question Why are two letter .icu domains cheap?

[doticu]

I thought two letter domains cost alot of money? Why are they so cheap?

 

[Josytal]

'cos
cheap domain = cheap sales

 

[TheDomainsGroup]

because the extension is trash and there is no market at the moment (or else it wouldn't be cheap)

 

[ecalc]

Don’t worry, with guerilla marketing and $0.98 retail pricing, a global feeding frenzy will consume all 676 units and the $662.48 bonanza will fund a registry/registrar party that will make a bacchanal look like a WCTU meeting.

 

[urljunky]

there is an extension .icu?

 

[wot]

there is an extension .icu?

It's where most ngtld extensions go before they finally pass away and are be buried with others that also did not make it.

 

[Premiums]

what is .icu?

 

[stewmath]

probably because its a crap unknown extension

 

[jmcc]

To a lot of English speaking people, ICU is an acronym for Intensive Care Unit in a hospital. The registry seems to want to brand it as "I see you" but I'm not sure that will be successful.

 

[doticu]

Thanks for the replies, Didn't know any of this.

 

[Premiums]

To a lot of English speaking people, ICU is an acronym for Intensive Care Unit in a hospital. The registry seems to want to brand it as "I see you" but I'm not sure that will be successful.

great info thank you

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I am somewhat surprised that in this normally knowledgeable community there seems many did not even know of this extension. At first I thought it was too gimmicky, and did not plan on investing in any. However, upon further reflection, my views changed, at least somewhat. Yes, it is new, but I think it might merit at least an open mind for the following reasons:

1. The registry seems to have, in my opinion, done a smart thing re initial pricing. Rather than only the extremes of really low prices and crazy premium ones, they use a smart graduated registration price scale that is typically only $15 to $150 for many excellent keywords (some are more). My understanding is that the renewal rate is NOT premium even for these though (correct me if I am wrong), and is currently about $8 at multiple registrars.I think that level of pricing is smart and will keep from the huge one year drop.
2. For such a new extension, the number of registrars handling it impressive.
3. They are not alone among ngTLDs in doing this, but I think having their pioneer program where they will help promote real use is a good idea. https://nic.icu/
4. Already the registration numbers are closing in on 50,000, already past many better known extensions that have been around for years. https://ntldstats.com/tld/icu
5. Already .icu domains can be listed on Sedo. Many extensions took much longer to be accepted.
6. The co-founder of .icu, Kevin Kopas, is a name well known in the domain industry, and shows every sign of being proactive and smart in the promotion and supervision of the extension. Read Ron's excellent story on this from DNJournal here http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2018/dailyposts/20180529.htm
7. For a domain not yet two months in general extension, the number of actually operating websites is more than decent for a ngTLD. It is 5th in growth trend as I write this. As of today .icu has 49 sites in Alexa 1M, or one per about 970 registrations. By comparison .app is 1 in about 2675, .top is 1 in 2500, the much older .xyz is about 1 in 940, and .online that promotes being highly used and is much older is only slightly better at 1 in 580).https://namestat.org/icu

Yes, it may become a flop, but I think it at least deserves an objective and informed look! For me points (3), (6) and (7) made me take a closer look at the extension, and to purchase some. There will not be huge profits I think because of the graduated pricing the premium names are not that much and you are competing with that. However, I think quality names may well find a buyer for some multiple of purchase price. No, I know that no resales yet, but that is not unusual for first two months of any extension.

 

[jmcc]

They are not alone among ngTLDs in doing this, but I think having their pioneer program where they will help promote real use is a good idea.

Promoting use and getting use are two very different things. Basically, usage orginates from awareness and at the moment, awareness is quite low. It will take a lot of marketing to get .ICU to the level where usage becomes self-sustaining.

For a domain not yet two months in general extension, the number of actually operating websites is more than decent for a ngTLD.

You seem to be confusing Alexa with an accurate metric of usage. In terms of web usage, .ICU is no different to any other early phase gTLD. Its usage is very low. What you are seeing in Alexa is blackhat SEOed and redirected sites.

Resales are not a reliable indication of the health of a new TLD. Basically there's no primary market or secondary market established until the second or third year of operation and most of the sales that occur ina TLD's first year are abnormal. Overspeculation by domainers can be quite toxic for a new TLD because domainers generally don't develop websites. Thus a new TLD on zonefile counts can appear to be strong but most of those early registrations have no working website associated with the domain name. Some speculation is good as it raises awareness but overspeculation can kill a TLD. There are some new gTLDs where this has actually happened.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

You seem to be confusing Alexa with an accurate metric of usage. In terms of web usage, .ICU is no different to any other early phase gTLD. Its usage is very low. What you are seeing in Alexa is blackhat SEOed and redirected sites.

I use Alexa 1M since that is the measure used by NameStats and similarly respected sites. It has also been used by numerous legacy, country code, and ngTLDs to stress useage. Here is how they compute their statistics for ranking. I disagree with your interpretation, but perhaps we can agree to disagree. Thank you for taking time to respond.

A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of Unique Visitors and Pageviews. Unique Visitors are determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single Pageview. The site with the highest combination of unique visitors and pageviews is ranked #1. Additionally, we employ data normalization to correct for biases that may occur in our data.
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https://www.alexa.com/topsites

I agree with your comment that, in any extension, over-speculation is unhealthy.

 

[jmcc]

I use Alexa 1M since that is the measure used by NameStats and similarly respected sites. It has also been used by numerous legacy, country code, and ngTLDs to stress useage. Here is how they compute their statistics for ranking. I disagree with your interpretation, but perhaps we can agree to disagree. Thank you for taking time to respond.

Alexa is not considered a good metric by those who understand SEO and search engines. It makes for nice reading for people who don't but the reality is that it can be manipulated. The real figures for usage can be quite terrifying,especially when it comes to web usage and development.

This should have been a red flag: "unique Alexa users " Get a few thousand headless browsers (basically programs that do almost everything a human operating a browser does) running on virtual servers and you can improve the ranking of sites.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

they use a smart graduated registration price scale that is typically only $15 to $150 for many excellent keywords (some are more). My understanding is that the renewal rate is NOT premium even for these though (correct me if I am wrong), and is currently about $8 at multiple registrars.I think that level of pricing is smart and will keep from the huge one year drop.

1. .

I have done some digging. I am correct that the renewal even for premium are standard rates of (depending on registrar about $7 to $10).

I was NOT quite right re the premium rates. There are 4 tiers. The lowest is about $16 as I said. The other three levels are $78, $780 and $7800 (at Namecheap, I think the exact rates vary slightly be registrar). The ICU people say about 85% of the premiums are in the $16 category,and it seems to me that is right from my searching. A number of single words are at the regular rate of about $1-$2 as well.

A few examples...at $16 many including words like chemistry, trend
$78 things like colours e.g. blue, trips etc.
$780 some high value words like matrix, cruise
$7800 I had trouble finding any but Toronto is one I did find