opinion Why I registered 20,000 .xyz domain names.

[Darryl Lopes]

I thought I was smart, it was like an aha moment, like when that guy bought 12,150 cups of chocolate pudding and earned 1.25 Million Air Miles. This was back in June 2016 and .xyz domain name extension was having a sale at Uniregistry and every .xyz domain name that was available to register would cost $0.01, one penny. I spent the next two nights scanning and compiling lists of domain names that I could add to my cart, at that time, the site could roughly only handle about roughly 500 registration per session, so on it went adding domain names 500 at a time to my account. Most of the domain names I registered, I would say 80% of them were just purely number combinations, during that time such as 0000011.xyz and 0000012.xyz, also I registered thousands of high-value keywords in the car, insurance, legal, addiction, mortgage and real estate industries. The Chinese domain market was hot for number domain names and 4-letter .com domain names at that time. I also thought it was pretty cool to see in the next couple days that I had over 20,000 domain names in my account. With great power comes great responsibility, I must have quoted those lines quite a few times to myself, I mean in general, when you have that many names, surely some sort of traffic would come along, via type-ins or bots, there was one way to test it out. I asked my friend Andre who had a blog and small online store selling art, pictures of guitars as clocks if I could test and send traffic to him as he had Google analytics. The next day he told me to stop redirecting my names because his service provider was going to charge him more for the influx of traffic. So it is true, it works. With great power comes great responsibility.

I set the names back to their default name servers and did a bulk edit where I priced every name for sale at $300 USD each. I was going to be rich! I got maybe two enquiries in the coming months and put it at the back of my mind and carried on the day to day work. The one enquiry was someone confused and the other one was a real person, they wanted a domain name I had registered for $0.01. The name was somnambulist.xyz, I don't even remember the name or registering it. Turns out the definition of somnambulant. 1 : walking or having the habit of walking while asleep. You learn something or about something every day when you are in the domain industry. Anyways an email went out to the potential buyer quoting them $2,000 USD minimum and the came back and laughed on email. I sent an email saying that was sent in error and the price was actually $300, they could not see the value and suggested the name might be worth $3 bucks if being generous. I held firm on my $300 USD asking price, I mean I did pay around $200 for all 20,000 domain names so I really just wanted to sell one and make a profit. That never happened, almost a year went by and I had to make sure all the .xyz were on auto renew off as the renewal price for around $12.88 USD each, I knew this going into this and a few clicks and sorting out bulk domain edits I was going to let them all lapse. If you really wanted to renew 20,000 .xyz names it would of the cost you in the region of $250,000 USD!

One thing I will strongly suggest is not to register domain names blindly or in bulk like I did, unless you curate every single name you register, you can get into trouble with the law in the form of a URS (Uniform Rapid Suspension System) and or UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Resolution Policy) and they will be a headache, cost you money and damage your reputation forever online. I did not get into any trouble registering all the .xyz names, but I could of and that would have been a stupid mistake to make in hindsight. .xyz is still one of my favorite extensions, they have good marketing and brand awareness. I just won't be registering 20,000 names anytime soon.

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[JagG]

Great story @Darryl Lopes and thank you for sharing.

Sorry to hear things didn't work out, but we need to fail sometimes and learn own personal mistakes to come back stronger.

Live and learn buddy and make the remaining 2018 you're year.

Possible to see the list you had, I am sure I am not the only one.

 

[johname]

This is the domain version of buying 20,000 shares of an about to go bankrupt penny stock

The using the registry to tell you what to buy is the "What did I do?" moment to me.

 

[900Worldwide]

The sale thru rate for most domains is 3% tops with .com's. It's probably far less less for .xyz domains.

You might be right about this but I would like to see where you are getting this information from.

I am looking at this from a quick flip (volume selling) stand point, plus the fact it cost him .01 each. Imo the price point should have been $.50 to $7 would put a smile on anyone’s face from that $200 dollar investment for those 20000 xyz domains.

Build some of the names out and charge more money many people buy website. If you have the skill to build the websites. Someone from another forum awhile back was charging $1500 for a really basic website and people was buying. No offense to anyone as I’m here to spread love. I see people buy website with new extensions, so imo money is there.

There is a buyer for everything just have to break out that magnifying glass to find them.

 

[900Worldwide]

I once bought like 120/125 INFO domains here at NP, for $5 each.
Hardly 2-3 sold for $20-$30 each. Waste of $600.

I still love good info’s.

 

[LamsuanlunT]

I would love to reg some domains for a penny. Tell me where I can do that!

 

[alwaysforGod]

Pretty awesome grabbing up of stock during a sale, sounds like you did some work gathering them too.
Bet having 20,000 domains was pretty awesome XD

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

@Darryl Lopes
Thanks for sharing your experience and that too very openly. Not many people does that which you did with big heart. Good lesson to learn for everyone in some way or the other.

Best wishes!

 

[Umesh1]

I thought I was smart, it was like an aha moment, like when that guy bought 12,150 cups of chocolate pudding and earned 1.25 Million Air Miles. This was back in June 2016 and .xyz domain name extension was having a sale at Uniregistry and every .xyz domain name that was available to register would cost $0.01, one penny. I spent the next two nights scanning and compiling lists of domain names that I could add to my cart, at that time, the site could roughly only handle about roughly 500 registration per session, so on it went adding domain names 500 at a time to my account. Most of the domain names I registered, I would say 80% of them were just purely number combinations, during that time such as 0000011.xyz and 0000012.xyz, also I registered thousands of high-value keywords in the car, insurance, legal, addiction, mortgage and real estate industries. The Chinese domain market was hot for number domain names and 4-letter .com domain names at that time. I also thought it was pretty cool to see in the next couple days that I had over 20,000 domain names in my account. With great power comes great responsibility, I must have quoted those lines quite a few times to myself, I mean in general, when you have that many names, surely some sort of traffic would come along, via type-ins or bots, there was one way to test it out. I asked my friend Andre who had a blog and small online store selling art, pictures of guitars as clocks if I could test and send traffic to him as he had Google analytics. The next day he told me to stop redirecting my names because his service provider was going to charge him more for the influx of traffic. So it is true, it works. With great power comes great responsibility.

I set the names back to their default name servers and did a bulk edit where I priced every name for sale at $300 USD each. I was going to be rich! I got maybe two enquiries in the coming months and put it at the back of my mind and carried on the day to day work. The one enquiry was someone confused and the other one was a real person, they wanted a domain name I had registered for $0.01. The name was somnambulist.xyz, I don't even remember the name or registering it. Turns out the definition of somnambulant. 1 : walking or having the habit of walking while asleep. You learn something or about something every day when you are in the domain industry. Anyways an email went out to the potential buyer quoting them $2,000 USD minimum and the came back and laughed on email. I sent an email saying that was sent in error and the price was actually $300, they could not see the value and suggested the name might be worth $3 bucks if being generous. I held firm on my $300 USD asking price, I mean I did pay around $200 for all 20,000 domain names so I really just wanted to sell one and make a profit. That never happened, almost a year went by and I had to make sure all the .xyz were on auto renew off as the renewal price for around $12.88 USD each, I knew this going into this and a few clicks and sorting out bulk domain edits I was going to let them all lapse. If you really wanted to renew 20,000 .xyz names it would of the cost you in the region of $250,000 USD!

One thing I will strongly suggest is not to register domain names blindly or in bulk like I did, unless you curate every single name you register, you can get into trouble with the law in the form of a URS (Uniform Rapid Suspension System) and or UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Resolution Policy) and they will be a headache, cost you money and damage your reputation forever online. I did not get into any trouble registering all the .xyz names, but I could of and that would have been a stupid mistake to make in hindsight. .xyz is still one of my favorite extensions, they have good marketing and brand awareness. I just won't be registering 20,000 names anytime soon.

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thx for sharing ur thoughts bro.

 

[Henry Y]

I registered a few .xyz domains.

bid.xyz
cat.xyz
spa.xyz
wow.xyz
model.xyz

 

[WatchDogue]

IMO it took a bit of guts and courage to carry out a plan to register and manage 20000 domains.

It was much more of an investment of time than money IMO, and hey, it might have paid off for you.

You saw a potential opportunity to " go for it " and you did, at the very least you gave it your best shot.

And it also takes a bit of guts and courage to post your plan and the ultimate unfortunate results of your plan herein for open comments.

Many excellent comments and insights ensued from your post.

Thanks for the interesting post.

 

[Ootsa]

Honest and open story.

By offering .xyz for $0.01(penny) each the registry was betting on making it ROI on the renewals. Unfortunately by doing so they also deflated the perceived value of the .xyz extension brand for who knows how long to come...

 

[hookbox]

If you register 20,000 crap names in a crap extension then they are all crap but if you register 20,000 good names in a crap extension then you are bound to sell a few and create a profit. I can promise you if these were 20,000 single decent keywords a large handful would have easily sold for at least $300 each

 

[hemirate]

Correct, I did not sell a single name.

Moral of the story: .xyz is a crappy extension. Noted.

 

[Michael Ehrhardt]

Domain Name Price Date Venue
galaxy.xyz 2800 2018-03-08 Sedo
host.xyz 3999 2018-01-28 Sedo
Jungle.xyz 7000 2017-11-26 Afternic
Paper.xyz 1000 2017-11-12 Private
Civic.xyz 1000 2017-11-12 Private
ripple.xyz 2500 2017-11-05 Private
Pistala.xyz 100 2017-11-04 GoDaddy
rudy.xyz 350 2017-11-02 Undeveloped
orlando.xyz 995 2017-11-02 Afternic
treehouse.xyz 599 2017-11-02 Afternic
circumcision.xyz 499 2017-11-02 Afternic
keto.xyz 499 2017-11-02 Afternic
preorders.xyz 700 2017-11-02 Undeveloped
Web.xyz 1550 2017-10-22 Flippa
stanley.xyz 1500 2017-09-19 Uniregistry
spectre.xyz 1008 2017-09-19 Uniregistry
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.xyz 995 2017-09-19 Uniregistry
kraken.xyz 995 2017-09-19 Uniregistry
reyes.xyz 700 2017-09-19 Uniregistry
pictet.xyz 299 2017-09-19 Uniregistry
treva.xyz 299 2017-09-19 Uniregistry
icarus.xyz 199 2017-09-19 Uniregistry
crownconstruction.xyz 100 2017-09-19 Uniregistry
ethereum.xyz 4000 2017-09-19 Uniregistry
Delaware.xyz 999 2017-09-16 Private



918 search results (only the first 25 results are displayed)

 

[maya-zir]

you could sell them in bulk or for $3-$5-$10 each one.
I sold some .xyz in bulk and finally even got some extra

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

I think, no one is really surprised, that the registry's "attempt", "to turn $0.01 USD 20,000 times into $12.88 USD" * or, in other words (numbers), "$200.00 USD into $257,600.00 USD" * has miserably failed.

* shematically meant

 

[FolioTeam]

Well you could have made your money back if you had realistic pricing. $300 for a $0.1 is rather ridiculous imo. You could have sold them back at $5 each *20000 = $100,000 - $200 and profited $99,800 would have been a good flip and a great story.
Good idea poor execution is the learning part.

Stay blessed!

Then he would have needed to sell at least 40 names to cover the $200 starting capital. And there was no guarantee that he would have made 40 sales.

All things considered, $200 is not such a steep price to pay for the domaining learning curve. Some have paid higher one way or the other. We all have war wounds and that is domaining for you.

 

[jmcc]

Why is this even news?

Two years ago, XYZ did a penny promo that cost them $2-$3 million dollars. They ate the expenses as advertising, hyping their brand. To them, it was a business expense. Their renewal rate was way less than the 5% retention rate that most promotions dependent on huge discounts achieve. It was dismal. They also used those numbers of penny registrations to present the .XYZ string as hugely adopted. Well, numbers don't lie, and XYZ went down from its peak of 6.7 million domains to 2.3 million, with another 200-300k in the drop queue.

The whole discounting as a business model is built on a certain percentage renewing and covering the costs of the promotion. I think that the Network Solutions promo where all those free XYZ domain names were stuffed in accounts may have given XYZ registry a more rosy view of the discounting game than is the general case. Many of the Netsol customers are bluechips and may have considered it a brand protection registration and that's why the renewals for the Netsol discounting were a bit higher than they should have been. The 1c promotion was just taking the whole discounting thing to insane levels. The Chinese registries and the Famous Four gTLDs seem to follow with the usual boom and bust.

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

e.g. according to NameStat the average period for .site is 1.01 years and it is about the 55th percentile in terms of all (ngTLD?) domain names. Or am I misinterpreting this data? (thanks for any guidance from those more familiar with the stat)

gTLD - New - Deleted - Retained - Est Retention (01-01-2016 - 01-12-2016)
xyz 5,591,801 5,252,875 338,926 6.06%

Peak XYZ:
July 2016
New 3,373,359 Deleted: 3,284,057 Retained: 89,302 Ret%: 2.65%

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

Moral of the story: .xyz is a crappy extension. Noted.

Actually, it is not. It is on a par with some of the non core gTLDs like .BIZ, .INFO and .PRO in terms of usage.

Regards...jmcc

 

[omelet]

you are not the only one Darryl
. I registered about 1000 .xyz names, i also withdrew 95% of them

 

[900Worldwide]

Actually, it is not. It is on a par with some of the non core gTLDs like .BIZ, .INFO and .PRO in terms of usage.

Regards...jmcc

I agree with it’s not a crappy extension but it’s definitely not on par with .info

 

[triplec0886]

Very interesting and informative story @Darryl Lopes. As a still-in-infancy domainer(been at it for 5 months), I can see myself doing something similar with the same thought process. Glad you were able to learn from it and share it. I also learned something new.....test out your domains with Google Analytics......

 

[welluyu]

@Darryl Lopes Thanks for sharing your experience..
I checked several good names .in xyz taken.. and several sell with high price..

 

[SpareDomains]

sure more than a few took a gamble, some win, some lose
Personally I didn't mess with them cause I'm an old school .com guy and the thought of 20,000 xyz in my account would drive me nuts, would need a separate account to keep those away from hiding my .coms