encouraging how widely .pro's are held internationally. I have bought about 10-15 on the aftermarket and sellers have been from Ireland, Netherlands, China, and the UK as well as the US. Recent registrations have included Russia, India, Poland, and China. It's good to see. The problem is there are still only 4-5 new registration per day on a good day with 1-2 deletes and with seasonal deleting months factored in that isn't going to amount to much progress during the course of a year. To make any real progress registrations have to go from 5,000 to 50,000 to 500,000 to 5,000,000 in a 1-3 year period not from 5,000 to 6,500 which is where we are heading at the moment.

The extension is still in a parlous catatonic state, if Registry.pro and Encirca continue running it like a mom and pop shop it will go nowhere. .Pro packs a punch but it's been fighting with it's hands tied behind it's back for 3 years. There is a genuine appetite for professional brandable alternatives to .com. Cut the registration fees to $10-$25, remove all restrictions, and it will fly. Leave things as they are and it will continue to die a slow death.

 

[dotprofan]

I agree that it's vital to lower the registration fee and remove the restrictions for registering .pro names. It seems like this won't happen until 2009 at the earliest however, when the contract with ICANN is renegotiated. In the meantime, I think the best thing that can be done to raise awareness for the extension is to develop high quality sites using the .pro domains. The .pro extension is great for SEO and a simple site can often cover the registration fee over a year using Adsense, Text Link Ads and other advertising channels.

 

[akcampbell]

In that case ICANN should give the contract for running .pro to somebody else because Registry.pro will have made no progress developing the extension by 2009 with the current setup.

I will drop alot of my weaker .pros in 2008 if nothing changes and I am sure alot of other .pro domain holders will do the same. Few keywords are worth holding long term for $99 per annum.

 

[dotprofan]

It's certainly a risk to renew names generating no revenue but I think that if you can get the names to pay for themselves then it's a no-lose situation to hold them.

In that case ICANN should give the contract for running .pro to somebody else because Registry.pro will have made no progress developing the extension by 2009 with the current setup.

I will drop alot of my weaker .pros in 2008 if nothing changes and I am sure alot of other .pro domain holders will do the same. Few keywords are worth holding long term for $99 per annum.

 

[sky]

I personally got a little carried away 'speculating'

It's certainly a risk to renew names generating no revenue but I think that if you can get the names to pay for themselves then it's a no-lose situation to hold them.

I regged about 20 names. After doing some promotion, about 1/2 of them are getting hits at a rate that indicates to me a degree of popularity. The other 10 I'd like to keep, but $1000 to renew them does seem too risky. We'll see how many I can get developed to a point where they can be profitable.

I wasn't getting any return parking them, so right now they all point to their sale page on SEDO. Every now and then I try to find some end users and promote the domains. No offers yet. But I'm hanging in there.

I'm a software engineer, and I own CS3, so I assume that if I can find some time around my day job that I can make some progress, just not as much as I'd like. One of them I am developing is going to be really cool, and I think I'm going to generate a nice revenue stream with it when I get it where I want it to be.