Why I Told My “New gTLD” Project to “Suck It” – Will Rebrand with King of all URLs

https://www.strategicrevenue.com/wh...o-suck-it-will-rebrand-with-king-of-all-urls/

 

The rule #1 do not register Premium domains

 

Like I said in another thread: dot-cars are very expensive, that's for sure, but if one re-brands from Find.Cars to FindCarsforSale.com, that maybe says about lack of marketing skills rather than anything else imho.

 

With so many expiring domains, I think some people have given up on 20+ past years waiting. I bought a great one clean yesterday 19 years old parked. Why even the New Gtlds?

 

from the article

and then

Excited about paying the discounted registration $2100, but the renewal at $2800 is ridiculous?

Unless you are an actual car company that produces cars, and you have a long-standing website that gets hundreds of thousands of visitors/returning customers a year to which you can get them accustomed to the new url simply by visual juice, and then maybe rebrand after a year or two, why would you invest in this extension?

We will continue to see new G dropouts with these types of poor decisions, as well as the blanketing of all new gTLDs along with them.

We are only hurting ourselves. Keep it up.

 

oops wrong thread my bad

 

Your business model drowned in it's own renewals. That is really sad, all that good money went out the window, these are vague extensions, not many end users want to play in this space.

 

They still own several .cars

 

@HotKey

Yes, initially I was very excited about .cars domains. Two years later, after watching what I feel has been significantly poor adoption overall, I did not want to spend another $2,100 (I did still had access to the discount) on renewing even just one of them. After two years of watching less than stellar growth, and a poor retail and wholesale market of the TLD as a whole, keep it mind, I watched Cheap.cars not even attract bids over $100.00; I decided that there was no longer any point to continue to hold the domain and build a business on it as its value and the anticipated competitive edge of having it early had diminished to me.

 

I completely get what you are saying. I had a similar decision to make a year or so ago and I asked the community for feedback to help make the decision. These were two single letter new gTLDs. Ultimately, I let them drop. Never looked back really. I made up the money from other sales, as I treat my portfolio as one whole. Not name by name. Anyway, I congratulate you on the courage to scrap it. I have seen businesses burn through millions of dollars, then scrap.

I believe you did the right thing based on the circumstances. Until the pricing structure is more affordable, it will be difficult to run a profit.

Many domain investors experimented with the new gTLDs and who knows what the future holds. One thing is for sure. The old rules still apply. Changing human behavior takes years. It just can't happen overnight. We could easily be a good 10 years off before people "get it".

 

Paying $2,100 for a renewal compared to $2,800 is not really a discount, any which way you look at it.

 

Depends on how you look at it. Was $700 less per name which was significant for me.

 

Agreed and thank you Silentptnr

 

When you waste that much money without a business plan already in place, or an existing business already in place, it is all wasted whether it be $2,100, or $2,800, at least you saw the light, otherwise you would be $20K in the whole in a few years, and that is a very nice category killer type domain if bought right.

Sorry for your loss, we all got big eyes, and were promised big things, but as soon as the registries didn't see the follow thru, they cut the advertising, and now people just see this as a fad.

 

@wwwweb
The business is fine and profitable and uses a variety of URLs....
It's this particular name that is not needed..

 

Thanks for sharing the story. I love new gTLDs, but I only choose those with reasonable renewals, which is around $10-$30 max.

In my experience, one can find plenty of good new gTLD names with renewals which are lower comparing to .com.

But...those names are usually taken since 2014-2015, still my experience is that it is possible to get great new gTLD name (and with standard renewal attached) for few hundreds bucks from domainers. Which is, I think, much better deal they to buy domain from registry with high yearly renewal.

It is clear that extension like .car are primarily focused on strong end users, as from domaining point of view it is particularly difficult to carry names with $2000+ renewals.

 

.cars .auto .security .storage etc.....


dhkjjdjd.storage
$599.99 per year, where do I sign up?

 

yes, but you listed end-user oriented extensions with some of the highest standard renewal fees. But there are hundreds of other new gTLD extensions as well..

 

Here is the thing, all of these should be under one umbrella, not all these different providers with different rules, different premiums, different renewals, this is why the system is broken, and many like godaddy have broken partnerships with such companies, the system is broken.

Look at the end user example, these domains actually cost the business money, they did not make them any added revenue. How sad is that?

 

I always wonder, is this premium price worth more than the customers I can get advertising on FB or G.

Answered, thanks.

 

Understandable. You had the right idea, and the right extension. But giving up too quick you will never fully know when it would have grabbed your users. Of course at over 2k/year the only place it might take you is bankrupcy, so you likely made a good call. Again, these types of extensions weren't meant for "testing" grounds for the common online business, they really require a commitment from huge corporations where renewals are a non-issue.

They say any new tech becomes obsolete after what, 4 months? I don't think we can apply this norm to the ngTLDs, because there's nothing coming around that will best them, and after 30+ years of the .com making bedrock, there's going to be a whole lot of time needed for the G's to settle into their spot.

 

....and the reason IMO why Donuts saw the darkness at the end of the tunnel and have been trying to save their investor’s money by acquiring as many strings as they can. But that genie is already out of the bottle.

.com started out costing, those willing to gamble, “nothing”. These was no confusion on who or what was the best extension and the world grew into the “new” internet knowing that .com “was” the internet. Pretty simple and harmonic, not like this current chaos that is costing people their money and dreams.

 

Thanks for commenting on here John. Who would be excited to pay $2k+ a year for a domain?

Most will never "get it". People still are trying to understand computer basics.

 

I'm curious...how did you attempt to market/sell your .car domains? Did you personally take them to the auto industry? Auto Shows? Dealerships? Manufacturers? etc. For example, I'm developing a business called First Car Memories, LLC and part of my business model calls for selling advertising to the likes of Ford, BM, VW etc. Thanks