IT.COM

.org Why I am bullish on .ORG: Plutocratic guilt!

NameSilo
Watch

Are you going to be buying more .ORG in Q4 2019?

  • This poll is still running and the standings may change.
  • This poll is still running and the standings may change.

Rob Monster

Founder of EpikTop Member
Epik Founder
Impact
18,389
A few folks have been asking about why I have recently become more bullish on .ORG. I thought the topic deserves a post, and perhaps some debate.

In short, the reason why I think .ORG will have a healthy after-market in the coming years is because of what some have called "Plutocratic Guilt". It is a term I learned from a fellow Seattleite named Nick Hanauer who probably has a bit of it -- he is really rich and he likes to talk about it, but then he also likes to philosophize about how rich people need to give back more to society. It started with his 2014 TED Talk:


The sad reality of the world is that the rich do keep getting richer and the poor are mostly staying poor and/or getting poorer, while much of the middle class gets obliterated. The GDP per capita data uses an average to mask this trend but the Gini coefficient of inequality clearly shows that income inequality is getting worse.
upload_2019-11-3_13-53-32.png

As for what to do about, it, my recipe is really simple: sell to rich people. We already do that at Epik, e.g. during October we sold 3 domains above $250K each. However, eventually rich people have enough stuff, and enough businesses. At some point, they start to care a lot more about their "legacy", which is one reason you see elaborate donor recognition walls in high visibility places. More examples here.

upload_2019-11-3_14-36-27.png


However, if you are really rich, you set up a Foundation e.g. the Gates Foundation, or more recently, the Chan Zuckerburg Initiative, etc. It is some mix of estate planning, philanthropy, tax shelter and (hidden) agenda. Most philanthropic funds are actually in the US and likely that pattern continues for the foreseeable future. Most US philanthropies choose .ORG as their extension.

upload_2019-11-3_13-46-39.png


.
 
Last edited:
16
•••
The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
I also have Revitalise.org
revitalise.org.uk is developed
 
1
•••
0
•••
1
•••
approaching expiry in the next month
-
bitbid...bitcoinforex...dyin...pippy...softie
-
a decision had to be made, renew bitcoinforex and let the others expire
 
0
•••
Rarely a two-word .org available for registration that really catches my eye..

Vertical Garden (.org)
 
1
•••
0
•••
How about leasing .org domains as 'regular donations' for tax offsets?

Obviously depends on your local tax law, but I wonder if that is viable?
 
1
•••
How about leasing .org domains as 'regular donations' for tax offsets?

Obviously depends on your local tax law, but I wonder if that is viable?

Consult a tax advisor, but seems logical. If the non-profit can't buy the domain but instead leases the domain name at some fair market value, that is a contribution of value. That said, I do think the cleaner solution is an outright donation at some value rather than risk having to restate multiple years of returns if there is some subsequent objection to your valuation.
 
0
•••
I wish I had focused more on .org over the years. The right names have been good to me, despite never owning more than 15 or 20 of them at a time. For example:

Bought RW for $1,500 and wholesaled it for $9k nine months later.
Bought Out for $1,470 and sold it for $30k a year later.
Bought Juicing for $512 and out-bounded it for $15k a year later.

They have demand, are plenty capable of selling for five and six figures (even seven figures for the best), and are generally pretty cheap on the wholesale market due to lack of interest. This is definitely a sleeper category, but demand drops off exponentially faster than .com when you go down the quality spectrum.

So like Brad said it needs to be a great fit for the extension; charity, health and wellness, issues, politics, religion, Geo, and short dictionary words that would make good brands. Quality over quantity here, especially now that Ethos will be taking over.

I wouldn't really advise that people go on hand-reg sprees. That said, I think Rob's experiment has a pretty good chance of success, lots of solid upgrade potential there for an $xxx gamble. Probably more nuggets to be found if you put in the research, but I would focus on the aftermarket.
 
3
•••
Bought RW for $1,500 and wholesaled it for $9k nine months later.
Bought Out for $1,470 and sold it for $30k a year later.
Bought Juicing for $512 and out-bounded it for $15k a year later.

While your examples sound great, Michael, I would argue it’s easy to fall in love with .org and make expensive mistakes.

In 2017-2018 I sold four one word .orgs for high $x,xxx to low $xx,xxx each. One sale via outbound to a perfect end user (upgrade from an .org hack), and three inbound leads. My ROI was excellent.

Those lucky (and relatively quick) sales gave me a wrong impression that one word .orgs sell really well.

I did a mistake of acquiring quite a few more one word .orgs and 3L orgs. And they don’t sell. I haven’t sold anything above 2K since March 2018. I did sell few in low $x,xxx range, but those were mostly liquidations — I sold for 1.3-2X of my acquisition price.

I know for sure at least two of my one word .org are of very good quality — very positive, aged, occupied in all imaginable extensions (if we don’t count .bond, .best and alike O_o), each registered in 150+ extensions and return hundreds of exact match results on LinkedIn. They both fit well into charity, health and wellness category (and former usage was exactly that), and there are many companies in other niches with same name.

Both domains were listed with fixed BIN price most of the time. The one I bought for 1K I can’t sell in mid to high $x,xxx, the best and ONLY offer to date was 3K. Another one I bought for almost 2K and I haven’t received ANY offers (I did some outbound when I acquired it 2 years ago and I think the best was around 4K). My BIN was from 10K to 18K, but last few months listed with make offer.

When I compare these two with the four I sold, I don’t see any major difference. They’re easy to spell and popular English words, and have similar qualities. I’ve got another very very good .org that I’m shooting to the moon with, but so far I received only few 5K offers from domainers and not a single offer from an end user.

Couple more examples of .orgs that I’m glad I lost at auctions (I was the second top bidder on these):
- Jordan .org 3.7K
- Syntax .org, 1.9K
- Django .org, 1.1K

I like these a lot, but I might have ended up holding them until now as current owners do. And my top three .orgs are actually better then these (surely not worse).

With all that said, I love .org. But I regret investing most of my funds into .orgs during my first 2 years of domaining. Outbound is also hard unless you have a perfect buyer, and even then they don’t want to pay above 3-4K for domain you acquire for 1-2K.

I currently own around 20 one word and 3L orgs of varying quality, and I sold about a dozen of same type.
 
Last edited:
3
•••
.
I wish I had focused more on .org over the years. The right names have been good to me, despite never owning more than 15 or 20 of them at a time. For example:

Bought RW for $1,500 and wholesaled it for $9k nine months later.
Bought Out for $1,470 and sold it for $30k a year later.
Bought Juicing for $512 and out-bounded it for $15k a year later.

They have demand, are plenty capable of selling for five and six figures (even seven figures for the best), and are generally pretty cheap on the wholesale market due to lack of interest. This is definitely a sleeper category, but demand drops off exponentially faster than .com when you go down the quality spectrum.

So like Brad said it needs to be a great fit for the extension; charity, health and wellness, issues, politics, religion, Geo, and short dictionary words that would make good brands. Quality over quantity here, especially now that Ethos will be taking over.

I wouldn't really advise that people go on hand-reg sprees. That said, I think Rob's experiment has a pretty good chance of success, lots of solid upgrade potential there for an $xxx gamble. Probably more nuggets to be found if you put in the research, but I would focus on the aftermarket.

Do you follow a new patterns (Q2 2018 on, especially since ex Donuts start playing w the PIR’s fridge - registry reserved e.g. 4d.org etc) of migration from .org to other .ext? (Where existing name .org redirects to something else)

Regards
 
Last edited:
0
•••
  • The sidebar remains visible by scrolling at a speed relative to the page’s height.
Back