domains Why I have not given up on New gTLDs!

[Lox]

by Jeff Neuman

"Why even have more TLDs when most of the ones from 2012 were "failures"?

This is what we hear the most. But they are generally from domain name industry insiders that have an interest in protecting their existing assets or from those that benefit greatly from the artificial scarcity of top-level domains. We also hear this from some intellectual property specialists that bear the burden of protecting their clients' trademarks and have more of a burden with each launch of a new TLD.

To them I say.....Who are you to judge the success or failure of the new gTLD Program? We shouldn't judge the success or failure of TLDs in terms of numbers of registrations or what the resale value of second level domains are within a TLD. For even if there is one registrant that depends on a domain name registered on a new gTLD domain name extension for their business or livelihood, then who are we to ever described that gTLD as a failure. Who are we to tell that registrant that their whole life's work is on a "failed" domian space. At the end of the day, we launch new registries for them and if the gTLD is secure, works, and does what the end users expect it to do, then all other opinions are just that....opinions.

New gTLDs were created, and are created, to give consumers a choice. The new gTLD Program is about removing the artificial barriers that exist in the creation of new TLDs while at the same time protecting consumers and preserving the safety and security of the Internet. It was not put in place to appease the existing market or preserve ...

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[bmugford]

In fairness, when new extensions were created the operators expected much more.
They expected a paradigm shift, some said .COM is like "AM Radio" or ".COM is dead".

Almost a decade later none of that happened. It has not lived up to all the hype.

If anything .COM is stronger than ever, while .XYZ seems to be the only new gTLD with any real sales traction.

The "consumer choice" thing is a myth. If that was actually the case, the registries would not reserve the premium terms and charge premium prices and/or renewals for them.

It is about nothing more than making money.

There was never a demand for thousands of extensions. This was a solution looking for a problem.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

.... nGTLD registries can do whatever they want.

Which is not a positive thing in my view.

As an end user I think most people would prefer stability and not being at the whim of some random registry operator.

Building your business on an extension where the registry owner "can do whatever they want" is not comforting.

Brad

 

[MKA]

I have a couple of issues with ngTLD:s.

1. Premium renewal fees: Exorbitant registration and renewal fees for good SLD:s (see finance.online)
2. Renewal fees: Even the bad SLD:s are held back by renewal fees of 2 - 5 times that of a .com.
3. Unprofessional: People don't recognize website.online as a website, making it difficult to incorporate onto a business card and whatnot. Even the .net is seen as unprofessional in many cases.
4. Upgrading: Your start-up is really successful, and you've invested a lot of time and money into your brand, but you feel that yourbrand.dev is clunky and you want to upgrade. What's you pick? .com, obviously.

4 is really important, because established franchises have an easier time justifying a expensive purchases.

 

[Joe N]

In fairness, when new extensions were created the operators expected much more.
They expected a paradigm shift, some said .COM is like "AM Radio" or ".COM is dead".

Almost a decade later none of that happened. It has not lived up to all the hype.

If anything .COM is stronger than ever, while .XYZ seems to be the only new gTLD with any real sales traction.

The "consumer choice" thing is a myth. If that was actually the case, the registries would not reserve the premium terms and charge premium prices and/or renewals for them.

It is about nothing more than making money.

There was never a demand for thousands of extensions. This was a solution looking for a problem.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

@Joe N @bmugford

Solution looking for a problem or a solution to the “forthcoming” inevitable ...

https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...tions-at-the-End-of-the-First-Quarter-of-2020

Verisign reported 366,000,000 domain registrations in 2020 ^ 1st quarter ...

Here’s the stats according to Domain Name Stat,

Mind you this is in essentially three (3) years ...

165.96 million domains were registered as of 31st, Dec 2019

201.6 million domains were registered as of 31st, Dec 2020 (+21% YOY)

Here’s where it gets really interesting

438.4 million domains were registered as of 31st, Dec 2021 (+117% YOY)

Now that # as of December 2022 was 628,500,000 domain names registered ...

And counting !

37% of those names are .com domains, which control the largest market share in the industry, this should come as no surprise to anyone here; since .com is the “foremost choice” when it comes to investing, it was the same way when original .com domain investors were making money during the mid - late 90’s selling single keyword .com domain names for millions ...

New extensions are driving up the value of .com domains and presenting a new marketshare to investors willing to invest in the future, ie .xyz etc.

But think about that ^ 165M >>>> 628M within 3 years ^ if you’re paying attention, then that should shock you and everyone

Yes .com will continue to go up, but seeking and investing in new .extensions that make sense will not bring harm to .com investors or their investments, if anything it’ll grow the value of the domain industry further.

I am not sure those numbers are quite accurate. Here is what Verisign said in their latest update -

https://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/dnib/index.xhtml?section=executive-summary

A lot of these registrations seem to be COVID boom related. I expect many to drop and the total number to grow at a slower rate or even decrease over the next year.

With that said, no one can really deny that the rosy predictions of many registry operators have not come true in the many years since new extensions launched.

People can invest in what they want to invest in. There are certainly new extension combos that make sense and are valuable, but it was just not the paradigm shift we were sold.

Brad

 

[MKA]

Slay.cool raised $2.63M - dot cool domain extension - sure, they want slaycool dot com but they don't give a .... and not having dot com , io, co, etc didn't stop them going viral.

No one is contesting that you can get big without a .com.

But how much did slay.cool pay for their domain? They probably paid the $20 it took to register the domain. So how would you (as a reseller) take advantage of that? Do you think you'd be able to get even $200 out of them if you registered it first? Maybe you would. But who knows? Maybe they would've settled for another brand if slay.cool wasn't available.

But there's still a good chance they'll eventually acquire slaycool.com, and whomever owns slaycool.com is going to be in a golden position to negotiate the price. So again, the .com wins.

.... nGTLD registries can do whatever they want. Versign, PIR & most of the ccTLD registries can't.

Yes, but the majority of sites use .com, and all virtually all businesses use .com. Even on your mobile phone there's a [.com] button when you're typing in the browser. People are willing to pay for the .com because it's the top global position for a brand. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a buyer for a different TLD? It's just not worth it....

And that's not even touching on all the success stories that came with the acquisitions of .com, like with teamworkpm.net. Their profit had more than doubled in the first year of the acquisition of teamwork.com, and they saw a similar increase the next year, and even said that the acquisition of teamwork.com is the best decision they ever made.

 

[GoKaizen]

Jeff uses a .com domain.

 

[Lox]

I have a couple of issues with ngTLD:s.

1. Premium renewal fees: Exorbitant registration and renewal fees for good SLD:s (see finance.online)
2. Renewal fees: Even the bad SLD:s are held back by renewal fees of 2 - 5 times that of a .com.
3. Unprofessional: People don't recognize website.online as a website, making it difficult to incorporate onto a business card and whatnot. Even the .net is seen as unprofessional in many cases.
4. Upgrading: Your start-up is really successful, and you've invested a lot of time and money into your brand, but you feel that yourbrand.dev is clunky and you want to upgrade. What's you pick? .com, obviously.

4 is really important, because established franchises have an easier time justifying a expensive purchases.

Slay.cool raised $2.63M - dot cool domain extension - sure, they want slaycool dot com but they don't give a .... and not having dot com , io, co, etc didn't stop them going viral.

.... nGTLD registries can do whatever they want. Versign, PIR & most of the ccTLD registries can't.

crunchbase | techcrunch

Regards

 

[evil]

Premium renewal fees are killing the ngTLD market.
sex.xyz sold for just $2,150 because the renewal fee (10300$)
sex.com at the same time is for sale at xx million$

 

[bmugford]

ngtld registry owners/operators:

DNS tech
Ex and/or still Domain Investors or Domainers
Ex ICANN etc org

There have already been plenty of new gTLD shenanigans. It is kind of like the Wild West compared to more regulated, predictable registries.

Just a few that come to mind are .XYZ and their forced stuffing of registrations.
They registered domains in people's names and put them in their Network Solutions account without permission. You had to manually opt-out. I have never seen that with another registry. Nor, should it be allowed under ICANN policies.

Uniregistry lead by Frank Schilling introduced massive premium registration/renewal fees to several of their extensions. They initially were even going to raise it on existing registrations, until they backed down. This still lead to GoDaddy dropping their extensions in the interest of protecting customers.

Or, how about a registry re-classifying existing registrations as "premiums" and autobilling people hundreds or thousands of dollars for them -

https://www.namepros.com/threads/tu...sbs-and-cfd-to-avoid-unexpected-bill.1290692/

This does not even include the general clusterfuck of reserved terms, premium registrations, renewals, renewal tiers, etc.

Greed is the driving force behind the vast majority of these decisions.

You can't expect registry operators to just "do the right thing" on their own. You need actual contractual language that prevents this type of nonsense.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

by Jeff Neuman

To them I say.....Who are you to judge the success or failure of the new gTLD Program? We shouldn't judge the success or failure of TLDs in terms of numbers of registrations or what the resale value of second level domains are within a TLD. For even if there is one registrant that depends on a domain name registered on a new gTLD domain name extension for their business or livelihood, then who are we to ever described that gTLD as a failure.

There are plenty of objective metrics to judge the "success" of a domain extension.

All these operators marketed these extensions like they were going to change the world.

Now if an extension only has one end user, who can say that isn't a success.

Man, talk about shifting the goal posts.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

I'm well aware of the shady ping pong games.

Network Solution and other registrars "pumped" .online, .live .shop, etc (donuts mostly) also. They also painted the ngtlds as a "must have" and "brand protection".

Regards

Yeah, you also have the brand protection rackets like .sucks and others charging thousands of dollars to "protect" your brand.

There is no reason these type of extensions should exist, when their only real potential stream of revenue is from brand owners for "protection".

Brad

 

[Lox]

There are plenty of objective metrics to judge the "success" of a domain extension.

All these operators marketed these extensions like they were going to change the world.

Now if an extension only has one end user, who can say that isn't a success.

Man, talk about shifting the goal posts.

Brad

Jeff is CLO of dot Hip Hop ... by teasing (testing) their (automated) marketing efforts on Twitter, I lose interest in investing or by helping them develop healthy marketing habits.

 

[Lox]

There have already been plenty of new gTLD shenanigans. It is kind of like the Wild West compared to more regulated, predictable registries.

Just a few that come to mind are .XYZ and their forced stuffing of registrations.
They registered domains in people's names and put them in their Network Solutions account without permission. You had to manually opt-out. I have never seen that with another registry. Nor, should it be allowed under ICANN policies.


You can't expect registry operators to just "do the right thing" on their own.

I'm well aware of the shady ping pong games.

Network Solution and other registrars "pumped" .online, .live .shop, etc (donuts mostly) also. They also painted the ngtlds as a "must have" and "brand protection".

Regards

 

[bmugford]

Jeff is CLO of dot Hip Hop ... by teasing (testing) their (automated) marketing efforts on Twitter, I lose interest in investing or by helping them develop healthy marketing habits.

.HIPHOP is one of the worst extensions in existence.

A (2) word extension with very limited terms that fit.

No wonder he is making the argument that even one end user isn't a failure -

To them I say.....Who are you to judge the success or failure of the new gTLD Program? We shouldn't judge the success or failure of TLDs in terms of numbers of registrations or what the resale value of second level domains are within a TLD. For even if there is one registrant that depends on a domain name registered on a new gTLD domain name extension for their business or livelihood, then who are we to ever described that gTLD as a failure. Who are we to tell that registrant that their whole life's work is on a "failed" domian space.

Brad

 

[Lox]

.HIPHOP is one of the worst extensions in existence.

A (2) word extension with very limited terms that fit.

No wonder he is making the argument that even one end user isn't a failure -

To them I say.....Who are you to judge the success or failure of the new gTLD Program? We shouldn't judge the success or failure of TLDs in terms of numbers of registrations or what the resale value of second level domains are within a TLD. For even if there is one registrant that depends on a domain name registered on a new gTLD domain name extension for their business or livelihood, then who are we to ever described that gTLD as a failure. Who are we to tell that registrant that their whole life's work is on a "failed" domian space.

Brad

I spend a significant amount of my free time reading everything ICANN and especially nGTLD related.

May 2011

The gTLD proposal is designed to dramatically expand the number of top-level domains available. This expansion will raise significant revenue for ICANN, possibly launch new businesses to manage the new gTLD’s, and create more options for registrars to sell domain names to consumers. The investment and economic potential from these new domains may be significant, but investment in economic potential should not necessarily be the focus of whether the gTLD proposal moves forward. We need to ask ourselves the tough questions.

How will this expansion affect trademark holders?

Will it create opportunities for fraud, increased consumer confusion, and IP theft?

Besides ICANN, who is asking for these new gTLD’s, consumers, registrars, or those looking to create businesses around these new top-level domains, is the gTLD proposal simply a solution that is in search of a problem that may or may not exist?


read more PDF

 

[Mkt Sales Leads]

In fairness, when new extensions were created the operators expected much more.
They expected a paradigm shift, some said .COM is like "AM Radio" or ".COM is dead".

Almost a decade later none of that happened. It has not lived up to all the hype.

If anything .COM is stronger than ever, while .XYZ seems to be the only new gTLD with any real sales traction.

The "consumer choice" thing is a myth. If that was actually the case, the registries would not reserve the premium terms and charge premium prices and/or renewals for them.

It is about nothing more than making money.

There was never a demand for thousands of extensions. This was a solution looking for a problem.

Brad

Exactly. Especially if a small business was fortunate enough to register a good keyword .co / xyz name only to have it expire and see it has become 'registry premium'.

Where's the 'consumer choice' (or better still, end user choice) in that?

 

[Grego85]

Greg.....i happen to believe you CAN make A LOT of money "if" you focus on the right niches. Earlier in this thread i said, "If it's to be, it's up to me"

Attempting to reach out to you via Sweet.domains I ran into Dreamhost As a result I ran into Michael Rodriquez and Christopher Ghazarian and I'll attempt to reach out to them via Linkedin.

I get your attraction to .xyz and your focus on web3/blockchain-related niches, but if you're interested in what I'm up to with names like American.link and Bicycle.link......we should talk. Thanks

Ummm... ok, well I was going more off my own actual experience in making money on domains.

Sorry you couldn't offer your .link names to me so easily via email, but as I said in my last post, your ngtld names should be related to crypto/web3 if you want any chance of selling regularly. Sorry for the other dudes who you shifted too after :/

I have Asset.Link and Venture.Link and have not been able to find much interest. I view the tld as overpriced and ohhhhh.. now I see you think the tld is worth more than .xyz? Lol, holy cow man, thanks for the laugh :D

 

[Alessandro Couteau]

In fairness, when new extensions were created the operators expected much more.
They expected a paradigm shift, some said .COM is like "AM Radio" or ".COM is dead".

Almost a decade later none of that happened. It has not lived up to all the hype.

If anything .COM is stronger than ever, while .XYZ seems to be the only new gTLD with any real sales traction.

The "consumer choice" thing is a myth. If that was actually the case, the registries would not reserve the premium terms and charge premium prices and/or renewals for them.

It is about nothing more than making money.

There was never a demand for thousands of extensions. This was a solution looking for a problem.

Brad

@Joe N @bmugford

Solution looking for a problem or a solution to the “forthcoming” inevitable ...

https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...tions-at-the-End-of-the-First-Quarter-of-2020

Verisign reported 366,000,000 domain registrations in 2020 ^ 1st quarter ...

Here’s the stats according to Domain Name Stat,

Mind you this is in essentially three (3) years ...

165.96 million domains were registered as of 31st, Dec 2019

201.6 million domains were registered as of 31st, Dec 2020 (+21% YOY)

Here’s where it gets really interesting

438.4 million domains were registered as of 31st, Dec 2021 (+117% YOY)

Now that # as of December 2022 was 628,500,000 domain names registered ...

And counting !

37% of those names are .com domains, which control the largest market share in the industry, this should come as no surprise to anyone here; since .com is the “foremost choice” when it comes to investing, it was the same way when original .com domain investors were making money during the mid - late 90’s selling single keyword .com domain names for millions ...

New extensions are driving up the value of .com domains and presenting a new marketshare to investors willing to invest in the future, ie .xyz etc.

But think about that ^ 165M >>>> 628M within 3 years ^ if you’re paying attention, then that should shock you and everyone

Yes .com will continue to go up, but seeking and investing in new .extensions that make sense will not bring harm to .com investors or their investments, if anything it’ll grow the value of the domain industry further.

 

[Ostrados]

There are hundreds of new gTLDs, the question is are they profitable business for their registries, or are we going to witness many go bankrupt?

There are many new gTLDs with less than 10 registered domains:

https://domainnamestat.com/statistics/tldtype/new

 

[MKA]

Premium renewal fees is killing the ngTLD market.
sex.xyz sold for just $2,150 because the renewal fee (10300$)
sex.com at the same time is for sale at xx million$

It gets even worse when you consider the fact if the domain is up for auction or make an offer, you have no way of knowing what the renewal fee will be. So you might think you've lucked out when you found admin.dev for a few hundred dollars, but then it turns out that you'll have to drop it because you can't afford the renewal fee for it.

There are never any artificial issues like this with .com. That's why they're worth investing in.

 

[bmugford]

"Greed is the driving force behind the vast majority of these decisions."

Greed is the driving force behind the entire domain industry, and lets not leave out .com and the secondary/aftermarket. However, here's where I see OPPORTUNITY

Sure, but I am also not the one spouting this self-serving nonsense like I am some agent of good helping humanity with domains, like the original post (below) -

New gTLDs were created, and are created, to give consumers a choice. The new gTLD Program is about removing the artificial barriers that exist in the creation of new TLDs while at the same time protecting consumers and preserving the safety and security of the Internet.

They were largely created to make money, not for some greater good. End of story.

Brad

 

[Steven McEvoy]

Jeff uses a .com domain.

This right here ends all debate. No matter if you like ngtlds or not .com will always be better.

It’s like me and .us

I love .us domains, however if I started up a company I would use a .us and fwd the .com to that .us so in the end .com as won.

 

[Alessandro Couteau]

I am not sure those numbers are quite accurate. Here is what Verisign said in their latest update -

https://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/dnib/index.xhtml?section=executive-summary

A lot of these registrations seem to be COVID boom related. I expect many to drop and the total number to grow at a slower rate or even decrease over the next year.

With that said, no one can really deny that the rosy predictions of many registry operators have not come true in the many years since new extensions launched.

People can invest in what they want to invest in. There are certainly new extension combos that make sense and are valuable, but it was just not the paradigm shift we were sold.

Brad

I am not sure whose numbers are more accurate neither ... Verisign or Domain Name Stat ... I presumed both were reputable ^

That said, I believe the whole GTLD game was early, too early maybe, but early isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the time is very similar to how long it took .com to achieve its TRUE success ... and from what we have seen; the growth is astonishing for some .extensions and for others, not so much ... (as) noted many would and will fail,

But I have a different opinion related to registrations ... I believe that the number of registrations will continue to slope upwards given how reliant people have become on the internet, crypto, nfts, social media, ecommerce, banking, insurance, etc. and I also believe that new tech like ChatGPT and Ai tools will boost that number by a large degree ... I mean just look at how many people are on their phone nowadays ... some people are glued to the screen

Yes you are correct, the pandemic did startle business owners with physical fronts, and going digital was the solution, I believe many people understand this, especially business owners who now know their physical business’ can be closed within a days notice ...

And of course business’ want good domain names ^ but the majority that are willing to pay top dollar is a small percentage ...

we have seen new .extension registry owners charge insane premium renewals for certain domain names ^ and as you said, this is clearly a cash grab and not the right way to grow the value of the industry ^ development and reasonable renewals are where we will see the value go up ^ time will tell.

Time moves forward >>> internet and online users continues to grow ^^^

My partner and I pay $18 a piece annually to own wines.xyz and whiskey.xyz / but the difference is we got to the game early, now I hear some premium .xyz keywords that can be registered today carry crazy renewal pricing ... again a cash grab ...